Socially Responsible supply chain

Greetings!!

This blog is an introduction about socially responsible supply chain practices, how it impacts the industry and its collaboration in the sustainable market. I'm Suriya kumar, pursuing MBA and specializing in operations management.

Why a social entreprise?

• Tranform a core businees activity into a responsibility
  
• Companies implement social supply chain and social procurement methods in their purchasing of goods and service and aim to maximize the profits to create a societal impact.
• Achieve environmental sustainability and social outcomes.
• To gain competitive advantage in their recruitment and retention of staff methods and brand reputation through its social supply chain practices
• Committed  to generate social and environment solution and use their profits to improve lives and tackle social problems
• Triple bottom line profits

"To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society" - Laurence D. Fink, CEO of Blackrock

By encorporating social values in operations, supply chain and procurement we can achieve a sustainable future and many business benefits along with the social benefits.

3 pillars for social supply chain strategy

1. Enhance Reputation

• Fair and transparent trade practices 
• Operating with integrity
• Paying suppliers on time

       2. Mitigate key supply chain risk

• Zero contamination in landfills between waste and environment
• Modern slavery, bribe, corruption
  
• Carbon footprint reduction    

 3. Drive commercial value

• Achieve cost savings
• Innovation, diversity and creativity that an usual supply chain is not having 
• Collaboration with other social enterprise

The supply chain's impact in sustainability

 

Source: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insights/starting-at-the-source-sustainability-in-supply-chains#

      The world is changing, to take steps for solving and viewing responsible sourcing as a great opportunity to strengthen supply chain, mitigate risks and develop trust in the market. 

    Many companies have started to concentrate more on social supply chain, for which they have challenging obstacles to face and overcome them.

Some of the companies which has started to implement social value in supply chain are

Nestle - Promote animal welfare, human rights, natural capital (source: https://www.nestle.com/csv/raw-materials)

Unilever - Sustainable farming practices (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMlANrJMF-s&feature=emb_logo)

Intel - Mineral sourcing (source: https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/corporate-responsibility/responsible-minerals.html)

Hence the future is changing and more use of technology is implemented we have to strategize supply chains for aiming sustainability and maximizing benefits and make the supply chain socially responsible.

 

The digital supply chain framework and technology

 Greetings !!

This blog is about the digital supply chain framework in brief and how it enables technology in the SCM processes. I'm Suriya kumar pursuing MBA and specializing in the domain of operations. The facts that are given in this article are from my learning in designing a digital supply chain to operate from openSAP.

The brief about the framework for digital supply chain mentioned in my previous blog is given below

Design:

• Reduce time to market
• Innovate continuously with sustainability
• Deliver on customer demand

Manufacture

• Optimize manufacturing processes and minimize waste
• Improve collaboration with contractors
• Increase agility and responsiveness
  

 Deliver

• Improve speed, efficiency and sustainability
• Deliver perfect orders consistently and profitably
•  Increase utilization of warehouse and transportation

Operate

• Manage life cycle of physical assets efficiently and sustainability
• Predict and simulate asset behaviour
• Avoid unplanned downtime

Plan

• Creating a holistic view of demand with respect to suppliers and demand
• Balancing inventory and service levels
• Improving forecast accuracy 

How important are technologies in SCM ?

    With the world adjusting to the covid pandemic outbreak, causing disruption in many businesses supply chain management softwares are gaining importance with the capacity of reducing costs and improve visibility without sacrificing quality.

"SCM software can help businesses streamline processes using intuitive algorithms and analytic models to future-proof the major elements of supply chain management including integration, operations, purchasing and distribution." - Nick Ford, VP of Product and solution marketing, Mendix.

SCM softwares enables cost effective collaborations between sourcing mangers, procurement specialists, logistics operators and IT professionals.

"Whether a supply chain is augmented by installing new software and system isn't wholly dependent on tech but rather how it is used collaborative endeavour ..... efforts to improve supply chain performances should, therefore, involve changes to the ways that employees and teams share information, consider, problems and opportunities, reach decisions, and carry out actions they agree on" - McKinsey

Source: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/digital-transformation-raising-supply-chain-performance-to-new-levels

Hence to remove silos by networking, improved decision making, focusing on automation, end to end customer engagement, continuous innovation and talent to drive the change should be the vision of enabling technologies in SCM processes