Greening the Supply Chain

"Green is green."
                                             –Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman & CEO, General Electric

There are many factors to consider for companies that want to become more environmentally sustainable, but clearly the supply chain is key. Opportunities exist for companies to become greener from the beginning of their value chain—with how products are sourced, produced, and fulfilled—through how they're serviced and ultimately disposed of at the end of their useful life.

Companies need to take a holistic look at their supply chains to identify and create an eco-advantage. Whether to reduce costs, drive revenue, or build brand equity, enterprise software can be leveraged as a tool to manage, execute, and measure environmental sustainability initiatives.

The opportunities fall into three categories:

• Eco-efficiency—reducing environmental impact and cutting costs by increasing efficiencies in existing business operations
• Eco-innovation—designing or redesigning products and processes to reduce costs and increase revenues while lowering their environmental impact
• Eco-transparency—measuring and reporting on relevant environmental factors to drive ongoing process improvement, comply with regulatory directives, and minimize risk

Greening the supply chain can generate environmental benefits as well as financial results by:

• Reducing risk by managing a product's environmental compliance in its design rather than making any necessary costly corrections later in its lifecycle
• Optimizing supply networks for production cost and time, as well as environmental cost and risks by using strategic network optimization tools
• Reducing manufacturing costs and environmental impacts by applying lean manufacturing principles to environmentally sensitive components and production operations
• Reducing transportation costs while also reducing emissions using transportation management tools
• Reducing energy costs and extending the life of assets by managing them more efficiently using enterprise asset management and intelligent device monitoring
• Increasing reverse supply chain efficiencies while addressing increasing product take-back requirements using warehouse management and depot repair solutions
• Measure the carbon footprint across your facilities to help reduce GHG emissions, identify cost saving opportunities, meet regulatory requirements and demonstrate environmental responsibility