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Make Your Manufacturing Supply Chain Greener

By Barbara Swenson

As the demand for environmentally conscious products rises, manufacturers are moving to meet that demand with a variety of innovations in their supply chains, including the design of better and greener

products that create less environmental waste.

A manufacturing supply chain involves every aspect of the manufacturing process, from the input and processing to the output and disposal. If you are manufacturing computers, for example, the input is all the component parts, and the processing is assembling these parts into a computer. The computer is your final output or product. Disposal can be for the material left over from the manufacturing process or disposal of the product itself at the end of its period of use.

The main challenge in making a manufacturing supply chain greener is to create it so that the waste from the manufacturing process is recycled and fed back into the input of another supply chain. When this happens it reduces the environmental and carbon footprint left by the company. This can also cut expenses, increase earnings, and help our planet by creating fewer pollutants and toxins that enter into the ecosystem.

Managing an Outsourced Supply Chain
Interview with Dr. Leroy Schwarz, Professor at the Krannert Graduate School of Management, Purdue University