Research Activity
Sustainable supply chain can be viewed as Management of raw materials and services from suppliers to manufacturers/ service provider to customer – with improvement of the social and environmental impacts explicitly considered.
Carry out a literature review on sustainable / green supply chain and prepare:
· A report (provide an example) -2500-3000 words approximately and
Issues/topics that you may like to address/consider are:
1. Drivers for Sustainable SCM
2. Analysing the impact of carbon emissions on manufacturing operation, cost and profit by focusing on product life cycle analysis.Analyse aspects of the product life cycle in terms of; Outlining CO2 emission points and scope, defining CO2 baseline, prioritising measures to reduce or off set emissions and finally planning and initiating actions.
3. New ways of thinking/information sharing
Seven key solution areas were identified:
· In- store logistics: includes in-store visibility, shelf-ready products, shopper interaction
· Collaborative physical logistics: shared transport, shared warehouse, shared infrastructure
· Reverse logistics: product recycling, packaging recycling, returnable assets
· Demand fluctuation management: joint planning, execution and monitoring
· Identification and labelling: through the use of barcodes and RFID tags. Identification is about providing all partners in the value chain with the ability to use the same standardised mechanism to uniquely identify parties/locations, items and events with clear rules about where, how, when and by whom these will be created, used and maintained. Labels currently are the most widely used means to communicate about relevant sustainability and security aspects of a certain product towards consumers
· Efficient assets: alternative forms of energy, efficient/aerodynamic vehicles, switching modes, green buildings
· Joint scorecard and business plan: this solution consists of a suite of industry-relevant measurement tools falling into two broad categories: qualitative tools, which are a set of capability metrics designed to measure the extent to which the trading partners (supplier, service provider and retailer) are working collaboratively; and quantitative tools, which include business metrics aimed at measuring the impact of collaboration
4. Sustainability in the carbon economy
5. Introducing/developing sustainable KPIs to SC, SCOR,GSCF Models
Wal-Mart may be a good example to look at: when you burn less, you pay less and emit less, and the benefits can ripple further. The big advantages for organisations in becoming sustainable are reducing costs and helping the environment. For example: Wal-Mart sells 25% of detergent sold in the United States, by replacing regular washing detergent with concentrate they will save: 400 million gallons of water, 125 million pounds of cardboard and packaging, 95 million pounds of plastic.