BUS606: Operations and Supply Chain Management

The business sustainable performance happens when a company or firm creates ongoing value for its stakeholders and shareholders while keeping up with the environmental requirement. There are few essential aspects of a firm's sustainable value which are; doing well for the environment and society, and more importantly by keeping the customer and shareholders happy. According to Dunphy, "sustainability consists of actions that extend socially useful life of the organization, enhance the ability to maintain and renew viability of the biosphere and protect all living species, enhance ability of society to maintain itself and to solve its major problem and to maintain a decent of welfare, participation and personal freedom for present and future generations of humanity". Sustainability is a brilliant way of performing a business, and transitions toward sustainable enterprises can be made by developing innovative and constructive corporate culture. These healthy cultures would be able to create high performance and make optimum use of existing assets in ways that have good outcomes for the economic, environment, and society.

Within a role of supply chain management, the sustainability can be viewed as a major environmental perspective. The sustainability in supply chain activities can be taken by green purchasing, green supply chain, reverse logistics, product stewardship, and logistics management. Various studies reveal that waste management and recycling of goods initialized sustainability. However, the re-use or recycling of product lifecycle across supply chain activities pursues protective environment measurement. Moreover, the supply chain sustainability associated with the product life extension, product design, recovery processes at end-of-life, and manufacturing by-products produced during product use, and product end-oflife. The research of Abbasi  suggests the implication of green initiatives to strengthen sustainable development. Thus, there is a positive relationship between supply chain and sustainable development that can be obtained through environmental performance, corporate environmental practices, and social sustainability.

Chen et al. pointed out three criteria of sustainable performance; economic sustainable performance, environmentally sustainable performance, and social sustainable performance. In 2001, the European Commission published a sustainable development strategy by emphasizing the importance of social cohesion, environmental protection, and economic growth to go hand in hand. Guan et al. addressed sustainable supply chain management as "a modern management pattern emphasizing the integration of the economy, environment, and society through all the processes including procurement, producing, packaging, transportation, storage, consumption and disposal of the end-life product, supported by supply chain management technology, and its final goal is to achieve the sustainable development of economy, environment, and society".

The proposed framework applied in this study to assess the sustainability performances can be divided into three main sustainability dimensions as proposed by Brent & Labuschagne. These dimensions are economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, and social sustainability. Therefore, in embracing the whole concept of sustainability, these three pillars of sustainability are crucial to run a successful business not just for now but for the future.

Sustainability is a brilliant way of performing a business, and transitions toward sustainable enterprises can be made by developing innovative and constructive corporate culture. These healthy cultures would be able to create high performance and make optimum use of existing assets in ways that have good outcomes for the economic, environment, and society.

SCM adopts systems perspective across firms and functions as an absolute system by processes of coordination. Thus, the key to the creation of supply chain value is possible, made through collaboration among participating firms. Companies may engage in information exchange and structural collaboration. Information exchange may include the inventory supervision, forecasting techniques, and delivery. Meanwhile, the structural collaboration may include vendor-controlled inventory, outsourcing, co-locating factories and just-in-time identify demand chain collaboration can be referred to as the lifelong affairs with partners in the downstream supply chain to create endcustomer value. It is characterized through the information exchange, operations, cross-firm forecasting and shared planning with downstream partners. Meanwhile, highlighted outsourcing also opens the door to practice SCM as a tools and/or plays a beneficial role to make SCM more effective and efficient. In SCM in order to serve clients, the upstream company is direct to suppliers and downstream to distributors.

Generally, labor, capital, information, technology, materials, financial assets, and other resources through the supply chain. Given that the goal of a company is to capitalize on profits, the companies must reduce costs and exploit benefits along the supply chain, Physical logistics more dependent on information technologies, and these technologies enable of further cooperative arrangements. Mentat & Wveja stated that firms faced inter-dependence and shared fortune while managing a grown enterprise which required an exceptional growth in technology and integration of networks. Thus, the environment of supply chain management becomes apparent to participating companies with victorious implementation in the dynamic comprehensive environment of the business world, augmenting with risks, and it greatly affects the processes of the decision-making in business management. Therefore, nowadays, SCM becomes a popular management tool in helping firms improve their competitiveness. The concept of SCM has been recognized to be of vital importance for the textiles and apparel industry. The management can utilize the functions of SCM to plan, coordinate, and control logistics knowledge flow, capital flow, and information flow of the business. It enables firms to improved response speed and reduced uncertainty of the supply chain.

The supply chain is an important component of world trade. However, a supply chains itself is not enough; it is more critical to understand its features and the role played by each function in the overall supply chain to work efficiently and effectively. Since SCM has been considered as the strategic and systematic coordination of traditional business activities, firms are starting to pay attention to their supply chain to increase competitive advantages. As the twenty-first century begins, SCM has turned into a significant strategic instrument for firms to reduce costs, but also enable firms struggling to enhance quality, improve customer service, and increase competitiveness. Supply chain and SCM have played an important role in the firm efficiency and have attracted scholars' attention in recent years. The real contribution of SCM not only attracted scholars' attention but also received attention from practitioners.