Procure IQ

A recent article in Logistics Management contained 6 Network Redesign Tips designed to help you reduce distribution costs. The following three tips are particularly relevant regardless of the type of supply chain you operate: Being Green Can Bring More Green If it’s truly green, it saves you money. If a solution that purports to be green increases costs, then you can be sure it’s another example of greenwashing, because truly green solutions reduce the requirements for energy, water, and other natural resources, which ultimately …

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David Suzuki recently gave the keynote at SAP Canada’s Sustainability in Business Summit. ComputerWorld has been kind enough to put the most relevant part of his keynote on the web on the ITBusiness.ca site. In brief, he says nature has to be the bottom line, and he’s right. Think about the following facts: Every time you use a gallon of water, that costs you money. Every time you use a watt of energy, that costs you money. …

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… but green goes beyond just packaging and carrier efficiency. In other words, while a recent article in the Environmental Leader on how greener shipping can make you more green had some great advice that should be a starting point in your shipping considerations, I think it missed a few key points. Furthermore, it advocated carbon offsets over greener technology, which is not the answer. You need to solve the sustainability problem, not just shift the burden to someone else who may or may not solve the problem with your cash. To understand what green shipping …

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The last time we reviewed Integration Point, one of the twenty-one stops on the 2008 Sourcing Maniacs Vendor Tour, we discussed their global trade solutions and told you they provided another way to get your trade data in order. In that post, we told you about their extensible modularized web-based platform that has effectively solved the core customs, security, and classification challenge as well as the free trade / secure trade zone challenge with solutions that address import and export classification (HTS codes), import documentation requirements, export documentation requirements, C-TPAT, AEO, denied party screening, FTA qualification, duty deferral, customs warehousing, …

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I don’t care how green your city claims to be. Unless you follow São Paulo’s lead and ban outdoor advertising, you’ll never be green. Until I can walk down a street without having my eyes and ears constantly assaulted by product advertisements, you’re chalk full of noise pollution and no amount of greening is going to fix that. To see my point, compare these images (from eduadoZ and katedubya) from ‘Clean City’ with the image of Las Vegas below (from eircell.ie). What looks cleaner to you? …

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As I noted in my recent post on Why You Need Visibility, if you put an energy meter inside a home and show people total usage in real time, a miraculous thing will happen: they will use about 10% less energy. And, more importantly, you can use this behaviour to drive savings, revenue, and innovation in your business. How? Consider these five uses courtesy of Andrew Winston and the Harvard Business Review which give you a green advantage. Usage Reductions If you provide operations with information on resource use, they will …

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Supply Chain Brain recently ran a decent article on 10 Steps to Green Packaging in the CPG Industry that had a few insights that are worth a closer look. Replenish Purchase raw materials from suppliers who employ sustainable resource management policies. Re-explore Use recyclable material. Reduce Use ergonomic design and optimization to minimize the use, and size, of packaging material. Replace Replace hazardous and harmful substances with eco-friendly materials. …

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post is from Dick Locke, Sourcing Innovation’s resident expert on International Sourcing and Procurement. (His previous guest posts are still archived.) The October 1 New York Times has an interesting article on a tariff increase on solar panels. While the panels came from China, that’s not the interesting part of the story. The interesting part is that CBP (The US Customs and Border Protection department — successor to the US Customs Service) announced the tariff increase eight months ago and nearly the entire solar panel industry missed it.To summarize, one US company asked CBP for …

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If you haven’t, you might find that you’re shut out of European markets in 2010. You see, when January, only two short months away, comes around, another 15 substances must be reported under REACH. Furthermore, the EU is planning to add substances to the list every six months, possibly until the entire SIN List of 356 chemicals that have been identified as Substances of Very High Concern is on the table. If you can’t complete the necessary reporting, you can’t import into, manufacture in, or export from the EU. Right now, you just have 15 restricted substances …

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This summer, MessageLabs (now part of Symantec) released a white-paper on The Greening of SaaS which I found very disappointing because one key point that many vendors overlook when selling SaaS is how it can considerably green your operations if implemented and utilized properly. The paper indicates that with no hardware to purchase or software to run, the energy required to power that hardware and execute that software is eliminated or significantly reduced, depending on client-side consumption. While it is true that the client does not need to buy, maintain, and then dispose of (as much) energy consuming …

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