Interorganisational - Supply Chain Management

Here is a brief piece on Reverse Logistics I wrote for Supply Management, published in their issue from 31st January 2008.

Is Reverse the Top Gear in logistics?

Árni

Yes, not recycling, but freecycling.

Consumers are now involving themselves into reverse logistics via an Internet based platform: uk.freecycle.org

“Freecycle groups match people who have things they want to get rid of with people who can use them” and the objective is to
“keep usable items out of landfill”.

Árni

Network economy. Knowledge economy. Information economy. Global economy. Creative economy. Information age. Network society. (I must be forgetting something).

And now: Low carbon economy.

Environmental issues have been discussed eagerly by politicians in the UK press this week; low carbon economy is the “buzz-phrase” according to this piece from BBC. Not without a reason according to these pictures, which project dramatic changes in surface temperature over the next century. Human activity is quoted as a “very likely” cause for this change.

In the literature on supply chain management we find the word green as one of the labels for environmental concerns. This recent paper by S. K. Srivastava “Green supply-chain management: A state-of-the-art literature review” (The latest issue of International Journal of Management Reviews) presents a comprehensive review of the literature within the realm of “green supply chain management”. (A useful overview for those who are working on reverse logistics, waste management, recyling and remanufacturing).

One of the conclusions in this paper is that:

“One of the biggest challenges facing the field of GrSCM is extending the historical ‘common wisdom’ about managing operations. Much research, management education and many practical applications have focused on buffering the operations function from external influences, including the natural environment, in order to improve efficiencies, reduce cost and increase quality. When the natural environment is considered, it is typically recognized or modelled as an external constraint, requiring operations to work within prescribed limits. Once this basic assumption is relaxed, a fundamental question arises about how to pursue research on green issues in operations: should this be considered a separate research stream with its own strategic framework or should green issues be integrated into existing operations management research frameworks and areas? While the complexity of green issues might favour the former approach, the greatest contributions can be achieved by pursuing opportunities within a more integrative framework.” (our emphasis in bold).

Environmental responsibility is considered as one of the operations challenges in a textbook I am using as a core text in a Operations Management course. It is presented on five pages at the last chapter of the book as a part of The operations challenge. I decided to include this chapter (and topic) at the beginning of the course to emphasise the environmental issue that relates to Operations Management. Still, I have found it difficult (or rather complex, cf. the notion made by Srivastava) to integrate this aspect into the current models and approaches in such textbook.

Can we expect a textbook that provides an integrative framework on environmental issues?

Árni

This piece from yesterday´s FT demonstrates one but several ways of how reverse logistics activities may be involved in moving desks.

“Last week I gathered up seven years of my working life and threw it away. I filled three plastic sacks of miscellaneous rubbish for landfill sites and one oil drum of paper for recycling and built six tottering towers of books to be sent to Oxfam.“

Here, sorting is carried out, and destination for various end-of-life products are determined.

“Moving meant a major sorting operation. First, I tackled a job I had been putting off for years: opening my mail. My policy is never to open anything unless it looks interesting. The pile of uninteresting mail was therefore very large, some of the envelopes having been posted several years earlier.“

Who is not guilty of such gate-keeping but time-saving activity? What is though interesting here is that this confirms how difficult it is to forecast when and how end-of-life materials enter the reverse supply chain. How often do we not open our mail, but still decide keep it somewhere? How often do we move desks? There are many sources of uncertainty for materials as simple as paper.

“When I started to open them I discovered how right I had been. They contained invitations to dull leadership seminars and press releases about dull surveys. I took an executive decision and slung the rest, unopened, into the oil drum, where it made a reassuring thud. This felt very good.“

Just carry on reading!

“Then the old newspapers and magazines followed. Thud, thud. Next were books, so many management books of so very little interest. The first I picked up was Value Nets, Breaking the Supply Chain to Unlock Hidden Profits. The question was not whether to keep it now but why I had ever kept it at all. About a hundred other titles followed.”

Now, this is why we need “reverse supply chains”

Maybe demand management could solve this problem of reverse logistics?!

Árni