Big ideas for sustainable supply chains

Sup­ply chains were always his­tor­i­cal­ly shroud­ed in mys­tery. There was almost a mys­tique about the ori­gins of some mate­ri­als and prod­ucts, guard­ed by gen­tle obfus­ca­tion, mod­er­at­ed through man­aged scarci­ty, sourced secre­tive­ly.

How­ev­er, the glob­alised growth of the last 20 years has now birthed such com­plex­i­ties, inter­con­nect­ed­ness and inter­de­pen­den­cies in inter­na­tion­al sup­ply chains that prov­i­dence, trace­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy have become imper­a­tive.

As Europe learnt to its cost in 2013, when this all goes wrong it can go very wrong. Cer­tain super­mar­ket ready meals, such as sup­pos­ed­ly “beef” lasagna, weren’t just con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with oth­er meats, but con­tained 100 per cent the wrong species, in this case horse. I’ve not been so dis­ap­point­ed since I ordered Bom­bay duck.

The horse­meat scan­dal laid bare con­vo­lut­ed sup­ply chains that defied log­ic. What a cus­tomer might rea­son­ably assume would be a fair­ly short, lin­ear jour­ney for beef from farm to fork was instead exposed as an impen­e­tra­ble, inter­wo­ven web of trans-con­ti­nen­tal ship­ping and pro­cess­ing. It’s lit­tle won­der that Dob­bin end­ed up on the table.

The Rana Plaza fac­to­ry col­lapse in Bangladesh that same year exposed a more sin­is­ter side to sup­ply chains, the ter­ri­ble, reck­less­ly unsafe con­di­tions in which cloth­ing for top glob­al fash­ion brands was stitched togeth­er by prac­ti­cal­ly inden­tured, exploit­ed, over-worked employ­ees. The trag­ic deaths at Rana Plaza were entire­ly avoid­able and cast a lin­ger­ing pall over the asso­ci­at­ed com­pa­nies.

Sup­ply chains must be man­aged more sus­tain­ably to avoid these unnec­es­sary and unac­cept­able risks to life, limb and rep­u­ta­tion. But this is not just about fun­da­men­tal rights, risk avoid­ance or rep­u­ta­tion­al defence. Tru­ly inno­v­a­tive and smart sup­ply chain man­age­ment can be trans­formed into a suite of inte­grat­ed pos­i­tive ben­e­fits from enhanced cus­tomer trust and loy­al­ty, secu­ri­ty of sup­ply and even low­er costs.

Mon­delez Inter­na­tion­al, for exam­ple, set about resolv­ing a dilem­ma – their Latin Amer­i­can cof­fee sup­ply chain was at risk. Farm­ers were leav­ing cof­fee-grow­ing in droves, a trend which left unchecked would endan­ger the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the company’s sourc­ing. Futer­ra Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Com­mu­ni­ca­tions came up with a big hairy auda­cious goal for them – cre­at­ing one mil­lion cof­fee-farm­ing entre­pre­neurs by 2020 – and wrapped it up in an equal­ly size­able big cre­ative idea, “Cof­fee Made Hap­py”.

Tru­ly inno­v­a­tive and smart sup­ply chain man­age­ment can be trans­formed into a suite of inte­grat­ed pos­i­tive ben­e­fits

The notion was sim­ple: sup­port, edu­cate and train cof­fee farm­ers on the ground to run more suc­cess­ful, sus­tain­able busi­ness­es, think big in terms of the scale and ambi­tion, and then con­nect the grow­er and the drinker in a pow­er­ful and com­pelling way.

Mon­delez Inter­na­tion­al set up the ‘Cof­fee Made Hap­py’ ini­tia­tive

The Cof­fee Made Hap­py ini­tia­tive does all these things, chang­ing the poten­tial prospects of cof­fee farm­ers, secur­ing Mondelez’s sup­ply chain and, with the intro­duc­tion of a Cof­fee Made Hap­py logo on packs, builds cus­tomer trust and loy­al­ty.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Futerra’s work with glob­al brew­ing giant SAB Miller on their big sus­tain­abil­i­ty idea, “Pros­per”, found­ed on the belief that they as a busi­ness only pros­per when the com­mu­ni­ties in which they work and oper­ate also pros­per, demon­strates an equal­ly enlight­ened sup­ply chain approach.

Pros­per is based on the five worlds SAB Miller seeks to cre­ate: thriv­ing, socia­ble, resilient, clean and pro­duc­tive. The last “pro­duc­tive” world focus­es explic­it­ly on their sup­ply chains, encour­ag­ing crop diver­si­fi­ca­tion by farm­ers to ensure beer crops don’t affect food pro­duc­tion, and favour­ing and encour­ag­ing small-scale local farm­ers.

But it’s not just on the busi­ness side of things that cre­ativ­i­ty counts. Futerra’s work on the “Who made my clothes?” fash­ion rev­o­lu­tion cam­paign, chal­leng­ing fash­ion­istas the world over to ask man­u­fac­tur­ers and retail­ers how and where their clothes were made and who by, in the after­math of Rana Plaza, cre­at­ed pres­sure in the oth­er direc­tion. Tens of thou­sands, from more than 60 coun­tries around the world, asked the ques­tion, push­ing for greater trans­paren­cy and respon­si­bil­i­ty in glob­al fash­ion sup­ply chains.

The les­son here is sim­ple. A lais­sez-faire atti­tude to sup­ply chain sus­tain­abil­i­ty, cross­ing fin­gers or clos­ing eyes and ears, hop­ing for the best and only act­ing deci­sive­ly when some­thing goes ter­ri­bly wrong is not a strat­e­gy at all.

In fact, it’s a lia­bil­i­ty wait­ing to hap­pen. In an age of ever-increas­ing scruti­ny, the truth will out fash­ion rev­o­lu­tion style. Instead a proac­tive, intel­li­gent and respon­si­ble approach to secur­ing a gen­uine­ly sus­tain­able sup­ply chain, espe­cial­ly when framed with­in a big, com­pelling and com­mu­ni­ca­ble idea such as Cof­fee Made Hap­py or Pros­per, can become a mas­sive­ly valu­able asset. Lit­er­al­ly every­one – pro­duc­ers, cus­tomers and your busi­ness – can win.

So per­haps it’s time to shine a light into the dark­er recess­es of your own sup­ply chain, do the right thing and then tell every­one about it. Because either you do it or some­one else will do it for you. And that rarely turns out well.