Reducing Your Company’s Carbon Footprint — Through Logistics

Trying to reduce your company’s carbon footprint? MIT engineering professor David Simchi-Levi suggests taking a systematic look at the logistics involved in your supply chain — and then carefully analyzing the data to understand the greenhouse gas emissions impact of your logistics choices, the MIT News Office reports.

Just considering the miles an item travels can be misleading, according to Simchi-Levi. For example, shipping by air produces 47 times the greenhouse gas emissions per one-ton mile as shipping by cargo ship. “Distance does not simply equal a higher carbon footprint,” Simchi-Levi, who is the author of the new book Operations Rules, told the MIT News Office recently.

Interested in the topic of greener supply chain logistics? Here are some articles from MIT Sloan Management Review  on related topics:

• Your Next Supply Chain: An Interview with David Simchi-Levi and Charles Fine (MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter 2010)
  New forces and dynamics are emerging to influence the supply chain designs of the future. And even the old forces are influencing it in new ways. Interviews with David Simchi-Levi and Charles H. Fine — two of the field’s premier thinkers — suggest how to capitalize on what’s coming.  Interviews by Michael S. Hopkins.
• ‘Greening’ Transportation in the Supply Chain (MIT SMR, Winter 2010)
  By Susan L. Golicic, Courtney N. Boerstler and Lisa M. Ellram
  Even corporations with clear environmental aims fail to go the distance when it comes to their supply chains. But lessons from a small group of Fortune 500 companies can give them the direction they need.
• The Four-Point Supply Chain Checklist (or, How Sustainability Creates New Opportunity)  (MIT SMR, Spring 2010)
  Positioned at the intersection of internal operations, company-wide strategy and external relationships, supply chain managers are in a unique spot not just to consider sustainability initiatives, but to benefit from them. Edgar Blanco of the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics says there are four key opportunities. Interview by Michael S. Hopkins.
• Outcome-Driven Supply Chains (MIT SMR, Winter 2010)
  By Steven A. Melnyk, Edward W. Davis, Robert E. Spekman and Joseph Sandor
  The supply chains of tomorrow must deliver varying degrees of six outcomes — the traditional cost-related benefit plus responsiveness, security, sustainability, resilience and innovation — depending on key customers’ needs.
  
• Crude Calculations (Collaboration between MIT Sloan Management Review and The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 22, 2008)
  By David Simchi-Levi, Derek Nelson, Narendra Mulani and Jonathan Wright
  Why high oil prices are upending the way companies should manage their supply chains.