Forging New Links:Toward Sustainable Supply Chain Management

Corporate sustainability requires awareness of the full product life cycle, ranging from the conduct of upstream suppliers to the disposition of obsolete products. Leading companies have integrated environmental and social responsibility expertise into cross-functional teams throughout the supply chain, thus enhancing profitability, resource productivity, innovation and growth. For example,?environmentally preferable purchasing? has influenced the development of benign products that are energy efficient and avoid the use of harmful substances. Likewise, anticipating safety and security risks and developing contingency plans has enhanced business continuity and resilience.

The speaker will provide an overview of best practices in sustainable supply chain management, based on a study funded by the Global Environmental Management Initiative, a prominent industry consortium. The business processes addressed include supplier relationship management, materials management, order fulfillment, product development, and returns management. Companies that participated actively in these studies include 3M, Anheuser-Busch, Dell, Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, DuPont, Eli Lilly, FedEx Express, HP, Intel, Kodak, Motorola, Novartis, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, and Texas Instruments. Their experiences illustrate how corporations can simultaneously meet stakeholder expectations with regard to sustainability and superior business performance.

Finally, the speaker will present guidelines for disruptive environmental innovation, which has the potential to achieve quantum improvements in the ecological footprint of global supply chains. Based on a new book, "Design for Environment: A Guide to Sustainable Product Development," the guidelines encompass dematerialization, detoxification, revalorization, and capital preservation. Such innovation is the only plausible pathway to meet the challenges of climate and natural resource protection while realizing economic prosperity and social equity.