Supply Chain Management

Actions to Reduce Scope 3 Emissions 🌎 Scope 3 emissions typically account for the largest share of a company's carbon footprint, covering indirect emissions across the entire value chain. Addressing them effectively requires a multifaceted approach that engages suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders. This framework outlines clear actions across key Scope 3 categories, ranging from procurement to investments. Each action is categorized into three progressive levels, encouraging companies to start with quick wins and advance toward deeper integration and systemic change. In purchasing and capital goods, strategies include substituting high-GHG materials and equipment, applying GHG criteria in investment decisions, and engaging suppliers to standardize emissions reporting. These measures aim to embed sustainability criteria across the sourcing process. For energy-related activities and transportation, reducing energy consumption, switching to lower-emission fuels, and electrifying fleets play a critical role. While some listed actions—such as on-site renewable generation—typically fall under Scope 1 or 2, they remain integral to broader decarbonization strategies. Operational waste and product lifecycle emissions require both upstream and downstream interventions. Companies can minimize waste at source, enhance recycling processes, and design for recyclability, ensuring materials remain in circulation and emissions are mitigated across product life cycles. Business travel, employee commuting, and leased assets offer opportunities to reduce emissions through virtual collaboration tools, promotion of public transport, retrofitting for energy efficiency, and improving facility operations—highlighting the value of internal policies and infrastructure upgrades. Downstream logistics and product use demand focused improvements in logistics efficiency and product energy performance. Encouraging efficient product use and adopting low-GHG energy sources can reduce the footprint associated with sold goods and services. Franchise and investment-related emissions emphasize the importance of supporting energy-efficient operations and prioritizing low-carbon investment portfolios. Channeling funding into clean tech and applying rigorous climate criteria to investment decisions are essential for long-term impact. The success of Scope 3 reduction strategies depends not only on technical interventions but also on clear governance and collaboration frameworks. Accurate data collection, traceability, and continuous engagement across the value chain ensure sustained progress. Comprehensive Scope 3 management is vital for achieving credible net-zero targets. This framework provides a roadmap to operationalize reductions, integrating climate action into the heart of corporate strategy and ensuring alignment with global decarbonization goals. #sustainability #sustainable #business #esg #emissions

The European Commission has introduced a new carbon tax on imported goods called the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). This is meant to make sure that European companies and companies from other parts of the world are on the same page when it comes to carbon pricing and environmental commitments. Here are the main changes: 🔴 Emissions Reporting: Starting in October this year, companies have to start keeping track of how much carbon is linked to the goods they import. They need to start reporting this data by January 2024. This reporting will continue until the end of 2025. 🔴 Carbon Leakage Prevention: CBAM is a way to prevent companies from moving their production to places with weaker environmental rules to avoid carbon costs. It makes sure that European products and products made outside of Europe have similar carbon costs. 🔴 CBAM Certificates: Importers have to get CBAM certificates to match the carbon pricing between EU and non-EU products. They need to provide details about the product's carbon footprint, where it's from, how it's made, and its emissions data. This includes emissions during production and indirect emissions, like electricity use. 🔴 Covered Sectors: CBAM applies to industries with high carbon emissions like iron and steel, cement, fertilisers, aluminium, electricity, hydrogen, and some downstream products like screws and bolts. It also covers certain indirect emissions under certain conditions. Importers mainly need to report emissions during the transition phase until 2026. To help importers and producers outside of the EU adapt, the EU Commission is providing guidelines and tools to calculate emissions. They're also offering training materials and webinars. Some important data points to consider: 🟢 Carbon Leakage: A study by the European Environmental Bureau warns that unchecked carbon leakage could cause a 15% increase in global emissions, undermining climate efforts. CBAM aims to prevent this. 🟢 Emissions Differences: The World Trade Organization says that different countries have different emissions rules, leading to different carbon costs. CBAM aims to make this fairer. 🟢 Economic Impact: The European Commission estimates that the global carbon allowance market could be worth €4.5 billion per year by 2030. CBAM will significantly affect international trade and revenues. 🟢 Industry Shift: A study by the European Parliament Research Service shows that without CBAM, high-emission industries might move to places with weaker rules, leading to job losses and less competitiveness in the EU. 🟢 Green Transition: The International Monetary Fund says that well-designed carbon pricing like CBAM can encourage industries to become more environmentally friendly, contributing to a greener global economy. 🟢 Regulatory Challenges: CBAM's reporting requirements might be tough for importers initially. However, the long-term benefits of fair carbon pricing are expected to outweigh the challenges.

You don’t remove barriers by pushing harder. You remove them by pulling the right levers. Every organization is navigating a maze of competing forces. 𝐎𝐧 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞: the enablers—vision, leadership, collaboration, and modern tech. 𝐎𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫: the barriers—resistance, silos, legacy systems, and uncertainty. What makes or breaks a transformation isn’t just the plan—it’s whether the enablers are strong enough to neutralize the barriers before the effort collapses under its own complexity. Notice something? These forces aren’t all living in your tech stack. They show up on 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐬, and most companies underestimate at least two: • 𝐎𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥 – where strategy is shaped, and alignment (or misalignment) cascades. • 𝐅𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥 – where disconnected tools and teams quietly derail progress. • 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥 – where fear, habits, and mindset become either friction or fuel. • 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥 – where the foundations either enable scale or lock you into the past. It’s rarely one single thing that causes a transformation to stall. It’s the accumulation of small frictions across all four levels, pulling in different directions. If you’re wondering why your digital efforts feel harder than they should... This framework might help explain why. 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞:  https://lnkd.in/eUkTtA6j ******************************************* • Visit www.jeffwinterinsights.com for access to all my content and to stay current on Industry 4.0 and other cool tech trends • Ring the 🔔 for notifications!

In Ghana, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso, women in rural cooperatives produce some of the world’s finest shea butter- by hand, in conditions many global consumers will never see. Locally, it’s sold raw for $1 to $2 per kilogram. That same shea butter, once exported, repackaged, and labeled “organic” or “artisanal,” can sell in the U.S. or Europe for $30 to $50 or more. The difference? Branding. Packaging. Storytelling. Access to global markets. It’s not just shea butter. It’s coffee, cocoa, hibiscus, moringa, baobab oil- Africa exports raw, and imports wealth back in the form of marked-up goods. Meanwhile, the women who do the hardest work in the value chain often remain in poverty. This isn’t just an economic issue. It’s about power and narrative. The current system rewards ownership of the story, not just the substance. So what needs to change? 🔹 Investing in African-owned brands that can go beyond raw exports 🔹 Building infrastructure for local manufacturing and distribution 🔹 Creating access to retail markets, both on the continent and abroad 🔹 Shifting from “supplier” to brand owner, from “producer” to value creator Africa doesn’t need saving. It needs more control over its own value chains, and support for the people, especially women, who are the backbone of its raw material economy. Let’s stop asking why global brands profit from African goods and start asking what it takes to build our own. Image cred: @tanziehq #Africa #RawEconomy #ValueChain #Entrepreneurship #OwnTheNarrative

Pre-plastic packaging📦 3 cool solutions with old wisdom👇🧘♂️ We can create solutions spaces where we welcome indigenous wisdom. Before the plastic era many locals were using very sustainable packaging solutions. Here are three cool examples: 1️⃣ Kangina (Afghanistan): Preserves grapes in mud-and-straw discs. The clay-rich mud creates a controlled atmosphere, keeping grapes fresh for up to six months without refrigeration. This knowledge is centuries old... 2️⃣ Banana Leaf Packaging (Southeast Asia): Traditionally used across Asia, banana leaves are natural, biodegradable food wrappers. They retain moisture and impart a unique flavor to foods. 3️⃣ Baleen Baskets (Arctic): Inupiaq men in the Arctic region weave baskets from baleen, a material from whale jaws, incorporating walrus ivory and whale bone. Let's not forget this wisdom, but get back to it. Inspired? #CircularEconomy #SustainablePackaging

Did you know that up to 90% of a company's environmental impact comes from its supply chain? This statistic highlights businesses' massive responsibility to engage with their entire network of suppliers in the fight against climate change. Across industries, we're seeing a growing emphasis on sustainability within supply chains. Whether it's reducing carbon emissions, ensuring ethical sourcing, or increasing transparency, the need for innovation and collaboration is clearer than ever. And by focusing on these areas, companies can make huge strides in reducing their overall environmental footprint. My partner Jungheinrich AG is a good example of this. Instead of focusing solely on their own sustainability goals, they recently extended their efforts to their entire supply chain to take part in a self-assessment. Businesses doing this can ensure transparency and accountability at every level. It also demonstrates that real change is possible when companies work together. If your company could make one change today to engage its suppliers in sustainability, what would it be? I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas. #sustainability #supplychain #innovation

Resilience is a constant in global trade. What changes are the points of fragility that supply chains expose in different regions. When the right infrastructure, policies and partnerships are in place, they can mark the difference between disruption and continuity. In Rwanda, the challenge was speed and cost. By developing a dry port and land corridor, delivery times fell from two weeks to just 48 hours. This was not only about improving logistics performance. It gave farmers and businesses the ability to reach markets on time and at lower cost, expanding their opportunities for growth. The lessons from landlocked Rwanda have informed how we approach similar constraints in other inland markets. In Romania, the issue was market access. Our €16 million investment in Aiud is connecting half of the country’s industrial GDP directly to Europe’s largest retail hubs. By reducing reliance on slower routes, local manufacturers now have faster access to customers across the continent, strengthening supply chain confidence and competitiveness. Resilience may be constant, but fragility takes different forms. Recent insights from Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Transportation & Logistics highlight how supply chain priorities vary across regions. While North America is advancing AI-led risk planning, the Global South is focused on circularity, water efficiency and investing in local talent. With a presence in over 80 countries, we have the reach and perspective to deliver solutions that reflect local realities while supporting global trade flows. Resilient supply chains are not built from uniform models. They are built through deliberate design - shaped by geography, grounded in customer needs and delivered through partnerships that respond to the world as it really is.

🔥 Climate risks are no longer abstract—they’re disrupting businesses, communities, and economies right now. The World Economic Forum’s 2024 report, "The Cost of Inaction: A CEO Guide to Navigating Climate Risk", delivers a sobering message: ignoring climate risks isn’t just irresponsible—it’s economically devastating. 🌡️ Key insights from the report: 💥 Climate-related disasters have caused $3.6 trillion in damages since 2000, exposing critical vulnerabilities in supply chains and infrastructure. 📉 Physical risks could put 5-25% of EBITDA at risk for some sectors by 2050 under a 3°C warming trajectory. 💸 Transition risks, like carbon pricing and changing regulations, could impact 50% of EBITDA in energy-intensive industries by 2030. 🌱 Every $1 invested in climate adaptation yields $2-$19 in avoided costs, while green markets are projected to grow from $5 trillion in 2024 to $14 trillion by 2030. 💡 My reflections: 🔄 Resilience isn’t enough anymore. Too often, we focus on simply "weathering the storm" of climate risk. But true leadership is about rebuilding something better—rethinking markets, redesigning business models, and creating solutions that lead entire industries forward. 🌍 Supply chain fragility is the Achilles’ heel of the global economy. A single extreme weather event can cascade across operations, grinding everything to a halt. Climate-resilient supply chains can’t just be about survival—they must be radically adaptive, decentralized, and built to thrive under disruption. 📊 Climate risk is fundamentally redefining the concept of value. Businesses stuck chasing quarterly earnings are missing the bigger picture. In a world of rising costs and irreversible climate impacts, long-term value will belong to those who embed sustainability, resilience, and equity into their strategies. The time for cautious, incremental steps has passed. How are we using this moment to transform the way we work, innovate, and lead? #ClimateAction #Sustainability #Resilience #Leadership #Innovation

A new approach to managing uncertainty I keep seeing people who approach uncertainty in #supplychainmanagement by proposing to take problems that exhibit a high level of uncertainty (also called “unpredictable,” “unforecastable,” or “stochastic”) and try to turn them into problems that are that are more predictable (or forecastable, or deterministic). The latest example is Lora Cecere’s thoughtful article   “If Only the Supply Chain was Reconfigured” https://lnkd.in/e54nMaFQ (“tinyurl.com/” with “CecereForecastability2024”)   where she argues for fundamentally reconfiguring the supply chain to manage uncertainty.    Of course, there will never be a single solution to managing uncertainty with an operation as complex as a company running a global supply chain, but there is one point that I keep running into: the desire to perform “forecasts” and assume that the goal is to perfectly predict whatever is being forecasted: monthly demands, lead times, lead time demands, component costs and market prices.   Years ago Lora called for a “new analytics.” I claim that the new analytics starts with using what many (such as Lokad) call “probabilistic forecasting.” This requires a fundamentally different approach to forecasting, especially along three dimensions:   1)   We need a new attitude toward forecasting, which means predicting the distribution of what might happen, rather than guessing what will happen. 2)   We need a new approach to how we evaluate the quality of a forecast, which means evaluating how well it performs in terms of making decisions (including both expected performance and risk) rather than measuring the difference between actual and the point forecast. 3)   We need to rethink what to do with a probabilistic forecast, which means learning how to live in an uncertain world. This is where Lora’s ideas fall, but this has to be approached with (1) and (2) in mind.

August is now mostly in the rearview mirror, so I wanted to provide an update about where dry van truckload pricing dynamics are for this month using DAT’s data on broker buy contract rates and dry van spot rates (both including fuel). Calculating contract less spot and dividing that figure by the average of the two series results in what I call the dry van spot market cycle indicator (DVSMCI). That is shown below with key dates for when pricing dynamics changed also included. Thoughts: •August’s DVSMCI currently stands at 16.8% (broker buy contract at $2.39 per mile versus dry van spot at $2.02 per mile), which places things in a weak pricing environment for carriers. We are well above the 10% threshold that has signaled transition to bull market pricing. •Consistent with this, the producer price index for general freight trucking, long-distance, truckload primary services was effectively flat in July month-over-month and down about 2% year-over-year (https://lnkd.in/d3EQCWH). •Stepping back, spot rates have been effectively flat since April 2023 (when they were $2.07 per mile). •It is very much starting to feel that predictions such as, “State of Freight for July: ‘Bullish’ market coming for freight economy” may have been premature (https://lnkd.in/gUHbrvVe) Implication: I continue to see no signs that dry van truckload spot prices are poised for a sustained upward increase in 2024. While I do expect seasonal tightening as we approach Labor Day and especially Thanksgiving and Christmas, the demand conditions just aren’t there for the type of sustained increase in spot rates that are needed to bring on a bull market pricing cycle. #supplychain #supplychainmanagement #freight #trucking #transportation