The Ever-Expanding Sustainable Supply Chain

Emerging and ongoing areas of business improvement have long been driven by a wide variety of business sustainability goals and objectives. While sometimes falling under project headings of continuous improvement, business optimization or business synergies, companies across all industries have been searching for sustainable value. Today this search has a new name and an expanded perspective beyond the internal working of the organization.

Slicing out just one area of business sustainability focus, many procurement organizations are now moving from savings to strategy by expanding their view of environmental and social responsibility actions within the supply chain. Our sustainability consulting practice finds these companies creating strategic sourcing and procurement guidelines aligned with their business sustainability strategies.

Wal-Mart unveils its Sustainability Index, defining business sustainability expectations and creating opportunity for its over 100,000 suppliers.
IBM is now requiring its 28,000 suppliers to install management systems to gather data on their energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and waste and recycling.

The next phase, beyond supplier visibility and procurement policy, is an expansion towards a multi-way conversation to promote active engagement of all key stakeholders.

Supply Chain Alignment: All business partners have input into the business sustainability direction and have equal value opportunity.

Supplier Integration: Integrated processes with suppliers to improve communication, increase efficiency, and ensure common sustainable processes.
Customer Expectation Translation: Sustainable product expectations clearly communicated down the supply chain to material and service providers.
Creating supply chain management alignment begins with increased eco awareness, applied sustainability concepts, and corporate commitment. Wal-Mart and IBM have taken the first step and laid the foundation. Building on this work, companies can add increased value through active engagement and communication with key business stakeholders.

Whether your company is just becoming familiar with the concept of business sustainability or has been implementing sustainability concepts for years under other names, there are always more sustainable performance improvements that can help move your organization along the sustainability continuum. Our sustainability consulting provides information and small business resources to clients of all sizes seeking to make incremental steps towards a sustainable supply chain.