Sustainable supply chain

Mota B, Gomes MI, Carvalho A, Barbosa-Povoa AP. Towards supply chain sustainability economic, environmental and social design and planning. J Clean Prod 2015 105 14-7. 

UN Global Compact Office and Business for Social Responsibility, 2010, Supply Chain Sustainability. A Practical Guide for Continuous Improvements, June. 

Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing VI Disassembly, Modeling Environmental Problems, Reverse and Closed Loop Supply Chains, Sustainability and Industrial Ecology. Sponsored by the SPIE, The International Society for Optical Engineering. 

Clearly decisions on the mode of transport will affect the carbon footprint of a supply chain as will the extent to which transport capacity is efficiently used. Flowever, the nature of the delivery network (i.e. the number, location and design of distribution centres, the use of hub and spoke arrangements, the extent of cross-docking, etc.) can have a wider impact on supply chain sustainability. 

The factors driving an increased focus on supply chain sustainability can be divided into three distinct categories ... 

Describe key dimensions of sustainabiUty for a supply chain. Supply chain sustainability can be evaluated in terms of social, environmental, and economic impacts. The social pillar includes the impact on the workforce, customers, and society. The environmental pillar includes resource reduction, emission reduction, and environmental product innovation. 

Describe the tragedy of the commons in the context of supply chain sustainability. What are some mutually coercive mechanisms that could be implemented to encourage supply chain sustainability ... 

Seuring, S., and Muller, M., 2008. From a literature review to a conceptual framework for sustainable supply chain management, Journal of Cleaner Production, 16, 1699-1720. 

In market economies, however, companies are confronted with competition when selling to customers and they use the market competition when purchasing from suppliers. On the other hand, market constellations can change, when many customers compete for limited resources or raw materials provided by few large suppliers. In these situations, prices, values as well as ensured profitability within each company are decisive for the sustainable survival of the business. While the supply chain emphasizes the supply aspects including ensured supply and availability (Corsten 2001, p. 94), an essence of Porter s value chain underlining the value focus and the supply chain concept is required as basis for the study. 

Sustainability overall objective for human beings formulated by the United Nations in the 1990s is to ensure sustainable development for future generations chemical companies have already started to translate this objective into their industry practice with respects to products developed and sold, energy and natural resource efficiency in their processes, climate protection, corporate social responsibility for the workforce as well as stakeholders in production and consuming areas sustainability as an objective also already inspired operations research and supply chain literature (see for example Zhou et al. 2000 Al-Sharrah et al. 2002)... 

Zhang J (2005) Transshipment and its Impact on Supply Chain Members Performance. Management Science 51 (10) 1534-1539 Zhou T, Cheng S, Hua B (2000) Supply Chain Optimization of Continuous Process Industries with Sustainability Considerations. Computers Chemical Engineering 24 1151-1158... 

Product performance as well as issues related to supply chain, marketing, etc., need to be addressed. It may also be necessary to evaluate not only the product but also the process in terms of environmental impact, life cycle assessment and/or sustainability, before it can be launched. 

SEEBA workshop on Supply Chain Management Meeting Electronics Customer Environental Requirements, 30 April 2003, Centre for Sustainable Design, Farnham, UK Envirowise (2001) ENDS Report 321, Envirowise revamp brings advice on cleaner product design, October 2001. Envirowise is funded by the UK Department of Trade and Industry. See www.envirowise.org Apple (2005) Apple states its environmental policy with respect to materials at http //www.apple.com/ environment/design/materials/selection. html... 

The total control of the whole supply chain, from discovery research and raw-material sourcing all the way to postlaunch monitoring of patients, has been a key element of the conventional business model for the pharmaceutical industry, particularly big pharma. In view of the challenges facing the industry, the question arises as to whether this business model is sustainable in the long run. 

Chemical industry players have only recently started transforming their supply chains, and enormous potential still remains to be captured. Being an early adopter, moving first, and taking a creative approach can really ensure distinctiveness, competitive advantage, and long-term, sustainable value creation. 

A systemic approach of the whole supply chain allows the designer to identify the critical stages where inefficient use of raw materials and energy takes place, as well as the sources of toxic materials and pollution. Developing sustainable processes implies the availability of consistent and general accepted sustainability measures. A comprehensive analysis should examine the evolution of sustainability over the whole life cycle, namely that raised by the dismantling the plant. 

The measure for assessing the sustainability of a process design should consider the complete manufacturing supply chain over the predictable plant life cycle. The metrics should be simple, understandable by a larger public, useful for decisionmaking agents, consistent and reproducible. The metrics described below [3] have... 

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