Sustainable Solutions for SCM

1.6 Green supply chain management The concept of green supply chain management was first introduced by US Michigan State University in 1996 [28], the authors have drawn on the results of interviews with five environmental managers in the furniture industry to develop a taxonomy of environmentally-friendly (green) supply chain best practices. The results suggest that in order to be successful, environmental management strategies must be integrated in all stages of the supply chain, including procurement, manufacturing, packaging and logistics. While the potential for performance improvement in all five of the companies is evident, all of them demonstrated “pockets” of environmentally-friendly practices (EFP) in different stages of their respective supply chains. US and other parts of the academic world begun to study various aspects of the green supply chain management [3], [29], [34], [48], [55]. Green supply chain management (GSCM) involves traditional supply chain management practices, which integrate environmental criteria, or concerns, into organisational purchasing decisions and long-term relationships with suppliers [24]. GSCM is defined as integrating environmental thinking into supply chain management, including product design, material sourcing and selection, manufacturing and delivering the final product to the customers, its consumpiton and end of serviceability [55]. A green supply chains aims at confining the wastes within the industrial system in order to conserve energy and prevents the dissipation of dangerous materials into the environment. It recognises the disproportionate environmental impact of supply chain processes within an organisation. GSCM is often perceived as a new innovative managerial tool, which can be used as a strategic weapon to gain competitiveness and to simultaneously promote a firm’s environmental and financial performance [27]. GSCM as a strategy to gain competitive advantage means that there is substantial interest amongst the companies to take action to decrease their environmental impact. The goal of adding value to the business and reducing costs in all parts of the production system is identified as key drivers in order to increase competitiveness. The companies agree that the common manufacturing objectives such as cost, quality, delivery and flexibility will not be enough in order to stay competitive when external stakeholders require an increased focus on sustainability [42]. Some famous foreign multinational companies such as the Ford Motor Company, Hewlett-Packard Company, Valuable Clean Group and General Electric Company regarded supply chain management as a strategic asset and corporate culture acquiring corporate competitive advantage to filter into various parts, various departments and employees. As in the past and so also in the present, the practice of GSCM is understood as a multi-dimensional concept which can be measured from different perspectives and at different dimensions of GSCM practices. Already in 2005 Zhu et al. [64], proposed a four-dimensional GSCM practices, namely internal environmental management, external GSCM, eco-design and investment recovery. Holt and Ghobadian [32] suggested internal environmental management practices, logistics, supplier assessment and evaluation, green procurement and logistics policy, supplier education and mentoring, and industrial networks as important GSCM practices. For example, according to Ninlawan et al. [43] and Thoo et al. [58], green procurement, green manufacturing, green distribution and

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