Sustainable Purchasing and Supply Chain

Course details

This workshop will enable you to make sense of sustainability and how it applies to purchasing and the supply chain. You will explore the different aspects of sustainability, and examine how they impact the ways we select and manage our suppliers and supply chain operations. You will find out how to apply this thinking to your own organisation and use sustainability as a source of additional value and innovation for your business.

Sustainable Purchasing and Supply Chain is designed to get you thinking more critically about sustainability and, in particular, how it can become a source of value and innovation in the supply chain. We will discover how successful organisations are no longer seeing sustainability as a tick-box exercise but as a fundamental, integral strand in the way they work with suppliers and supply their customers. You will be invited to consider the implications of this for your own purchasing and supply chain activities.

IS IT RIGHT FOR ME?

This workshop is for purchasing and supply chain professionals – buyers, analysts and managers – and the environmental and CSR practitioners who work with them.

You may be aware that you need to embrace sustainability in your supply chain but may not be so clear about what this means in practice. If you need to take sustainability on board and embed it into your purchasing and supply chain processes and plans, then this workshop is for you.

WHAT WILL I LEARN?

By the end of this course you will be able to:

• Describe the main areas that need to be addressed in sustainability, and the implications of these for your purchasing and supply chain processes and plans
• Identify the main sustainability schemes and standards, and explain which ones are most relevant to your organisation
• Pursue sustainable purchasing and supply chain activities that create added value and innovation
• Apply sustainable purchasing and supply chain practices to your organisation

WHAT WILL IT COVER?

Dimensions of Sustainability

• What is sustainability and why do we care about it?
• Economic and ethical sustainability
• Applying ISO 26000 to sustainable purchasing and supply chain

Sustainable Sourcing

• Sustainable sourcing practice – the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI)
• Trends in sustainable sourcing: Fairtrade and social procurement
• Behind the badge – sustainability labels and their implications for us and our customers
• Group work on implications of sustainable sourcing: innovation, supplier management and risk

Lean, Green Logistics

• Lean thinking and the reduction of environmental waste
• Carbon reduction schemes and what they give us
• A framework for implementing green logistics

Making Sustainable Purchasing and Supply Chain Happen

• Group work on sustainability dilemmas
• PQ Leadership – how purchasing and supply chain leaders make sustainability happen
• Individual action planning