Future Global Supply Chain Issues: Sustainability: Going Green with Transportation
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Going Green with Transportation
Sustainability has progressively become an escalating problem for communities, governments, businesses, and consumers. In current years, increasing regulatory strains, shortage of natural resources, and escalated population and urban development have instigated businesses to stay competitive and continuously provide new services and products in the modern day’s marketplace. There have similarly been escalated degreed of waste and increasing demands from stakeholders and customers. As a result of these issues, businesses develop effective and sustainable supply chain operations to get positive results and discover monetary benefits. The purpose of this paper is to discuss several challenges affecting the global supply chain regarding going green with transportation.
One of the significant issues when executing a sustainable supply chain solution has been traffic congestion and associated infrastructure concerns. Whether the nation is industrialized or not, the present logistics infrastructure had not kept up with the degree of activity’s speed. The production of products has radically increased, which has resulted in millions of goods in transit daily. Transportation of products is essential and needs a large amount of fossil fuel to be used. The combustion of fossil fuels leads to greenhouse gas emissions, like carbon dioxide, resulting in a negative effect on individual health and the environment (Novack, Gibson, Suzuki, & Coyle, 2019).
Nonetheless, the geographical length of supply chains has escalated dramatically, besides the environmental concern of fuel use and emissions. A lack of initial funding and investment has led to a worrying scarcity of capacity on railways, ports, and roads. This issue has similarly generated traffic congestion on motorways and forced container vessels to wait before being unloaded at docks. Additionally, jams on the railways have been a usual issue in most nations, besides escalated carbon emissions. As the increase of economic development and growth continues, traffic bottleneck is more likely to affect supply chain management for several years to come.
The pressures of globalization and increasing world markets are typical in today’s globalized and competitive economy. According to Rajeev, Pati, Padhi, & Govindan (2017), in a globalized globe, the industry’s fast growth has led to economic development. Economic development and advanced wealth of countries come with the rise of new markets, and a more significant flow of transporting goods across borders, increasing global access to markets. Economic development and growth in transport are closely connected since as economics develops, more transport is required to carry the freight that economic development unavoidably generates. Supply chain managers should get ways to increase global infrastructure to lessen the jamming affecting transport systems. Offshore manufacturing has escalated exponentially, further contributing to congestion. The drift to low-cost nation manufacturing has implied that supply chains have increased, and goods travel much. The development of offshore manufacturing has led to escalated security measures, especially for containers, which have grown delays at both destination and origin points.
The development of e-commerce has escalated quickly across the globe. According to Tseng, Islam, Karia, Fauzi, & Afrin (2019), retail e-commerce sales for the US have escalated more than three-fold between 2012 and 2018. This escalation of e-commerce sales has considerable relevance for the supply chain management sphere. It has enforced many challenges and pressure for supply chain managers to guarantee each parcel delivery is punctual and expedited. Moreover, the growth of omnichannel retailing, consumers’ whole online shopping experience related to fulfillment and sales, should be flawlessly incorporated across every channel of interaction. All of the above challenges affect sustainability, which leads to the lessening of natural resources like oil and resulting in escalating emissions.
Businesses should continuously learn how to grow and survive in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way without adverse effects on future and present generations. Sustainability should be embraced, meticulously comprehended, and assessed in a much broader perspective.
References
Novack, R. A., Gibson, B. J., Suzuki, Y., & Coyle, J. J. (2019). Transportation: A Global Supply Chain Perspective. Cengage Learning, Inc.
Rajeev, A., Pati, R. K., Padhi, S. S., & Govindan, K. (2017). Evolution of sustainability in supply chain management: A literature review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 162, 299-314.
Tseng, M. L., Islam, M. S., Karia, N., Fauzi, F. A., & Afrin, S. (2019). A literature review on green supply chain management: Trends and future challenges. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 141, 145-162.