Supply Chain Sustainability Challenges

Harvard Business Review (Oct 2010) provided highlights from a survey of 335 respondents of which nearly 80% have direct or indirect supply chain practices. Of those surveyes 54%, indicated that they are extremely or very concerned about their sustainability performance.

The top performance issues identified concerning their company were:

*cost and financial concerns,
*lack of interest from stakeholders (Employees and clients),
current economic realities;
*the need to run lean,
*potential risks for brand and reputation,
regulatry compliance, or
*managing the life cycle and cumulative environmental impacts.

Areas hindering sustainability in the supply chain were:

*cost and financial concerns
*focused on more pressing priorities
*limited resources
*uncertain ROI
*insufficient supplier understanding and buy-in

As more businesses demand increased transparency, more organizations will need to reveal more clearly their sustainability practices in their supply chain practices to establish trust, and secure reputation.

Increasingly companies like Wal-Mart, Tesco and Kroger are using new technologies to provide more transparent information to the marketplace.

As telepresence becomes more pervasive and even live webcams allowing monitoring of what is happening on a factory in real-time, product and service provenance will be more open to public inspection.

New forms of technology will provide unprecedented visibility into the industrial system.

Social media products like YouTube, Twiters and other forms of social media provide viral platforms for activisits that are keen to challenge SCM practices.

Organizations will need to strive to release provenance information otherwise likely come under increased scrutiny as the world continues to move to demanding supply chain sustainability and provide increased assurance of following environmentally sound practices.