STUDENTS' CORNER - 226

Sustainable supply chain

In recent years, a new movement has gained immense popularity: Green marketing. In essence it means in producing things, no natural resources should be harmed or damaged. Environment is the major concern in all your business engagements.

 There is a keen awareness that commercial motive has done excessive damage to the environment; man’s health is being neglected if not consciously sacrificed. Moreover, there is a widespread apprehension that soon the available natural resources will become almost depleted if caution is not exercised in all commercial activities. The word often used in this connection is ‘Sustainability’.

It means the whole of your supply chain must be green in their initiatives; but it has not been found possible to monitor the suppliers’ suppliers whether they are green-oriented or not.  Recently a research was carried out( In recent HBR it was reported) to find out the possibility of all the components of the supply chain being green-motivated and the findings underscored the point that it is not possible to check and monitor the suppliers and their suppliers down the line in terms of adoption of the green measures. Everyone has his own reasons to move away from the green endeavour despite willingness and they sound valid. Impossible deadlines, shortage of labor, late arrivals of raw materials, like this, so many reasons have been put forward by the suppliers. Green is important but business is more important, that seems to be the message they seem to pass on.

All the same, green marketing is steadily though slowly gaining ground; it can be understood. Environmental activists keep dinning into the ears that harm to environment will end up in irremediable harm to mankind. The very survival of man will become a very big challenge. They also talk about social responsibility.

Much more to talk about green marketing but this may be rather out of context for us. It suffices to know that your supply chain is functioning in an atmosphere of green marketing ambience and it is also pointed out that your business gains in sustainability if it tends to add value to the supply chain; not only to your suppliers  the marketing experts say but also to the suppliers of your suppliers. 

We will see some more of supply chain facts in our next on 11 May.