The Center for Cooperative Logistics Education, Advancement, and Research (CLEAR Center) has been asked to lead a research effort benchmarking the environmental supply chain sustainability best practices of Distribution Business Management Association’s members.
CLEAR Center will collaborate with the Association and faculty from Central Michigan University. DBMA is composed of a select, limited group of members, the predominance of whom are Fortune 500 companies.
“I am honored that DBMA asked the CLEAR Center to help lead this effort and we are excited about our role in helping improve the competitiveness of its members and the environment,” said Dr. Doug Voss, director of the CLEAR Center and assistant professor of Marketing and Supply Chain Management in the UCA College of Business.”Supply Chain Managers employed sustainability best practices before they were en vogue by getting products to our shelves in the most efficient manner. DBMA and its members have been on the forefront of this movement for a long time.” Researchers will examine several sustainability opportunities including efforts to reduce waste, land and water pollution, and energy. The project will uncover the sustainability initiatives that have the greatest effect on improving firms’ competitiveness in terms of delivering an acceptable return on investment in an appropriate amount of time through cost reductions, revenue enhancements, and risk mitigation.
“Firms sometimes engage in sustainability initiatives to enhance profitability and other times they engage in initiatives just because it is the right thing to do,” Voss said. “The project will help reveal those initiatives that fall in each category.”
Association members will have the ability to benchmark their sustainability initiatives and results against the combined results of other DBMA members. Past research has shown that improving sustainability programs has the potential to reduce costs, enhance revenue, improve corporate image, and mitigate risks, which stands to improve their balance sheet, he said.
Supply chain management, specifically transportation/trucking, is a major economic driver of the Arkansas economy.
“The topic of environmental sustainability is also incredibly important to Arkansas as we increasingly become known as a hub for wind energy manufacturing,” Voss explained. “This project will help ‘spread the good word’ that Arkansans take environmental stewardship seriously, we value our industry partners, and are making strides to become a center of knowledge in this area. Further, we expect to show that some sustainability initiatives are actually profitable and nothing motivates other firms to adopt a beneficial practice – such as sustainability – like demonstrating it is the right thing to do and, by the way, you are going to improve your financial standing. The more firms that profitably adopt sustainability practices, the better off we all are as a community.”
The project is organized around the Plan-Do-Check-Act process improvement model. “Plan” represents the steps a firm takes to prepare to implement a sustainability management program, Voss explained. “Do” represents the formal implementation and ongoing operation of a sustainability initiative targeted toward product procurement, storage, manufacture, delivery, and customer returns. “Check” activities involve measuring the sustainability program against targets and objectives. “Act” is the process of utilizing “check” results to continuously improve the program.
The project is expected to take approximately one year to complete.
Collaboration between university faculties and also with industry is beneficial in a number of ways, Voss said about the partnership between, UCA, DBMA and Central Michigan University.
“As a tax-payer funded institution, we have to be good stewards of public resources and try to do more with less,” he said. “Collaborating with other faculty and industry groups helps achieve synergies and greater results than we could working alone.”
UCA is one of 27 DBMA university affiliates, a group that includes other prominent universities such as Michigan State, Ohio State, Iowa State, Central Michigan, and the University of Kentucky.
