Today, Green Manufacturing (GM) supply chain is considered to be a prerequisite
for sustainable development. According to Wisner et al. (2005), customers are increasingly demanding to know where the products come from, how they are made and
distributed, and what impacts future legislation will have on the products they buy. Green
Supply Chain (GSC) is a method to design and/or redesign the supply chain, which
incorporates recycling and re-manufacturing into the production process. This involves
the minimization of a firm's total environmental impact from the start to the finish of a
supply chain, and also from the beginning to the end of a product life cycle (Beamenvironmental policyzon, 1999;
and Green et al., 1998). Yu and Son (2008) mentioned that GSC integrates the
consideration of environmental impacts and resource efficiency, and is based on the GM theory and
the Supply Chain Management (SCM) technology, involving suppliers,
manufacturers, vendors and users in the whole supply chain. According to Wisner et al. (2005), developing a GSC strategy involves collecting and analyzing environmental regulations and
customer surveys from each of the supply chain firm locations; discussing the relevant
environmental issues with the procurement, engineering and quality control departments at each
firm; developing the GSC policies; communicating them to customers and suppliers along
the supply chain; and then managing the program to assure compliance with the policies.
Rao and Holt (2005) identified that greening the different phases of the supply chain
leads to an integrated GSC, which ultimately leads to competitiveness and
economic performance. Srivastava (2007) defined Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM)
as "integrating environmental thinking into supply chain management, including
product design, material sourcing and selection, manufacturing processes, delivery of the
final product to the consumers as well as end-of-life management of the product after its
useful life."
GSCM has emerged as a strategy for some leading companies (Sarkis, 2003; and
Zhu and Sakis, 2006), including Dell, HP, IBM, Motorola, Sony, Panasonic, NEC,
Fujitsu, General Motors, Toshiba, Xerox, and Digital Equipment. Zhu et al. (2007) conducted a survey across four typical manufacturing industrial sectors in Chinapower
generating, chemical/petroleum, electrical/electronic, and automobileand found that the
electrical/electronic industry has relatively higher levels of GSCM implementation, achieving
better performance outcomes than the other three manufacturer types. Chien and Shish
(2007) found that original equipment manufacturing and original designing and
manufacturing firms in Taiwan's electrical and electronic industry have adopted green procurement
and GM practices in response to the current wave of international green issues,
thus generating favorable environmental and financial performances for the
respective companies. Hsu and Hu (2008) mentioned the various approaches to GSCM practice
that have been identified by various researcherssuppliers meeting, environmental
auditing for suppliers, suppliers environmental questionnaire, requesting compliance
statement, asking for product testing report, demanding Bill of Material (BOM),
establishing environmental requirements for purchasing items, implementing Green Purchasing
(GP), collaborative R&D with suppliers, information system, joining local recycling
organizations, collaboration on products recycling with the same sector industry, producing
disassembly manuals, Green Design (GD), environmental education and training, top
management support, environmental policy for GSCM, cross-function integration,
manpower involvement, effective communication platform within companies and with
suppliers, establishing environmental risk management system for GSCM, supplier evaluation
and selection, tracking the development of directives, applying
Life Cycle Assessment/Analysis (LCA) to carry out eco-report, and establishing an environmental database
of products. Some of the significant benefits of GSCM include across the system
cost reduction, easier penetration to global market, reduction of resource
(i.e., material, manpower and energy) usage, reduction of waste (as much as
practically possible, in a given manufacturing environment), reducing risks, good publicity,
achieving competitive advantage, and enhancement of customer satisfaction level. |
