Building a competitive advantage through sustainable operations strategy

This paper addresses an important gap in sustainability and technology management studies: the strategies for sustainable operations. Based on analysis of cases from automotive, textile, chemical, and food processing industries, the authors discuss the responses companies take to environmental and social pressures when aiming at increasing profitability. Our findings show that adaptations of traditional operations strategy frameworks can be useful when developing and assessing sustainability strategy for operations. Lastly, we also offer definitions for ‘sustainable operations strategy’ and ‘sustainable technology’ as those are not yet established in the literature. We consider the contribution of this article to be linked to the development and evaluation of sustainable operations strategies, which will invariably include the choice and use of technologies.

Green operations initiatives in the automotive industry:an environmental reports analysis and benchmarking study

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on investigating and benchmarking green operations initiatives in the automotive industry documented in the environmental reports of selected companies. The investigation roadmaps the main environmental initiatives taken by the world's three major car manufacturers and benchmarks them against each other. The categorisation of green operations initiatives that is provided in the paper can also help companies in other sectors to evaluate their green practices. Design/methodology/approach: The first part of the paper is based on existing literature on the topic of green and sustainable operations and the "unsustainable" context of automotive production. The second part relates to the roadmap and benchmarking of green operations initiatives based on an analysis of secondary data from the automotive industry. Findings: The findings show that the world's three major car manufacturers are pursuing various environmental initiatives involving the following green operations practices: green buildings, eco-design, green supply chains, green manufacturing, reverse logistics and innovation. Research limitations/implications: The limitations of this paper start from its selection of the companies, which was made using production volume and country of origin as the principal criteria. There is ample evidence that other, smaller, companies are pursuing more sophisticated and original environmental initiatives. Also, there might be a gap between what companies say they do in their environmental reports and what they actually do. Practical implications: This paper helps practitioners in the automotive industry to benchmark themselves against the major volume manufacturers in three different continents. Practitioners from other industries will also find it valuable to discover how the automotive industry is pursuing environmental initiatives beyond manufacturing, apart from the green operations practices covering broadly all the activities of operations function. Originality/value: The originality of the paper is in its up-to-date analysis of environmental reports of automotive companies. The paper offers value for researchers and practitioners due to its contribution to the green operations literature. For instance, the inclusion of green buildings as part of green operations practices has so far been neglected by most researchers and authors in the field of green and sustainable operations. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Modelling the water, energy and economic nexus

The mining industry faces three long term strategic risks in relation to its water and energy use: 1) securing enough water and energy to meet increased production; 2) reducing water use, energy consumption and emissions due to social, environmental and economic pressures; and 3) understanding the links between water and energy, so that an improvement in one area does not create an adverse effect in another. This project helps the industry analyse these risks by creating a hierarchical systems model (HSM) that represents the water and energy interactions on a sub-site, site and regional scales; which is coupled with a flexible risk framework. The HSM consists of: components that represent sources of water and energy; activities that use water and energy and off-site destinations of water and produced emissions. It can also represent more complex components on a site, with inbuilt examples including tailings dams and water treatment plants. The HSM also allows multiple sites and other infrastructure to be connected together to explore regional water and energy interactions. By representing water and energy as a single interconnected system the HSM can explore tradeoffs and synergies. For example, on a synthetic case study, which represents a typical site, simulations suggested that while a synergy in terms of water use and energy use could be made when chemical additives were used to enhance dust suppression, there were trade-offs when either thickened tailings or dry processing were used. On a regional scale, the HSM was used to simulate various scenarios, including: mines only withdrawing water when needed; achieving economics-of-scale through use of a single centralised treatment plant rather than smaller decentralised treatment plants; and capturing of fugitive emissions for energy generation. The HSM also includes an integrated risk framework for interpreting model output, so that onsite and off-site impacts of various water and energy management strategies can be compared in a managerial context. The case studies in this report explored company, social and environmental risks for scenarios of regional water scarcity, unregulated saline discharge, and the use of plantation forestry to offset carbon emissions. The HSM was able to represent the non-linear causal relationship at the regional scale, such as the forestry scheme offsetting a small percentage of carbon emissions but causing severe regional water shortages. The HSM software developed in this project will be released as an open source tool to allow industry personnel to easily and inexpensively quantify and explore the links between water use, energy use, and carbon emissions. The tool can be easily adapted to represent specific sites or regions. Case studies conducted in this project highlighted the potential complexity of these links between water, energy, and carbon emissions, as well as the significance of the cumulative effects of these links over time. A deeper understanding of these links is vital for the mining industry in order to progress to more sustainable operations, and the HSM provides an accessible, robust framework for investigating these links.

Does a proactive environmental orientation automatically lead to a ‘win-win’ situation?

A debate on the effect of environmental practices on performance has been taking place in the academic literature over the last two decades. In recent years this has involved researchers looking beyond the direct relationship between practices and performance to consider other potential contributing factors. This paper considers the extent to which environmental proactivity influences the practices that firms adopt and the associated performance outcomes. Data were collected from sample of UK food manufacturers and analysed using multiple regression analysis. Findings suggest that proactivity is an important antecedent to practices but these practices may not lead to improvements beyond environmental performance.

Quality management, environmental management maturity, green supply chain practices and green performance of Brazilian companies with ISO 14001 certification: Direct and indirect effects

This study aims to test a new conceptual model based on the relationship between quality management (QM), environmental management maturity (EMM), adoption of external practices of green supply chain management (GSCM) (green purchasing and collaboration with customers) and green performance (GP) with data from 95 Brazilian firms with ISO 14001. To our knowledge, such links and relationships are not simultaneously identified and tested in the literature. The results indicate the validation of all of the research hypotheses. This paper highlights that an improvement in green performance will require attention to quality management, environmental management maturity, and green supply chain. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Mixed methodology to analyze the relationship between maturity of environmental management and the adoption of green supply chain management in Brazil

The aim of this research is to verify the relationship between the maturity levels of environmental management and the adoption of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices by electro-electronic companies in Brazil. In this work a two-phase research was conducted, with one quantitative and the other qualitative. The quantitative phase aimed to test whether a relationship between the maturity levels of environmental management and GSCM exists, while the qualitative phase tried to detail the characteristics of this relationship. The quantitative phase was conducted through a survey with 100 Brazilian electro-electronic companies and the collected data were processed using Structural Equation Modeling. For the qualitative phase, a multiple case study was conducted with three companies located in Brazil. The results indicate that: (1) The main hypothesis was confirmed and considered statistically valid, indicating that, indeed, the maturity level of environmental management influences the adoption of GSCM practices; (2) a coevolution tends to occur between the environmental maturity and the GSCM practices; that is, the more developed is the company's environmental management, more complex GSCM practices are adopted; and (3) the GSCM internal practices tend to present a greater relative adoption than the external practices; these external practices of GSCM tend to be adopted when the company is inserted in a higher environmental stage and/or operates under a scenario of stronger normative environmental pressure. By the way, this is the first research mixing survey and case studies on GSCM in Brazil. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Quality management, environmental management maturity, green supply chain practices and green performance of Brazilian companies with ISO 14001 certification: Direct and indirect effects (Reprint from vol 67C, pg 39-51)

This study aims to test a new conceptual model based on the relationship between quality management (QM), environmental management maturity (EMM), adoption of external practices of green supply chain management (GSCM) (green purchasing and collaboration with customers) and green performance (GP) with data from 95 Brazilian firms with ISO 14001. To our knowledge, such links and relationships are not simultaneously identified and tested in the literature. The results indicate the validation of all of the research hypotheses. This paper highlights that an improvement in green performance will require attention to quality management, environmental management maturity, and green supply chain.

Green product development and performance of Brazilian firms: measuring the role of human and technical aspects

The goal of this study is to present and test a conceptual framework that describes the technical aspects (TA), human/organizational aspects (HOA) of the adoption of green product development (GPD) practices and the effect of these practices on firms'environmental (EP), operational (OP) and market performance (MP). To this end, after reviewing the literature on these themes, a conceptual framework with 5 hypotheses is proposed. These hypotheses were tested on 62 Brazilian companies through structural equation modeling using SmartPLS 2.0M3. The main results of this study are as follows: (a) in general, the proposed framework obtained adequate goodness of fit statistics (GoF); (b) technological factors are shown to have an influence on the adoption of GPD practices, and those practices are related to company EP, OP and MP, thus confirming 4 hypotheses of the study; and (c) one of the study's hypotheses is not validated, indicating that the relationship of human/organizational aspects to GPD must be further analyzed. This work extends the literature because: (a) the conceptual framework tested in this study establishes several concepts that have been only partially tested in the previous literature; (b) this work presents evidence about Brazil, where the themes addressed herein have not been yet been thoroughly investigated; and (c) the non-validation of the hypothesis regarding the relationship between human/ organizational aspects with respect to the adoption of product-related environmental practices requires attention. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Green supply chain management and environmental performance of firms in the bioenergy sector in Brazil: an exploratory survey

To achieve sustainable development, supply chains must become greener. In this context, the importance of green supply chain management (GSCM) increases because it can contribute to improving firms'environmental performance (EP). However, little is known about these subjects in the context of firms in the bioenergy sector (sugarcane and ethanol production in Brazil). Thus, the objective of this work is to present the results of a survey conducted on 80 micro-, small-, and medium-sized firms that are suppliers in the Brazilian bioenergy sector (sugarcane and ethanol production). These results indicate that GSCM practices strengthen the EP of firms in the sector. Therefore, this article contributes to the existing literature because it addresses the relationship between GSCM and EP in an understudied sector (sugarcane and ethanol production). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Carrier Selection for Multi-commodity Flow Optimization in Cooperative Environments

Part 18: Optimization in Collaborative Networks

Treatment of textile wastewater with membrane bioreactor: a critical review

Membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology has been used widely for various industrial wastewater treatments due to its distinct advantages over conventional bioreactors. Treatment of textile wastewater using MBR has been investigated as a simple, reliable and cost-effective process with a significant removal of contaminants. However, a major drawback in the operation of MBR is membrane fouling, which leads to the decline in permeate flux and therefore requires membrane cleaning. This eventually decreases the lifespan of the membrane. In this paper, the application of aerobic and anaerobic MBR for textile wastewater treatment as well as fouling and control of fouling in MBR processes have been reviewed. It has been found that long sludge retention time increases the degradation of pollutants by allowing slow growing microorganisms to establish but also contributes to membrane fouling. Further research aspects of MBR for textile wastewater treatment are also considered for sustainable operations of the process.

Sustainable infrastructure operations : a review of assessment schemes and decision support

Infrastructure forms a vital component in supporting today’s way of life and has a significant role or impact on economic, environmental and social outcomes of the region around it. The design, construction and operation of such assets are a multi-billion dollar industry in Australia alone. Another issue that will play a major role in our way life is that of climate change and the greater concept of sustainability. With limited resources and a changing natural world it is necessary for infrastructure to be developed and maintained in a manner that is sustainable. In order to achieve infrastructure sustainability in operations it is necessary for there to be: a sustainability assessment scheme that provides a scientifically sound and realistic approach to measuring an assets level of sustainability; and, systems and tools to support the making of decisions that result in sustainable outcomes by providing feedback in a timely manner. Having these in place will then help drive the consideration of sustainability during the decision making process for infrastructure operations and maintenance. In this paper we provide two main contributions; a comparison and review of sustainability assessment schemes for infrastructure and their suitability for use in the operations phase; and, a review of decision support systems/tools in the area of infrastructure sustainability in operations. For this paper, sustainability covers not just the environment, but also finance/economic and societal/community aspects as well. This is often referred to as the Triple Bottom Line and forms one of the three dimensions of corporate sustainability [Stapledon, 2004].