United Nations Researches Sustainable Supply Chain Management

By Doug Caverly
Staff Writer
Article Date: 2010-02-12

It's not every day that you hear about the United Nations - the international organization that can settle disputes and/or dispatch armed peacekeepers - in connection with supply chain management. But the United Nations Environment Programme and the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry have teamed up on a special project.

As explained in a press release, these two groups "are soliciting pilot participants in a new project to develop and test a capability framework for sustainable value chains."

The official statement then continued, "The 'capability' approach shifts the focus from driving performance on certain sustainability metrics to building the capacity of organizations in a supply chain to identify and meet priorities tailored to their business strategy and local resources. This customized decision-making process is expected to better balance the tension between the economic logic of global value chains and the localized logic of sustainability."

It should be interesting to see how this experiment works out. With representatives from enough countries applying themselves to the idea of improving supply chains, the benefits could be substantial.

Or, if nothing comes of this initiative, that'll at least serve as a nice sign that supply chain management is already a very advanced science.

About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.