Green Supply Chain from Factory to Consumer

1) Introduction Making decisions is a crucial part to any person or an organization, because that decision is taken after taking many factors into considerations. Even after a deep analysis of the factors that we take into consideration we still may go wrong in calculating some uncertainties which would make may mislead our decisions. So, we take decisions in a circumstance where we will be having a number of options and in search for optimal solution. Sometimes we do not take some uncertainties into consideration as they are menial to affect our future circumstances when a particular decision is made. In this review we are going to look into the topics of sustainability and supply chain.

Supply Chain Management According to our class text Supply Chain Management’s goal is to create fast, efficient, and low-cost network of business relationships to get a company’s product from concept to market. In order to understand the goal we must know that the supply chain is the process the raw materials of a product go through in order to be available to the consumer. The relationships that the business creates are needed in order to create the product, each process the product goes through creates value, the supply chain is often called the value chain. Internet technologies are increasingly making the supply chain management process much more efficient and worth the initial investment.

Introduction The supply chain constitutes the processes, which goods or services go through to reach the end user, including the design, manufacture, and delivery stages (Buxmann et al. 2004). Therefore, it encompasses suppliers, manufacturers, transporters, warehouses, wholesalers, retailers, and customers. According to Datta et al. (2008), all businesses and companies are part of one or more supply chains and depend on them to thrive.

A supply chain is all the activities that produce or provide a product or a service to a customer (Reid & Sanders, 2010). Historically supply chain management has been about abating cost. Managing supply chain cost is key strategic planning to stay competitive in a global market. All organizations have a supply chain. A supply chain includes external, internal, incoming, and outgoing. External and internal supply chains are people, parts, raw material, raw foods, information, development of people and projects, engineering, labor, finished products, and components of products. Managing incoming supplies, use, storage, distribution and efficiently, to achieve maximum value of each. In order to be competitive and sustainable companies must develop and be constantly prepared to be agile with their supply chains (Milliken, 2012).

Introduction Sustainability of the supply chain has increasingly become a crucial aspect of corporate responsibility. Apart from being good for business, management of social, economic, and environmental effects of supply chain remains the right thing to do. Constantly changing markets have created complex landscapes that businesses must navigate to build sustainable supply chains. Sustainable supply chains aim at creating social, economic, and environmental value for all stakeholders throughout the supply chain. Building sustainable supply chains not only benefits the stakeholders but also aims at safeguarding business interests.

Every organisations nowadays are concerned in managing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainability as an essential matter of their operations management (OM). The demand to address sustainability in OM is driven by climate change and environmental issues, the workers well-being and communities, and other broad social demands defined as the triple bottom line [TBL] (Walker, Klassen, Sarkis, Seuring, 2014) the pursuit of social, economic and environmental objectives – within operations of a specific firm and operational linkages that extend beyond the firm to include the supply chain and communities. Different aspects of sustainable OM as mentioned in a recent study (Walker et al, 2014, p. 1) includes product design and eco-design, adoption of environmental and social standards, process improvement and lean operations, purchasing, supply chain management (SCM), logistics including recycling and closed-loop systems, performance measurement, and risk management.

Environmental pressures have caused green supply chain management to emerge as an important corporate environmental strategy for organisations’ processes. Our discussion will describe, illustrate and critically evaluate the purchasing process of Woolworths. It will further identify the steps of the purchasing process, the effect of green purchasing and sustainable purchasing. Moreover, the essay will go on to look at the effort that Woolworths has made through their programmes and initiatives of green purchasing.

Supply chain management (SCM) is the management of the torrent of possessions and chattels. It has been demarcated as the "design, organization, execution, control, and checking of supply chain events with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, loading of raw materials, inventories of work in progress and completed goods from point of origin to point of consumption. It includes the movement and based on the worldwide logistics, coordinating supply with demand and measuring performance globally Codependent and interrelated obligations channels and businesses are complex nodes in the supply of products and services required by end customers in the supply chain. The concept of Supply Chain Management is based on two core ideas. The first is that practically every product that reaches an end user represents the cumulative effort of multiple organizations. These organizations are referred to collectively as the supply chain.

A supply chain is a network of facilities that procure raw materials, transform them into intermediate goods and then final products, and deliver the products to customers through a distribution system [1]. The basic objective of supply chain is to “optimize performance of the chain to add as much value as possible for the least cost possible.

Sustainable operation management is a management approach that involves planning, implementation and control of business operations that translate available resources into the required product or service. It is the management of business practices, traditions and operations to promote the highest level of efficiency, smooth workflow, and increased productivity in an organization. This management strategy ensures that the available labour force and materials are changed into products or services in a cost effective way to increase the company’s returns (Corbett, 2009). It also involves production waste management, food waste reduction, creating new opportunities, environment protection, and improving customer health. Sustainable operation management in the retail industry around the world has gained momentum in the recent years, in the face of customer pressure and media interest. It is particularly linked to the concepts of corporate social responsibility and global warming (Morrison, 2013).