Supply Chain Management Case Study
Read this journal article, which examines supply chain management drivers and the motivation of sustainability for manufacturing enterprise supply chains in Pakistan.
Literature Review
Supply Chain Sustainability
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.