Supply Chain Sustainability - Assignment Example

Mapping of supply chain involves inventing suppliers, identifying the most considerable environmental and social challenges experiencing, and prioritize efforts with suppliers.

In order to sustain supply chains, it is the priority of the company to communicate culture and values to its customers and suppliers (Cetinkaya, 2010). Communicating and establishing expectations through the code of conduct of a supplier is a significant step in involving suppliers in the company’s sustainability efforts. Once a company knows its target suppliers and set compliance standards, amassing data from suppliers through self-assessment or a simple benchmarking questionnaire would provide a company with an understanding of the starting point.

Developing training and capacity-building programs consider many external resources. One way is by leveraging the case studies and best practices from top-performing suppliers at annual purveyor conferences, via capacity-building campaigns and online training suppliers. Once the baseline of the supplier is understood, an audit plan can measure improvement on performance over time. In various cases, the self-assessments are accomplished by procurement or marketing, corporate group, practical opportunities, and behavioral challenges for development that are difficult to identify through questionnaires.

Peer companies sharing similar supply chains could set best practices and common standards for sustainability performance and evaluate suppliers on the same metrics. The sustainability of supply chains in business is not only a good concept but also generates money in the long run. Companies can save costs and increase productivity by managing and improving the environment, economic and social performances throughout supply chains (Cetinkaya, 2010).