Behavioral Characteristic of a Sustainable Supply Chain
Customers increasingly pay attention on the value of supply chain service and quality and no longermake price the priority when select products. (Balkan, Richard, Graham, Thorsten, WojciechChristoph, 2011).A supply chain strategy exhibiting characteristics above could be a sustainable one and we will now look at the key ingredients of a sustainablesupply chain by observing practical work of those who practice well in sustainable supply chain management.
·Transparency and Learning from “worse case”
Best practice companies display transparency on designed,planned, implemented sustainability practices as well as the whole end-to-end supply chain (Balkan, Richard, Graham, Thorsten, WojciechChristoph, 2011),whichleads to better understanding of their customer, market needs and the changing business environment.Successful practice and failed case seem to be equally valuable for their progress.
·Invest in R&D
Natural resources and massive demographicchanges such as population growth and urbanizationlead to huge opportunities,but also risks. Integrating sustainabilitywith R&D activities, focus on broader challenges,and treat environmental issues as providing an opportunity to reduce costs in thesupply chain and to open up new markets by developing environment-friendlyproducts and services will contribute to a sustainable supply chain. (Balkan, Richard, Graham, Thorsten, WojciechChristoph, 2011)
·Recognizing and Assessing Current and Future Trends
More than ever, today’s supply chain managers are confronted with dynamic anddiscontinuous change (e.g. oil prices), and the more dynamic they are, the hardertrends are to forecast. Longer and
-Be Aware of Uncertainty related to Sustainability Issues in SupplyChain
Recognizing trendsin their business environment earlier and being better able toassess their possible impact.
-Understand Cause–Effect Relations Between Trends and SupplyChain
The early identification of trends is one thing: the next challenge is toassess the potential impacts of those trends on your supply chain. We have seen that best practice companies try hard tounderstand the complex cause-and-effect relations between uncertain trends andtheir supply chains.
·Inventory management
Keeping inventories low, especially in the downstream parts of the network, so as to maintain fast throughput and reduce the amount of working capital tied up in the inventory.