Sustainability

Building Supply Chain Sustainability

Although sustainability has been a buzzword throughout supply chains since the dawn of the new millennium, the push to implement greener facility designs and practices has ebbed and flowed. The reason, says Steve Osburn, director in Kurt Salmon Associates’ supply chain practice, is that—for the majority of companies—when they consider going green, most want to know what amount of green, ...

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Sustainable Collaboration is Good for Business

Think of the word “sustainable” and what springs to mind? For many, it means being “green,” and accepting the need for more careful use of increasingly limited natural resources. More specifically, it is a word synonymous with energy renewal and efficiency programs, harnessing the power of the sun, water and wind. Let me offer another word to consider—“ collaboration.” Perhaps ...

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Ensuring Supply Chain Supplier Sustainability and Transparency

Sustainability is a buzzword that has come to play a critical role in the development of any company’s reputation. Over the past decade, consumers have gasped at headlines exposing the unethical working practices of suppliers to major brands. In 2007 Mattel, known to have been an early industry leader in sustainability, made news when it recalled 19 million toys produced ...

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Energy Savings in the Supply Chain

Companies looking to make their facilities— and the facilities of their supply chain partners—more energy efficient have a myriad of tools that can help them, via resources offered by the federal government and industry coalitions, not to mention vendor solutions. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings, Better Plants Program offers technical support to help companies that have voluntarily pledged ...

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The Future is Now

Many were skeptical when online retail giant Amazon announced it was looking into the possibility of delivering goods to private households by drone, but in July 2014, the company’s Prime Air initiative petitioned the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for permission to test “small unmanned aircraft systems” in the U.S., stating that “one day, seeing Amazon Prime Air will be ...

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The Internet of Things: Connecting Supply Chains to Sustainability

Discussions about the Internet of Things (IoT)—the networked connection of physical objects that can share information— usually focus on the operational changes the IoT will bring to the supply chain. One aspect often overlooked is the IoT’s potential for creating a greener supply chain. James Macaulay, Cisco Consulting Services, co-authored The Internet of Things in Logistics, a Cisco/DHL report. He ...

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Sustainable Supply Chains Requires Effective Supply Management Capabilities

Globilization has created the emergence of sophisticated supplier networks, creating management challenges as exposure to volatility and complexity of global sourcing has emerged. While Western organizations have met shortterm cost reduction and flexibility goals through outsourcing, it has been at the expense of lower transparency into suppliers’ operational processes within these far-flung areas of the globe. Many enterprises have limited ...

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Building a Sustainable Supply Chain Workforce

Supply chain is the ‘it’ degree of the moment.” That’s according to Dana Stiffler, Gartner’s vice president of supply chain research. She spends her time looking at how supply professionals are being developed and, just as importantly, how the field is evolving even as you read this. And while supply chains have been in place just short of forever, the ...

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Freight Rail Driving Sustainability And Efficiency

Railroads are inherently efficient, be it in land usage, energy consumption or cost of moving goods. In fact, railroads are four times more fuel efficient than trucks, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. Because greenhouse gas emissions are directly related to fuel consumption, this increased efficiency translates to greenhouse gas emissions that are 75 percent lower for rail than for ...

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Sustainability Reporting

Until recently, large corporations have published annual sustainability reports that focused pri-marily on their own operations. But now, in an effort to create more transparent operations, those companies are reaching out to suppliers and requesting data on their sustainability ef-forts as well. These new reporting requirements are presenting challenges for suppliers, but also creating new opportunities for collaboration. Several factors ...

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