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Where stakeholders throughout North America redesign sustainable industrial systems that work for everyone.

This is the breakthrough society needs to solve the urgent challenge of expanding economic vitality while preserving our environment. From natural resources, agriculture, and raw materials to production, distribution, consumption, and recycling, our society can redesign its fragmented industrial systems. We must act quickly. Our first Industry Action Plan (IAP) is VitalRail, which focuses on optimizing railroads as the backbone of a multimodal transportation network that serves all industries.

What do we mean by industrial systems?

Industrial systems comprise the complete set of commercial, policy, and planning activities involved in delivering materials and products for modern civilization’s survival and fulfillment. This encompasses all inputs and impacts, including land use, transportation, recycling, and disposal. What occurs between properties is often as significant as what happens at a property.

What do we mean by redesign?

Redesigning industrial systems means working together to find and utilize ways to increase efficiency and reduce negative impacts. It begins with stakeholders establishing collective goals and pragmatic measures while recognizing the reality of prior strategies and investments. Redesigning may require judicious reconstruction, repurposing, and/or relocating some facilities. For instance, to create the most effective strategic mineral supply chain, we would intentionally position lithium mines, battery plants, vehicle factories, and recycling facilities to optimize systemwide logistics. We call this design process "Collaborative Industrial Optimization." Redesigning also calls for a paradigm shift wherein organizations and individuals are incentivized to contribute to systemwide sustainability.

What do we mean by sustainable?

Sustainable is the primary design goal of industrial systems: supporting the long-lasting, harmonious co-existence of humans and nature within our abundantly resourced, yet finite ecosystem.

Who are the stakeholders?

You are all stakeholders, along with everyone involved in or affected by our industrial systems. Developing IAPs for sustainable industries requires complete stakeholder representation. OnTrackNorthAmerica has already cataloged more than 38,000 stakeholders across North America’s industrial, political, and geographic landscape. For each IAP process we initiate, we invite additional stakeholders to work toward complete representation from all sectors, including academia, advocacy organizations, business, community, funders, government, labor, and media.

How do we work together as stakeholders?

We convene stakeholders in IntelliConference® forums that apply IntelliSynthesis®, our breakthrough question-and-response dialogue method, to foster efficient input from large groups of diverse stakeholders. We invite participants from all relevant sectors in a given system or region to ensure that all perspectives are represented and have a voice. Each stakeholder agrees to read and respond to rounds of questions within seven days. The facilitation team creates and shares a digest of each round of responses, saving participants time. Outlier perspectives are considered for the value they may offer the group. The IntelliConference and IntelliSynthesis processes are explained in greater detail elsewhere on this website.

Why include Canada, the United States, and Mexico?

Although Canada, the United States, and Mexico already engage in extensive cross-border trade, they can greatly benefit from the enhanced coordination provided by our IAPs. These are designed for specific industrial systems and geographic regions while maintaining crucial links to related plans, rather than creating isolated solutions. Unlike traditional studies that often remain unused on a shelf, our dynamic process delivers immediate, measurable results through continuous stakeholder engagement.