Sustainability: business, life, environment

Companies around the world are steadily building programs with eco awareness and realizing the tremendous opportunities that lie within their supplier relationships.   Citing further reductions in cost and risk mitigation as the primary motivators, these organizations are seeking to integrate sustainability concepts to their traditional supply chain management activities.  Despite this expanded awareness and growing enthusiasm, many businesses are finding change can be difficult given the recent past.

Adversarial supplier models spawned by decades of spend consolidation and supplier price concessions have made some buyer/supplier relationships less than ideal for sustainability discussions.  Our sustainability consulting finds that many executives quick to make sustainability commitments are now feeling the change management pains of  implementation. 
 
According to a recent supply chain survey, two-thirds of companies indicated limited to no sustainability insight into their supplier relationships.  In addition, less than half even consider the impacts and business sustainability risks of the extended supply chain, past first tier relationships.

But why is line-of-sight across the supply chain so important?

Leading supply chain focused organizations define visibility as a critical first step in managing business risk. We find that these companies are leveraging this total-view perspective to redefine value characteristics and performance measures of a ‘new’ sustainable supply chain.  With this insight, companies can build business sustainability programs which evaluate:

•    Supplier material sources: quality of supply and manner in which it is obtain.
•    Supplier business practices: the ethical standards by which the company conducts its business.
•    Supplier business processes: environmental and social impacts.
•    Supplier business relations and affiliations: quality of sub-tier relationships.

Creating supply chain management alignment through increased eco awareness, cooperative business relationships, and applied sustainability concepts can have immediate business impacts and reduce business sustainability risk.  Taiga Company provides professional consulting and business resources to business leaders seeking to make significant and sustainable improvements in their internal and external operations.