Business Solutions: Establish a Green Supply Chain

As changes to the marketplace have increased the awareness and focus on “sustainability” and “green” initiatives, companies are re-thinking how they operate their own business and how they approach the supply chains in which they work every day.

Spinnaker delivers solutions that make your supply chain more eco-friendly, sustainable and “Green”

Spinnaker can help you become more eco-friendly and take steps towards becoming a green supply chain. Spinnaker’s solutions include:

• Opportunity identification
• Trade-off analysis and initiative prioritization
• Implementation planning and program management
• Driving the rollout, adoption, and ongoing measurement needed to realize benefits and maintain alignment

Where to Start

The good news is that clients can get started right away by focusing on five relatively easy areas to help build momentum for more intensive changes. Each of the following areas will begin to make the supply chain, extended organization, and overall operations more eco-friendly:

Energy Conservation

Potential measures might include retrofitting lighting fixtures that use less energy, installing motion-detector sensors, instituting preventative maintenance programs for operating equipment and shoring up the building infrastructure / envelope to limit HVAC loss.

Clean Equipment

When upgrading or replacing material-handling equipment, consider alternatives such as electric fork-trucks that avoid greenhouse gas emissions and also reduce noise within warehouse and distribution operations.

Recycling Programs

Look for opportunities to expand existing recycling efforts to other parts of operations. Some examples include consumables, cardboard, pallets, and supplies.

Sustainability Sections added to Supplier Scorecards and RF(x)

Use regular discussions with members of the supply base to cover “green” topics and discuss the steps they are taking to promote sustainable and environmentally favorable behaviors.

Other Environmental Friendly Practices

Easy, low-cost activities like adding a reminder in an email signature to consider the environment prior to printing, promote carpooling when on business travel, and encourage usage of web-based technologies (e.g. virtual meetings, employee self-service, and online payroll).