Sustainable Supply Chains, Operations Management, and Information Technology

 

 

Donna M. Schaeffer and Cynthia Knott Eck, Marymount University

 

 

Sustainability:

The capacity to endure

 

 

Supply Chain:

The sequence of processes involved in the

production and distribution of a commodity.

 

 

Operations Management:

An area of management concerned with overseeing,

designing, and redesigning business operations

in the production of goods and/or services.

 

 

Information Technology:

The use of computers and telecommunications

to retrieve, store and transmit information.

 

 

 

 

Legal Requirements:

 

The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act of 2010 (SB 657)

 

·        In effect January 1, 2012

 

·        requires large retailers and manufacturers that do business in the state of California, and that have gross worldwide sales of over $100 Million Dollars, to be transparent about the efforts they have undertaken to eradicate Slavery and Human Trafficking in their supply chain.

 

Agreements

 

 

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ISO 14001

Specifies an Environmental Management System that enables the organization to:

  • identify and control the environmental impact of its activities, products or services, 
  • improve its environmental performance continually,
  • implement a systematic approach to setting environmental objectives and targets, to achieving these and to demonstrating that they have been achieved.

·        Sustainable site selection

·        Water efficiency

·        Energy and atmosphere

·        Indoor environmental quality

·        Location and linkages

·        Awareness and Education

·        Innovation and Design

·        Regional Priorities

 

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Green Sigma

 

Frequency Relevancy Analysis of Problems (FRAP)

·        how often a problem occurs) on the vertical axis and the relevancy or severity of each of the problems on the horizontal axis.

·        Problems with both a high frequency and relevancy need to be tackled first.

 

Total Productive Maintenance

·        a program that prevents defects, waste and down times and extends the life of equipment

·         empowers employees to initiate corrective action

 

·        sustainability standards for suppliers

·        an early-warning system to minimize risk

·        transparency in the procurement process

·        supply monitoring and development

·        international labor migration

·        ethical trade

·        continuous improvement

 

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UN Global Compact

 

 

 

 

 

Exemplary Organizations

 

 

Company

Operations Management

Information Technology

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At one of its sites, it analyzes real-time data on water usage and quality collected by hundreds of sensors across the plant.

 

Results of process improvements based on this information have already reduced overall water usage by 27 percent while increasing manufacturing production by more than 30 percent.

 

Savings so far have amounted to US$3 million a year.

 

 

Green Data Centers

 

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HP owns and leases facilities worldwide.

·        Cut absolute greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from operations (not including travel) to 20% below 2005 levels by 2013

·        Global Non-Hazardous Waste 2010

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yellow

Recycled

Paper

30.3

Pallets

14.2

E-waste

6.4

Packaging materials

3.1

Metals

2.0

Other

13.7

orange

Landfill

15.7

red

Incineration

7.8

med blue

Reused

Pallets

3.5

Packaging materials

0.2

Other

3.2

HP Data Center Smart Grid

 

 

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Sprint's Long-Term Environmental Goals

1.   We will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2017.

2.   We will secure 10 percent of Sprint's energy from renewable sources by 2017.

3.   We will reduce our electric energy consumption 15% by 2017.

4.   We will reduce operational waste-to-landfill by 30% by 2017.

5.   We will reduce our use of paper by 40% by 2017.

6.   We will send for reuse or recycle all of our Network and IT e-waste by 2017.

7.   We will ensure that 90% of our suppliers, based on spend, meet our social and environmental criteria by 2017.

8.   We will collect nine phones for reuse and recycling for every 10 Sprint sells annually - a 90% collection rate, by 2017.

9.     We will ensure 70% of wireless devices launched quarterly meet Sprint environmental criteria.

 

Identified, consolidated and removed redundant or unused applications and their supporting infrastructures

simplified the hardware and software footprint in data centers.

Reduced IT-based power consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by retiring more than 3,850 servers.

Virtualization