Track 3: Sustainability

Regulation, consumer sentiment, and volatile resource costs conspire to make sustainability a mission critical problem for supply chain executives. This track will focus on where sustainability is headed in terms of government oversight, costs of carbon, water, and other resources and even issues around socially responsible sourcing. Emerging technologies like software enabling accounting and decision support around these resources as well as smart controls in production and materials handling systems will be explored in today’s market and into the future.

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Sessions

Sustainability and Economic Recovery — Friends or Foe

For most businesses 2009 is best forgotten — or maybe not. Lessons were learnt about the persistence or rate of uptake of sustainable business strategies. Despite the absence of internationally binding legislation the market, supply chain partners, investors and other stakeholders demand transparency and accountability for action, as well as increased investment in energy and emission efficiency and sustainability-related programs.

Waiting for the Carbon Crunch — Internalization of Carbon as Cost of Doing Business

Carbon has arrived as a cost of doing business for some industries in certain geographies. On the supply side, energy utilities are adapting business models and innovating to de-commoditize energy and increase portfolios of renewable energy sources and associated environmental assets. On the demand side industries are assimilating a new category of risk, a new cost of doing business and focusing on investment in efficiency to reduce exposure to carbon associated costs.

The Hierarchy of Sustainable Supply Chain Metrics

Justification of green or sustainable credentials has shifted away from the marketing department towards the operations team. However, labeling does not make the supply chain sustainable. Building sustainable supply chains requires the re-examination of priorities, optimization factors and relevant metrics. This session offers insights into the evolving AMR/Gartner frameworks to incorporate assessment of supply chain sustainability.

Non-Governmental organizations (NGOs) — Good, Bad or Ugly?

Whether you like them or hate them, environmental NGOs are not going away any time soon. How are they changing in the rapidly evolving sustainable business environment? How are they adding value to corporate strategies and execution? How can they be ranked, differentiated, evaluated or partnered? We present recent analysis of the performance of leading eNGOs and offer guidance about their DNA, dogma and future direction.

Panel Discussion — Building the Sustainable Infrastructure of the Low Carbon Economy

Build it and they will come — or so they say. Past economic models have assumed infinite resources and limited data or information. The new sustainable economic model assumes limited and unlimited information in time and space. This panel discusses the major changes and offers forecasts of how stimulus funding and other factors will be pushing the smart and sustainable economic transformation.

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