Markets, Business and Sustainability

This book chapter addresses the concept, framework and process of sustainable development (SD), the emergence and integrated character of the supply chain management (SCM) and its further advance to sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). Special attention is attributed on the synthetic presentation of the available literature about the “sustainability challenge”, aiming at bridging the concepts of SD and SSCM for attaining sustainable social, economic and environmental progress.

The main goals of this chapter include the sufficient understanding and knowledge about the contemporary sustainability issue and the search for ways of transforming challenges to opportunities through collective initiatives at value supply chain network level. In addition, it provides useful insights into the criticism of the sustainability issue and focuses on overcoming misconceptions, conflicting views and conventional established attitudes to “the road towards sustainability”, that may be helpful to further future research for strengthening the sustainability performance.

This chapter includes an extensive list of references to help readers for deeper understanding of the sustainability issue.

This study aims to assess how construction supply chains can become more sustainable by implementing lean tools and techniques. The research method was a single case study of a leading construction company in Hong Kong. Two major projects were examined via semi-structured interviews with key personnel. The implementation of lean tools and techniques resulted in improvements in terms of quality, time, cost, safety and environmental sustainability. The application of Building Information Modelling (BIM) can facilitate both lean and sustainable construction. Prefabrication is also an enabler of sustainable construction.

Academics and practitioners in Europe and elsewhere have attempted to pinpoint the key role of the urban freight transport and identify potential sustainable solutions within the trend of increasing cities’ size.

In this framework, this chapter reviews the City Logistics(CL) models that have been applied in big major European cities, regarding both goods and waste management.

The increasing awareness of the sustainability imperatives from researchers, supply chain managers, policy makers and the society at large has drawn particular attention to effective management of waste, not only regarding the recycling or recovering process but also the transportation systems designed for the return flows.

The purpose of this study is to help understand the management of goods and waste in big cities and the choice among alternative integrated intermodal transport solutions, particularly with use of rail freight in place of trucks domination. In this respect, the results of the application of an alternative model applied for the transport of waste in a suburb of the Metropolitan Athens, Greece are presented and in addition a taxonomy of the reviewed CL models in big cities is conducted.

It highlights the need for further concerted research efforts in this field, within integrated supply chain approach, for revealing and evaluating future research possibilities for new sustainable practices.

This chapter describes the results of a quantitative survey carried out with the aim to examine whether peoples’ role as citizens (i.e. attitudes towards sustainable pig production systems) impacts on their role as consumers (i.e. actual consumption of pork products). A conjoint experiment was implemented in order to investigate consumers’ attitudes towards pig production systems based on a number of pig farming characteristics. Based on the results of conjoint analysis, cluster analysis was implemented in order to identify consumer segments with varying preference towards more or less sustainable pig farming types. Respondents’ socio-demographic profile, wider attitudes towards various aspects related to sustainability, technology and food production, as well as consumption frequency of various pork products were also used to develop the profile of the segments. Results of the conjoint experiment showed that consumers assigned more importance to animal and environmental well-being as criteria to discriminate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ production systems; however, their general attitudes towards issues like environmental protection, animal welfare, technological progress or industrial food production were only moderately strong. Moreover, results of cluster analysis pointed towards the existence of certain small, albeit clearly-cut clusters, which paid attention to specific attributes of more sustainable pig farming and consumed slightly less frequently selected meat product types. Nevertheless, the large majority of participants were classified into clusters of indifferent or ambiguous consumers, with very ‘weak’ attitudinal profiles and very high consumption frequency of a large variety of pork products. In conclusion, wider attitudes towards environment and nature, animal welfare and the need for an environment-friendly food production were indeed related to citizens’ specific attitudes towards pig farming at the cluster level. However, people’s positive attitudes towards sustainable farming did not differentiate significantly their pork consumption behaviour from the vast majority of the people holding weak sustainability-related attitudes.

Companies operating in the food sector are confronted with i) accelerating environmental and social impact assessment policies and standards, ii) an emerging concept of extended producer responsibility supporting the shift from ‘seed to meat’ to ‘cradle to cradle’ and iii) increasing preoccupation in society to live well without compromising future generation’s rights to prosper. Sustainable Food Supply Chain Management (SFSCM) refers to all forward processes in the food chain, like procurement of materials, production and distribution, as well as the reverse processes to collect and process returned used or unused products and/or parts of products in order to ensure a socio-economically and ecologically sustainable recovery. This chapter introduces the organizational approach for sustainability, focusing on the supply chain. First, we discuss the concept of a Food Supply Chain Network (FSCN) and describe the main characteristics, strategies and redesign strategies for FSCNs. Next, we discuss the impact of the concept of sustainability in the forward supply chain. Then we focus on environmental impacts in closed loop and reverse networks.

Reverse logistics can be defined as the process of planning, implementing, and controlling the flow of raw materials, in-process inventory, and finished goods from the point of consumption to the point of origin for the purpose of recapturing value or proper disposal. In environmental and economic terms, the goal of the reverse logistics process is to provide the optimal flow of residual matter created by the customer on the sales market, for example, used goods, exchange parts, returns, and packaging. Reverse logistics practices vary based on the industry and channel position. Industries where returns represent a larger portion of the operational cost tend to have better reverse logistics systems and processes in place. Nowadays, successful retailers understand that managing reverse logistics effectively has a positive impact on their bottom line. Industries that did not spend much time and energy addressing return issues, are now trying to implement major improvements. In this chapter, we discuss the past and the current state-of-the-art of reverse logistics operations followed by a section examining its key players, processes and main characteristics. Having examined generic reverse logistics issues, we provide future research pertinent to the food chain.

Sustainable Procurement has been an excellent tool for companies to provide solutions to consumers where cost, quality, production with less material, energy, water, waste and pollution, delivery, and recycling are constantly optimized. The economic crisis has made some consumers more demanding and some of those accustomed to sustainability are unable to afford solutions they once afforded. After discussing the characteristics of the changing consumer, sustainable procurement strategy factors, and consumption and sustainability (Sanne 2002), while making reference to numerous existing studies and literature reviews, we propose a new four level model for sustainable procurement that captures a wider spectrum of consumers to include low and medium income consumers.

This book chapter analyses specific trends and pressures in agri-food supply chain management in respect to sustainability and resource efficiency. Relevant applications, implementation practices, research implications and challenges are examined in the context of contemporary agri-food supply chains. This analysis will benefit supply chain managers, researchers, policy makers and other stakeholders involved with the agri-food sector.

The increasing awareness of the effects of food production and consumption on the natural environment as well as growing environmental, social and ethical concern of consumers have led to increased pressure on the agrifood industry from all stakeholders to deal with social and environmental issues related to their supply chains within product lifecycles, from ‘farm to fork’.

On the other hand, “greening” per se does not attract much attention amongst the agrifood business leaders, unless it is combined with economic waste elimination. Already, there is a body of knowledge emerging in this area which alludes to the natural fit between economic waste elimination through continuous operational improvement (such as lean) and environmental waste management (Hawken et al., 1999). At the same time, researchers such as Zokaei et al., (2010) and Hines (2010) illustrate that lean techniques and continuous improvement culture can be integrated with greening techniques into a single holistic approach. The Lean management concept aims to eliminate the “waste”, which refers to the non-value adding tasks from the system and is based upon the idea of Automation and ‘just in time’ (JIT) production.

Many authors argue that there is a natural fit between economic waste elimination and operational excellence (e.g. lean thinking) and environmental waste elimination (Hawken et al., 1999; Zokaei et al., 2010). However, the existing levels of lean maturity in manufacturing industries are underpinned by several decades of continuous improvement and refinement of approaches. This is hardly the case in the agrifood sector and therefore, the basic foundations for using operational excellence as means of 'greening' the sector may not exist (or at least they may not be mature enough).

The paper assesses the applicability of lean management techniques and concepts to greening of the agrifood supply chains; the research investigates actual systems, through case study analysis. The objective is to gather evidence on the best lean and green practices in the agrifood sector and assess the tools and concepts deployed by the food industry to realise the potential synergies between economic and environmental waste elimination and continuous improvement.

Lengthy and highly variable customs’ clearance processes and service times at ports of entry, along with the associated emissions generated from transporting cargo from far away production sites can severely erode the efficiency of offshoring within global supply chain networks. Nearshoring, namely the practice of allocating manufacturing capacity next to demand points, is a corporate countermeasure to such concerns. This paper proposes a novel, Total Landed Cost decision-making methodology for the identification of the optimal mixture of nearshore/offshore production capacity allocation and the optimal port of entry, while taking into account free trade and sustainability-related issues for global supply chain networks. Various “what-if” analyses of interest to practitioners (C-level executives, corporate planners, and regulators) are conducted, and interesting managerial insights are discussed.

The objective of logistics is to arrange delivery of finished inventory, work in process inventory, and material assortments, when required, in usable condition, to the location where needed, in a timely manner, and at the lowest total cost. It is through the logistical process that materials flow into the vast manufacturing capacity and final products are distributed through marketing channels for consumptions. Logistical management also incorporates the additional cost for environment protection from pollution which arises as a result of manufacturing.

The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate how the operations research methods may be used for joint optimization of inventory control, production plan of an enterprise and finished products delivery to consumers (or destinations, retailers) taking into account the additional cost related to environment protection. To formulate the above optimization problem the methods of inventory control theory with combination of transportation problem are used. The optimization model proposed is a generalization of classical Wagner-Whitin model from inventory control theory. It includes inventory control of materials and finished products, production process and transportation of manufactured products to consumers. In respect to demand two cases are considered: (a) demand at destinations is fixed over the planning horizon and (b) demand at each destination is a random variable with its own probability density known. The optimization problem is formulated by the following way: to find out the lot sizes of materials, production plan and transportation plan to minimize the total inventories holding costs, production and transportation costs over the planning horizon under some constraints. For solving the above optimization problem an algorithm is proposed. It is illustrated by numerical examples.

This book chapter summarises the key findings and results presented in the book chapters as well as compares and contrasts key issues regarding the process of sustainable development (SD), the emergence and integrated identity of the so-called supply chain management (SCM) and sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). The book chapter presents three key areas: business sustainability, market sustainability and environmental sustainability. Under each sustainability area, the key results are summarized including insights and criticism regarding sustainability and the diverse perspectives regarding ‘the road towards sustainability’. Suggestions for future research are provided.