Companies Need to Better Understand Emissions, Impacts from Global Supply Chains

Published July 22, 2009

Operations, logistics and supply chain executives need to better understand the emissions and impacts from the entirety of their operations in order to improve their environmental performance as well as improve their bottom line, according to a new study.

Conducted by the Business Performance Management Forum and E2open, the study, Acceleration of ECO-Operation: Achieving Success & Sustainability in the Supply Chain, questioned more than 125 professionals about complex global supply chains, distribution costs and environmental concerns.

The study looked at how companies are making progress toward optimal visibility, collaboration and sustainability throughout supply and demand chain networks (what the study calls ECO-Operation), finding that the top benefits to implementing ECO-Operation programs include environmental responsibility, better sustainability compliance, more efficient product manufacturing and better customer responsiveness.

However, the study also found that many companies are not looking deep enough within themselves. Forty-two percent of companies said they have not considered carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions from across all of their extended supply chains, and about 66 percent said that they have marginal or no visibility across all tiers and levels of their value chains.

An even larger amount of companies, 78 percent, said that the synergy and accountability throughout their global networks is suboptimal, and some of the other factors holding companies back from benefitting from ECO-Operation include lack of leadership and lack of standardized sustainability metrics.

One issue that will likely encourage companies to dive deeper into their operations is the fact that, while 76 percent said that customers have not requested information on emissions containment, about 66 percent expect their customers to start demanding that information next year.

The report also includes best practices and solutions to help companies begin to add efficient and environmental practices into their supply chain strategies.

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Companies Need to Better Understand Emissions, Impacts from Global Supply Chains

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