Greening Operations and the Supply Chain - BostonThis is a featured page

Solutions Salons
  • Making supplier reporting user-friendly (ex. suppliers can enter in economic data if they do not have environmental data and model carbon and associated impacts)
  • Understanding what the entire supply chain consists of, have a rule of thumb, standard on which you base what to include
  • Hotspots: understanding where your greatest footprint
  • Redesigning products to be more energy efficient and thereby get suppliers be more energy efficient
  • Break up the big chains and start producing and things more locally and thereby reducing carbon impact of the product and the extent of the supply chain
  • Addressing verifying that your suppliers are being green: conducting life cycle assessment, supply chain assessments internally or through contractors.
  • Proving to suppliers that the alternative, more energy efficient option is better.
  • Promoting energy efficiency through vendor procurement requirements.
  • Asking your suppliers basic questions to guage energy efficiency.
  • Educating suppliers on energy efficiency.
  • Sometimes the more "toxic" choice is more energy efficient-important to do a holistic assessment
Solution Designs
Challenge: How to get your suppliers to be more energy efficient?
  • Set expectations - clearly communicating expected sustainability practices to suppliers (supplier codes, industry codes (e.g. EICC))
  • Ask suppliers about practices at contract award
  • Educating suppliers: showing them how to measure their carbon footprint; providing them the first energy assessment, pointing them to the right resources (private contractors, government programs); telling them the company has implemented energy efficiency in its own internal operations
  • Audit on a regular basis and provide feedback and require suppliers to take action:
    • Too many suppliers to audit (Tier 1 and 2): targeted auditing based on country location, size of supplier; organizations such as EICC which do the auditing and make the information available to members.
    • Suppliers inundated with customer surveys/information: use a standard reporting mechanism such as Carbon DIsclosure Project
    • Getting suppliers to measure on a regular basis
  • Reward suppliers with increased business
  • Leverage/coordinate across businesses - leverage resources by collaborating across organizations to provide suppliers with the tools, technology, best practices they need to be energy efficient and tools to manage suppliers' energy efficiency such as coordinated audits.
Other challenges
  • How to tell major suppliers with whom you have a long relationship that they need to be more energy efficient.
  • Getting suppliers to see not paying attention to energy efficiency as a business risk: big companies (customers) need to clearly communicate to suppliers that they care about whether or not energy efficient suppliers.
  • Getting companies to report on supply chain emissions - leveraging the reputational benefit, peer pressure.
Defining operations: procurement, capital projects, manufacturing, logistics, facilities/engineering, packaging, EHS


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Husaina 		Latest page update: made by Husaina , Sep 16 2010, 4:08 PM EDT (about this update About This Update Husaina Edited by Husaina

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