Tag Archives: Sustainability

Microsoft announces the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, a new design approach for supply chain agility, automation and sustainability

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Microsoft announces the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, a new design approach for supply chain agility, automation and sustainability

Microsoft announces the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, a new design approach for supply chain agility, automation and sustainability

Microsoft Corp. announced the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, which helps organizations maximize their supply chain data estate investment with an open approach, bringing the best of Microsoft AI, collaboration, low-code, security and SaaS applications in a composable platform.

The company also announced the preview of Microsoft Supply Chain Center, a ready-made command center for supply chain visibility and transformation and part of the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform. Supply Chain Center is designed to work natively with an organization’s supply chain data and applications, with built-in collaboration, supply and demand insights, and order management.

“Businesses are dealing with petabytes of data spread across legacy systems, ERP, supply chain management and point solutions, resulting in a fragmented view of the supply chain,” said Charles Lamanna, corporate vice president, Microsoft Business Applications and Platform. “Supply chain agility and resilience are directly tied to how well organizations connect and orchestrate their data across all relevant systems. The Microsoft Supply Chain Platform and Supply Chain Center enable organizations to make the most of their existing investments to gain insights and act quickly.”

“Supply chain solutions are more critical than ever. Our early assessment of the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform and Supply Chain Center is that the company has put its technology, applications and resources together in a way that will serve its customer base well in a wide swath of IT and operations environments, offering flexibility for diverse IT environments and continuous agility for transformation into the future,” said Daniel Newman, founding partner and principal analyst of Futurum Research.

The Microsoft Supply Chain Platform: An open, collaborative and composable foundation for data and supply chain orchestration

With today’s announcement, we are making it easier for customers to realize the value of the Microsoft Cloud for their supply chain. The Microsoft Supply Chain Platform provides the building blocks across Azure, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Teams and Power Platform for customers to develop or independently adopt capabilities for their supply chain needs. With Dataverse, customers can create thousands of connectors to gain visibility across supply chain, develop custom workflows with low-code solutions in Power Platform, and securely collaborate internally and externally through the power of Teams. With tools and processes that drive positive impact, the platform can enable organizations to gain deeper insights and minimize the carbon impact of their organization and supply chain.

Read more at Microsoft announces the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, a new design approach for supply chain agility, automation and sustainability

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Photo by Turag Photography on Unsplash

Resilience is the New Name of the Game in Supply Chain

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Resilience is the New Name of the Game in Supply Chain

Resilience is the New Name of the Game in Supply Chain

For the majority of Supply Chain’s history, this evolution has been driven by a knack for finding efficiency. Companies have leveraged digital tools, and evolving skills, to collect vast data about product or raw materials sourcing, transportation, logistics, and manufacturing. They’ve hired strategic Supply Chain professionals who can turn this data into actionable intelligence, and redesign the supplier, production, and transportation network to get products to market quicker and cheaper. They use advanced ERP software and S&OP strategy to match supply with demand, and turn over inventory faster and faster. “Just-in-time” production has become a hallmark of today’s Supply Chains.

Case in point: research firm Gartner includes the speed of inventory turns as a key metric in its annual Top 25 List recognizing companies for their excellence in Supply Chain.

Now, the top Supply Chain professionals are those who can find those efficiencies, while providing a strong customer experience that safeguards the company’s brand. It’s been a long evolution, and it’s made the field more ascendant within companies than it’s ever been, with a bigger seat at the C-suite table. Risk mitigation, innovation through supplier collaboration, and increased sustainability have also driven Supply Chain’s strategic value – but they’ve taken a back seat to efficiency.

Then came COVID-19.

As we’ve also written about recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused almost-unprecedented disruptions to a majority of companies’ Supply Chains – as many as 72%, according to a recent Supply Chain Canada survey.

We’re four months into the pandemic, and it appears that these disruptions have spurred another evolution:

More than ever, companies are focusing on Supply Chain resilience

All around the Supply Chain world, professionals are shifting their focus to make sure that they can withstand supplier disruptions, not only due to COVID-19, but to future emerging issues as well.

In our recent interview with Procurement Guru Jill Button about the particular Supply Chain challenges of the moment, she highlighted this shift, saying: “People are beginning to understand the risks and fragility of a Supply Chain and not having a sound Procurement practice. I think, as a field, we need to step up and embrace this moment.” In March, at the outset of the pandemic, industry thought leader Bob Ferrari wrote about how, in a world of supplier disruption, companies might shift from a just-in-time inventory model that maximizes efficiency, to one that prioritizes a diverse supplier base to maximize resilience.

Top consulting firms are taking notice too, in their own advice to corporate leaders: Bain, Deloitte, McKinsie, and Baker McKenzie, and others have released white papers in recent days on the importance of Supply Chain resiliency and risk mitigation in this new era.

Read more at Resilience is the New Name of the Game in Supply Chain

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DHL: transforming logistics with startup partnerships

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DHL large electirc vehicle

DHL large electirc vehicle

Supply Chain Digital gets an insight into DHL’s partnerships with startups to drive digitalisation and sustinability within the business.

When it comes to innovations at DHL, the company values its partnerships both big and small. In recent years many startups have entered into the logistics industry. Markus Kückelhaus, VP of Innovation and Trend Research at DHL raises the question of why?

“The logistics industry is a very fragmented sector that is still catching up. Which is why this industry is interesting to startups,” says Kückelhaus who highlights that due to the industry’s small attempts at digitalisation, in addition to growing investments into logistics, there has been an increase in opportunities for startups.

Effidence

Founded in 2009, Effidence is a French research and robotics startup that develops collaborative robotic solutionsin logistics and agriculture. DHL has partnered with Effidence to develop its ‘follow me’ robotic trolleys.

Locus Robotics

Founded in 2014, Locus Robotics is an American robotic technology company that develops warehouse solutions to improve productivity. DHL has partnered with Locus Robotics to develop its Aisle picking robots.

University of Aachen

Established in 1870, the University of Aachen strives to drive innovative discoveries that impact global challenges. The German university partnered with DHL in 2012 on a new initiative to combat global warming. DHL worked with the university to develop its own electric vehicles as part of its mission to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050. Currently DHL has 10,000 electric vehicles out on the roads aiming to replace all 55,000 global vehicles in its fleet to electric.

Read more at DHL: transforming logistics with startup partnerships

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SEE ALSO:

  1. DHL – the world’s leading contract logistics provider
  2. DHL’s innovation center driving digitalisation and sustainability
  3. DHL: Talent management within logistics
  4. Read the latest issue of Supply Chain Digital here

Is Virgin Hyperloop One going to change the supply chain game?

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Here is a breakdown of the potentially industry disrupting impact points that the integration of hyperloops into global supply chain could have.

Speed

So, let’s say we get a hyperloop built in the kingdom that runs from the port city and modern commercial hub of Jeddah in the West, to the city of Dammam in the East. The 844 mile journey takes over 12 hours by road. With its projected top speed of 760mph, Virgin Hyperloop One’s train could cut that travel time to just over an hour.

In June, Port Technology magazine interviewed Ryan Kelly, Virgin Hyperloop One’s Head of Marketing raised concerns about the current global supply chain’s ability to measure up to the logistical demands of the coming years. “We are not poised to meet the demand of the coming decades. Today, on-demand deliveries are novel. Tomorrow, they will be the expectation. E-commerce, set to grow to $4 trillion globally by 2020, is driving a dramatic shift in both consumer and business behavior. The market for express and parcel freight is set to grow to $516 Billion by 2025– this expanding market is currently limited by airline/airport capacity challenges.”

Kelly believes that, by being able to deliver goods across long distances, at the speed of air freight and near the cost of conventional trucking, hyperloop technology “can serve as an integrated logistics backbone, supporting the fast, sustainable and efficient delivery of palletized cargo. Deliveries can be completed in hours versus days with unprecedented reliability.”

Sustainability

The ability for this new mode of transportation to support high-speed, high-reliability logistical solutions across vast distances is obviously a game changer for supply chains currently bogged down by air, sea and land traffic congestion. Virgin Hyperloop One’s cargo subsidiary, DP World Cargospeed, will reportedly be a carbon emissions neutral, electrically powered alternative to current freight strategies, given that, according to a UK government survey, “heavy goods vehicles are currently estimated to account for around 17%1 of UK GHG emissions from road transport and around 21%2 of road transport NOx emissions, while making up just 5% of vehicle miles.”

The ability for hyperloops to transport freight that otherwise would make its way via truck, cargo ship, cargo plane (by far the most environmentally harmful form of transportation) and traditional rail freight alternatives is a strong argument for its adoption.

According to Kelly, Virgin Hyperloop One is currently setting its sights on eroding the market share of supply chains currently taken up by air freight. “We’re focused high-priority, on-demand goods — fresh food, medical supplies, electronics — the same goods often delivered via air. Hyperloop doesn’t make sense for carrying things like coal and other bulk goods which can be on the back of a truck/train for weeks with little impact,” he explains. “Air cargo currently accounts for less than 1% of world trade tonnage, yet 35% of world trade value is carried by air. This is an expanding market that is currently limited by capacity challenges.”

Read more at Is Virgin Hyperloop One going to change the supply chain game?

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The Emerging Business of Supply Chain Risk Management

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For many organizations, globalization, outsourcing, and extended supply chains are effective strategies to increase efficiency and achieve economies of scale, however, these benefits are accompanied by the significantly increased risk to quality, safety, business continuity, reputation, and more.

Is Your Company Safe to Work With?

As reported by Forbes, there’s an emerging category of business – supply chain risk management – of which many companies aren’t yet aware.

For the largest companies, this is a jugular area – imagine the exposure of a large oil company or a large online retailer when a supplier they’ve contracted with makes a mistake or even causes an all-out disaster? (Think oil drilling contractor, for example.)

Risk Management Overview

For many organizations, globalization, outsourcing, and extended supply chains are effective strategies to increase efficiency and achieve economies of scale.

However, these benefits are accompanied by the significantly increased risk of quality, safety, business continuity, reputation, and more.

Identifying Risk in the Supply Chain

Organizations are always at risk for losses through cost volatility, supply disruption, non-compliance fines, and safety incidents that cause damage to their brand and reputation.

Knowing what’s at stake is the first step to understanding, measuring, and managing risk in your supply chain.

Supply Chain Safety

Among the highest priorities for companies across all industries, safety concerns are often magnified in chemical, oil and gas, construction, and manufacturing.

Workplace accidents can jeopardize contracts, result in fines, and cause significant damage to a company’s reputation.

Supply Chain Quality Control

Do your vendors and suppliers meet your standards for quality and consistency?

Customers are quick to react when they perceive a drop in quality; and, even the smallest product issues can be difficult to recover from.

Supply Chain Financial Challenges

Any disruption to the supply chain due to financial challenges has the potential to impact business continuity and, ultimately, your bottom line.

Taking a proactive approach to understanding supplier financial strength can prevent disruption and unnecessary costs.

Supply Chain Compliance

Are your contractors insured? Do they have the right type of insurance, the right limits?

Knowing this information will help you to manage insurance risk and avoid potentially costly litigation.

Supply Chain Reputation

Damage to a company’s brand or reputation can be long-lasting, extremely costly, and sometimes unrecoverable.

Committing to a supply chain risk management strategy can not only prevent brand damage but can also serve to foster new partnerships with organizations that share like values.

Supply Chain Sustainability

It’s no longer enough to assess risk within the traditional construct of a supply chain.

Organizations must look beyond and consider environmental impacts and corporate social responsibility, including adherence to labor laws and sustainable practices.

Read more at The Emerging Business of Supply Chain Risk Management

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Mondelez International calls for transparency and sustainability in palm oil supply chain

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One of the world’s leading confectionery, food and beverage companies, has called out to its suppliers for 100% sustainability and 100% transparency in the sourcing of palm oil.

Mondelez International announced in a statement this week that it has challenged its supply chain, as well as the global industry, to be more sustainable and transparent in the production of palm oil.

In 2013, the company announced an action plan for palm oil, which looked to work with its suppliers to achieve 100% traceability to supplier mill level by the end of 2015 while publishing sourcing policies.

This came after the company also ceased buying from palm oil suppliers linked with allegations of illegal forest clearance.

The global palm oil market is forecast to be worth around $92bn by 2021.

“Throughout the years, Mondelēz International has continuously raised the bar for itself and its suppliers and there has been substantial progress in suppliers implementing sustainability policies and improving traceability. Nevertheless, there is more the industry needs to do in the palm oil supply chain to prevent deforestation. Mondelēz International’s suppliers have achieved industry leading levels of traceability with its Palm Oil Action Plan but there remains a gap between the current state and our goal,” said Mondelez in a statement.

Mondelez has called on its suppliers to do more, challenging them to “commit to palm oil concession mapping as a vital step to accountability and change” and “act faster to eliminate deforestation in their palm oil supply through time-bound remediation plans or Mondelēz International will cease contracts with upstream suppliers engaged in deforestation.”

Read more at Mondelez International calls for transparency and sustainability in palm oil supply chain

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Retailers worth $3.3trn scaling up supply chain sustainability

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Leading retail powerhouses are stepping up on supply chain sustainability, according to the latest figures from CDP, a global environmental impact non-profit.

The world’s largest retailer, Walmart, has just been joined by three more of the top 20 retail companies – CVS Health, Target Corporation and Tesco – in collecting data from suppliers to reduce environmental risk and cut carbon emissions in the supply chain.

Ten years after CDP started collecting supply chain data on behalf of the world’s largest purchasing organisations, 115 organisations – representing a combined annual spend of more than US$3.3 trillion – are now requesting data from over 11,500 suppliers.

This is more than a 15% increase from last year, when 99 organisations requested data.

Sonya Bhonsle, Head of Supply Chain at CDP, commented: “With emissions in the supply chain on average around four times greater than those from a company’s direct operations – and rising to up to seven times greater for retailers and consumer-facing companies – large multinational corporations cannot comprehensively address their environmental impact without looking to their supply chains.

“It’s very encouraging to see so many of the world’s biggest buyers taking supply chain sustainability seriously. By requesting data from their suppliers, they are shining a light on the risks hidden deep within their production chains – and uncovering a myriad of opportunities for reducing their overall environmental footprint, boosting innovation and cutting costs.”

The rise in companies scrutinising their supply chains coincides with growing momentum behind the take-up of science-based targets – goals that allow companies to reduce their emissions in line with the decarbonisation required to keep global temperature increase below two degrees Celsius, the central aim of the Paris Agreement.

The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which helps companies develop and approves such targets, requires companies to set scope 3 targets if their scope 3 emissions account for at least 40% of their total emissions. For global retailers that do not manufacture many of the products they sell, scope 3 emissions in their supply chain can be far greater than 40%.

Read more at Retailers worth $3.3trn scaling up supply chain sustainability

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Communicating sustainability in the supply chain: Five top tips

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The sustainability of modern supply chains is under scrutiny from all angles, with consumers, manufacturers, processors and farmers all keen to ensure affordability and profitability. With such tensions in the chain, how can ‘the middle man’ deliver on demands of global customers and mobilise staff in the changing landscape of ever-higher stakeholder expectations?

1 – Don’t over-promise

It’s very easy to get carried away and over-promise, but sustainability targets should never be divorced from your basic business principles. Road-test promises internally before they are communicated to the outside world – especially when they are made within customer partnerships.

2 – Don’t alienate colleagues

No sustainability targets can be achieved by the sustainability team alone. We need our colleagues to deliver on our promises. However, sustainability has developed its own jargon-filled language which tends to alienate those working outside of it – take the term ‘capacity building’. While it means giving people the necessary knowledge and skills to shape their own development, I’ve had numerous instances where colleagues thought we were talking about building extra factory processing volume or similar!

3 – Don’t doubt yourself

There is a growing pressure from customers, shareholders and NGOs to comply with regulated sustainability schemes. While external certification bodies, such as FairTrade and Rainforest Alliance, act as third party auditors and provide reassurance to customers, it is often true that no-one knows your business better than yourself. We believe that in addition to third party certification, there is a role for companies to develop verification schemes that are independently audited.

4 – Don’t collect data for data’s sake

Don’t get obsessed by the metrics without knowing why you’re collecting them or how to usefully act upon them. Focus on impact, insight, outcomes and improvement, not the glory of numbers.

5 – Don’t go it alone

Companies don’t operate in isolation. There is a paradigm shift towards collaboration, and the nature of where and how to compete is being re-framed. The CEO of a global telecoms company once said that his biggest business regret was wasting over a decade and billions of pounds’ investment before he discussed sharing infrastructure such as masts with his competitors.

Read more at Communicating sustainability in the supply chain: Five top tips

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Sustainability Drives Supply Chain Professionals to Learn New Finance and Accounting Concepts

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At JDA’s Focus event, Rich Beck, the Sr. Vice President of Global Operations at PepsiCo, gave the keynote on the second day of the conference. Rich said that their supply chain goals included “digitizing the value chain” (JDA was a key solution provider in this area) and “sustainability.”

I’ve been covering supply chain management for twenty years. Last year, I spent 20 percent of my time on the road. And I hear many, many supply chain speeches. I can count on a few fingers of one hand the number of supply chain executives I have heard say sustainability was one of their major goals.

That will change. 72% of the companies included in The S&P 500 Index® publish sustainability reports, up from just under 20% in 2011. Over time, companies’ sustainability efforts become more mature and corporate sustainability goals filter down and become key supply chain goals as well. And these are not incompatible goals. At PepsiCo supply chain sustainability includes “reducing their inputs while optimizing outputs;” but really, that has always have been a goal for supply chain organizations.

The CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project, is the best known of the organizations that are helping (or pressuring, depending on your point of view), companies to do better. Thousands of companies work with the CDP to measure, disclose, manage and share environmental information.

The CDP scores companies on their performance. “A high performance score signals that a company is measuring, verifying and managing its carbon footprint, for example by setting and meeting carbon reduction targets and implementing programs to reduce emissions in both its direct operations and (the extended) supply chain.” Companies score higher if they are focused not just on internal emissions, but the emissions caused in their extended value chain. This causes a ripple effect as big companies with sustainability goals request their suppliers to also reduce their emissions.

Read more at Sustainability Drives Supply Chain Professionals to Learn New Finance and Accounting Concepts

What is your opinion towards “sustainability”? Do you think it is a priority? Share your thoughts with us in the comment box below.

Resilinc to Unveil the Top 10 Supply Chain Risk Management Insights of All Time

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The Top 10 Supply Chain Risk Management insights of all time are the most impactful conclusions, lessons learned, and heuristics that all SCRM practitioners should be acutely aware of in order to maximize their chance of success in achieving risk management and resilience performance excellence. Bindiya Vakil, founder and CEO of Resilinc, and Ann Grackin, CEO of ChainLink Research, will lead the discussion.

“These are the insights born from real-life experience in the trenches, battle scars, and “ah hah” moments,” said Vakil. “They are based on Resilinc and ChainLink Research company experience—working with the most complex supply chains in the world as solution providers, consultants, and practitioners in previous lives—as well as crowd-sourced contributions from risk thought leaders and luminaries in industry and academia.”

The top 10 insights will each be presented as important threads in an overall strategic-framework fabric. When implemented in their totality, the top 10 insights may form the backbone of a successful best-practice-driven SCRM program.

Participants in this Webcast will have the opportunity to:

1. Gain insights and best practices to improve SCRM and resilience program performance.

2. Apply insights as part of a strategic framework for success.

3. Benchmark their organization’s resilience program best practice adoption against the top 10 insight list.

Read more at Resilinc to Unveil the Top 10 Supply Chain Risk Management Insights of All Time

Will you take part in the event? What are your expectations ? Share with us in the comment box.

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