Introduction

This review paper is specifically aimed to analyse the sustainability practices of supply chain

management. The paradigm shift from traditional supply chain to green supply chain and

sustainability supply chain is analysed and its impact on manufacturing organisations in terms

of eco-friendly processes and environmental advantages. The prime target of present

sustainability supply chain is to bring sustainable development for the firm by ensuring the

operations management to address environmental, social, and financial risks and meet their

commitments. The operations managers are excited about creating sustainable supply chain

methodologies as a major aspect of accomplishing competitive edge over competitors in the

market. Anyway it is a discussing subject whether competitive advantage is achievable with

sustainable supply chain management.

Analysis

Supply chain is a is a system of processes including suppliers, firm, production facilities,

technology involved in the production process, sale of a product, resources and activities,

delivery of an item from the conveyance of source materials to the manufacturer from

supplier through to its conveyance to the end customer (Mani et al., 2015). Supply chain

management is the progression of material and goods over the network including the

suppliers, traders and partners. SCM incorporates the administration of work processes data

streams and cash flows (Beske and Seuring, 2014). Sustainability practice in business means

procedure by which a firm deal with their environmental, social, and financial risks,

commitments, and openings (Touboulic and Walker, 2015).

The idea and application of supply chain management have been promoted to upgrade the

performance level of organizations who take part in it (Sandberg and Abrahamsson, 2010).

Sharma et al., (2010) has observed that, there has been numerous numbers of researches
about the execution of supply chain management in the manufacturing companies as well as

in the retailer organizations since; they have identified the importance of supply chain

management. The practices of SCM are particularly meant for revamping the performance

level of integrated supply chain and they are clear cut functions of managerial actions.

According to the opinion of Shipeng, (2011) the SCM actions are categorized as following:

strategic supplier partnership, level of information sharing, quality of information sharing,

and integration intensity.

The decisions made on account of the sourcing are elementary in the supply chain

management. Many things are significant with this regard, such as the choice of the supplier,

the efficacy of the business developments and how it has been amalgamated to have the

maximum output etc. It is evident form numerous researches that the sourcing of strategies

lead to ameliorate the supply chain performance of an organization. Evaluating the variants of

sourcing decisions, it has found that the strategic sourcing decisions is greatly interrelated

with the achievements in manufacturing strategy of viable supply chains (Paneerselvam,

2016).

The corporate strategy has always been concentrating on expanding the profit margins via

diminishing the production cost as well as escalating the sale of products. According to the

version of Storer et al., (2014) the emerging issues like limited resources; greenhouse gases,

global warming, and consumer health conscious have elevated the necessity of the firm to

include durability into their strategies. The advancement in technology and development of

internet and 24 hour news channels had made all the organizations under the surveillance of

public all the time. Some intolerable practices concealed in the supply chain activities has the

potentiality to turn into public information vigorously, which might have been the reason for

diminishing the brand value of the products and naturally make unsatisfied shareholders.
Attaining sustainability is a key objective of operations managers. It is considered as a major

driving force of achieving competitive advantage by majority of operations managers

(Marshall et al., 2015) the sustainability practice helps to integrate social and environmental

issues in an organisations supply chain strategy (Slack et al., 2015). The major aim of

sustainable supply chain has been identified as preservation of natural resources against

exploitation while at the same time upholding competitiveness and productivity of the firm.

The companies with more than one dominant strategy and dynamic interaction with its

external environment have more chances of attaining sustainable competitive advantage as

their competitors may not have similar advantages.

According to the point of Smit, (2012) the customers in this contemporary world has more a

“conscious consumer”, rather than an investor and they are indeed a part of the corporate

strategy of the organizations and it has become more relevant for the firms to meet up with

their demands and needs. In the opinion of Seuring, (2013) the supply chain is the crucial step

where the initial processing of raw materials to the product delivery to the customers is done

and it is significant for the firm to have more focus upon the process of supply chain and

develop a consistent strategy with respect to the same. The peculiarity of the supply chain

managers are that they are the most dominant personnel’s who are engaged in all the phases

of business from strategic planning, information services, logistics, marketing, sales and

finance. In fact the supply chain managers are occupied to carry out sustainability initiatives

(Gopalakrishnan et al., 2010).

The role of supply chain managers is significant enough to make an impact over the millions

of shareholders either positively or negatively. It is because their strategic decisions have that

much importance in the day to day business of the organization (Murphy and Poist, 2003).

Sometimes it may happen that some strategic decisions may go wrong and have adverse

effect over the firm, and then it is not sustainable and not even worth the corresponding risks.
Even though, adjoining of sustainability all over the organization demands innovation. The

success of the organization lies upon when they started to distinguish themselves with their

competitors in implementing the strategies of cost effectiveness, service quality and customer

satisfaction (Pedersen, 2009). As per the observation of Kaynak and Montiel, (2019) the

interplay among supply chains and sustainability is one of the crucial steps towards

operations and the environment.

The research organized by Zhu et al., (2008) has divulged that “the concept of a Green

Supply Chain- has become the major subject matter of many firms and the concept has been

materializing by many of the practitioners as a sustainable and profitable undertaking”.

According to the vision of Srivastara et al., (2013) the Green Supply Chain Management is

“amalgamating the environment concern into supply chain management, together with

material sourcing and selection, manufacturing processes, product design, delivery of the

final product to the consumers, and end-of-life management of the product after its useful

life.” Another view from Lee et al., (2012) about Green Sustainable Supply Chain is that “it

is the process of using eco-friendly materials and transmuting these inputs through change

agents and their by-products can alter or be recycled within the existing environment. This

process develops products that can be retrieved and re-used till the end of their life-cycle and

thus, creating a sustainable supply chain (Srivastava et al., 2013).

Even though, many research have been concentrated on the idea of sustainability in supply

chain management (Srivastava, 2007), but only a diminutive work has done to evaluate the

role and significance of logistics operations in an organizations with respect to sustainability.

The logistics operation of an organization constitutes the amalgamation of almost all the

activities which is indispensible for the delivering of products through supply chain. Next, the

logistic cost can be explained as the monetary articulations of all sorts of preoccupied labours

in the due course of product displacement (Kuik et al., 2010). Generally, for all most all the
organizations the cost of logistics is considerable and placed secondly only according to the

goods already sold. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the logistics cost

average is about 12% of the world’s gross domestic product every year.

Nonetheless according to the version of the Council of Supply Chain Management

Professionals, the logistics has such a huge impact over the environment that it alone can

make up to seventy five percentage of a company’s carbon footprint (The Council of Supply

Chain Management Professionals, 2008). The merging of monetary cost and environmental

impact over the operations due to the contribution of logistics, makes it a crucial area where

subsist the demand for exploring new opportunities to substantiate the logistics operations

and make it more significant. The core strategy of this research will be with regard to this

peculiarity and we are concentrating on the areas of logistics in the supply chain activities.

There are many areas in the logistic chain of an organization where we could implement

sustainability. The entire logistic operation of an organization can be segmented into various

sections such as distribution chain, supply chain, value adding chain, and the reverse logistics

chain. In each of these logistic functions we could recognize occasions for introducing the

sustainability factor. Apart from that, here in this research, after the provision of examples of

contemporary leading firms and how they assess sustainability (Linton et al., 2016), it is

important to analyse the reason behind these firms to implement the practice of sustainability

straight away.

There are numerous factors which are compelling the companies to implement changes to

their logistic strategies. It is significant that each logistics manager need to appreciate the

importance of every factor with his or her company’s logistic operation and to start

amalgamating the ideas and practices to accomplish the sustainability in the firm’s

operations. Here with many examples we are trying to mention the logistic functions of
various firms where the factor of sustainability can be executed, incorporating both short as

well as long term recommendations (Linton et al., 2016).

According to the opinion of Mollenkopf et al., (2010) the logistic operations of an

organization is playing a crucial role in implementing the sustainability strategy into their

supply chain operations. The logistics operation of Europe’s chemical industry is a

marvellous example for the same. Young, (2009) has observed that the managers of this

organization had implemented strategies like full asset utilization, increase of unit size, small

loads to full loads, cost-to-serve reduction and elimination of waste etc. According to his

version, such strategies together with the amalgamation of diverse supply chain components

in correspondence with the social systems and ethical considerations of the qualified

workforce have contributed to switch into sustainable logistics operations and helped the firm

to cut down the rate of their carbon footprint (Young, 2009).

The “Green Supply Chain” strategy should be implemented into the global supply chain but

without the sustainability factor it is not possible as well. The “Green Supply Chain” has been

adapting by the business organization since their basic instinct has turned up to focusing on

the interest of their shareholders rather than only in profit maximisation Kocabasoglu et al.,

(2007). The worldwide discussions over the terms climate change and global warming have

set the people’s mind going green. Apart from that the priority of the customers of developed

nations has switched to green products and green revolution.

At the same time the third world countries are also moving towards the same concept and

getting involved with the ideas of green products and its benefits to the individual as well as

to the entire society. In fact, at first most of the companies were hesitant to embrace the green

revolution since the cost of production was high which will naturally let down the profit of
the firm. The customer awareness and their willingness to suffer the hike in prices have

turned up the vision of the firm to go “Green” (Kaynak and Montiel, 2009).

Diametrically, the image of “Green” can elevate the sales of the company. A study among

100 firms across many industries shows that almost sixty percentage firms have adopted the

practice of sustainability in order to build up their brand name (Kannan et al., 2014). For

customers, the price and the quality of the product have utmost importance apart from that

they are became more health conscious. This has given rise to the section of “conscious

consumer” and they expect from the firms to make more eco-friendly products (Pepper et al.,

2009).

Environmental benefits and business benefits are the two significant benefits of green supply

chain. (1) Cost reductions and (2) benefit relates to consumer preferences are the two major

business benefits. The switching to green supply chain has improved the efficiency in

resources and that naturally leaded to reduction in cost. The adoption of green supply chain

will elevate the customer preference towards the firm which will enhance the sale. According

to the opinion of Emmet and Sood, (2010) apart from the instant publicity, there are four

other major benefits for the firm for being green supply chain. They are reduction in

operation cost, increase in customer service and sale, chances for innovations, and normative

risk mitigation.

Conclusion

From this literature review it is evident that supply chain is a is a network of processes that

helps to sourcing materials, inbound logistics, designing production, managing inventory, and

delivering goods to the end customer. The operations managers keen to making these

processes sustainable to achieve the element of cost efficiency, performance improvements

and ecological accomplishments. The growing demand for environmental friendly operations
of companies lead to the introduction of Sustainable Supply chain Management, it is

specifically aimed to achieve eco-friendly processes, quality enhancement and cost effective

supply chain operations. The shift towards Green Supply Chain is a major example of

adopting and implementing Sustainable SCM. It is evidence that sustainable SCM provide

various advantages for the company and enhance its corporate reputation. The ability to

reduce pollution, carbon emission, avoids waste and plastics, improved quality and enhanced

automation are naturally bringing competitive edge for the company along with corporate

reputation. Therefore, it can be concluded that Sustainable SCM is capable of providing

competitive advantage for the firm.

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