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Supply Chain Sustainability
Supply-chain sustainability is the management of environmental, social and economic impacts and the encouragement of good governance practices, throughout the lifecycles of goods and services. There is a growing need for integrating sustainable choices into supply-chain management. An increasing concern for sustainability is transforming how companies approach business. Whether motivated by their customers, corporate values or business opportunity, traditional priorities such as quality, efficiency and cost regularly compete for attention with concerns such as working conditions and environmental impact. A sustainable supply chain seizes value chain opportunities and offers significant competitive advantages for early adopters and process innovators. Background Supply chains are critical links that connect an organization’s inputs to its outputs. Traditional challenges have included lowering costs, ensuring just-in-time delivery, and shrinking transportation times to allow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supply Chain Management
In commerce, supply chain management (SCM) deals with a system of procurement (purchasing raw materials/components), operations management, logistics and marketing channels, through which raw materials can be developed into finished products and delivered to their end customers. A more narrow definition of supply chain management is the "design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronising supply with demand and measuring performance globally". This can include the movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, finished goods, and end to end order fulfilment from the point of origin to the point of consumption. Interconnected, interrelated or interlinked networks, channels and node businesses combine in the provision of products and services required by end customers in a supply chain. SCM is the br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conflict Resource
A resource war is a type of war caused by conflict over resources. In a resource war, there is typically a nation or group that controls the resource and an aggressor that wishes to seize control over said resource. This power dynamic between nations has been a significant underlying factor in conflicts since the late 19th century. Following the rise of Industrialisation, industrialization, the amount of raw materials an industrialized nation uses to sustain its activities is heightened. History Chincha Islands War One of the most prolific examples of resource war in history is the conflict over Chincha Island guano in the late 19th century. The Chincha Islands of Peru are situated off of the southern coast of Peru, where many seabirds were known to roost and prey on fish brought there by the currents of the Pacific Ocean. The guano of these seabirds is incredibly dense in nutrients and became a sought-after resource as a fertilizer. Soil that was nutrient rich allowed for hig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Efficient Energy Use
Efficient energy use, or energy efficiency, is the process of reducing the amount of energy required to provide products and services. There are many technologies and methods available that are more energy efficient than conventional systems. For example, building insulation, insulating a building allows it to use less heating and cooling energy while still maintaining a Thermal comfort, comfortable temperature. Another method made by Lev Levich is to remove energy subsidies that promote high energy consumption and inefficient energy use. Improved energy efficiency in Green building, buildings, industrial processes and Energy efficiency in transport, transportation could reduce the world's energy needs in 2050 by one third. There are two main motivations to improve energy efficiency. Firstly, one motivation is to achieve Operating cost, cost savings during the operation of the appliance or process. However, installing an energy-efficient technology comes with an upfront cost, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Life-cycle Assessment
Life cycle assessment (LCA), also known as life cycle analysis, is a methodology for assessing the impacts associated with all the stages of the life cycle of a commercial product, process, or service. For instance, in the case of a manufactured product, environmental impacts are assessed from raw material extraction and processing (cradle), through the product's manufacture, distribution and use, to the recycling or final disposal of the materials composing it (grave). An LCA study involves a thorough inventory of the energy and materials that are required across the supply chain and value chain of a product, process or service, and calculates the corresponding emissions to the environment. LCA thus assesses cumulative potential environmental impacts. The aim is to document and improve the overall environmental profile of the product by serving as a holistic baseline upon which carbon footprints can be accurately compared. The LCA method is based on ISO 14040 (2006) and ISO ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sustainability Measurement
Sustainability measurement is a set of frameworks or indicators used to measure how sustainable something is. This includes processes, products, services and businesses. Sustainability is difficult to quantify and it may even be impossible to measure as there is no fixed definition. To measure sustainability, frameworks and indicators consider environmental, social and economic domains. The metrics vary by use case and are still evolving. They include indicators, benchmarks and audits. They include sustainability standards and certification systems like Fairtrade and Organic. They also involve indices and accounting. They can include assessment, appraisal and other reporting systems. The metrics are used over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.Bell, Simon and Morse, Stephen 2008. Sustainability Indicators Measuring the Immeasurable?'' 2nd edn. London: Earthscan. . For organizations, sustainability measures include corporate sustainability reporting and Triple Bottom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. Soon after, it spread to other areas of Asia, and COVID-19 pandemic by country and territory, then worldwide in early 2020. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020, and assessed the outbreak as having become a pandemic on 11 March. COVID-19 symptoms range from asymptomatic to deadly, but most commonly include fever, sore throat, nocturnal cough, and fatigue. Transmission of COVID-19, Transmission of the virus is often airborne transmission, through airborne particles. Mutations have variants of SARS-CoV-2, produced many strains (variants) with varying degrees of infectivity and virulence. COVID-19 vaccines were developed rapidly and deplo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethical Consumerism
Ethical consumerism (alternatively called ethical consumption, ethical purchasing, moral purchasing, ethical sourcing, or ethical shopping and also associated with sustainable and green consumerism) is a type of consumer activism based on the concept of dollar voting. People practice it by buying ethically made products that support small-scale manufacturers or local artisans and protect animals and the environment, while boycotting products that exploit children as workers, are tested on animals, or damage the environment. The term "ethical consumer", now used generically, was first popularised by the UK magazine '' Ethical Consumer'', first published in 1989. ''Ethical Consumer'' magazine's key innovation was to produce "ratings tables", inspired by the criteria-based approach of the then-emerging ethical investment movement. ''Ethical Consumer''s ratings tables awarded companies negative marks (and overall scores, starting in 2005) across a range of ethical and environmental c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BlackRock
BlackRock, Inc. is an American Multinational corporation, multinational investment company. Founded in 1988, initially as an enterprise risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with US$11.5trillion in assets under management as of 2024. Headquartered in New York City, BlackRock has 70 offices in 30 countries, and clients in 100 countries. BlackRock is the manager of the iShares group of exchange-traded funds, and along with The Vanguard Group and State Street Corporation, State Street, it is considered to be one of the Big Three index fund managers. Its Aladdin (BlackRock), Aladdin software keeps track of investment portfolios for many major financial institutions and its BlackRock Solutions division provides financial risk management services. As of 2023, BlackRock was ranked 229th on the Fortune 500, ''Fortune'' 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue. BlackRock has sought to position ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Airships
An airship, dirigible balloon or dirigible is a type of aerostat (lighter-than-air) aircraft that can navigate through the air flying under its own power. Aerostats use buoyancy from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air to achieve the lift needed to stay airborne. In early dirigibles, the lifting gas used was hydrogen, due to its high lifting capacity and ready availability, but the inherent flammability led to several fatal accidents that rendered hydrogen airships obsolete. The alternative lifting gas, helium gas is not flammable, but is rare and relatively expensive. Significant amounts were first discovered in the United States and for a while helium was only available for airship usage in North America. Most airships built since the 1960s have used helium, though some have used hot air. The envelope of an airship may form the gasbag, or it may contain a number of gas-filled cells. An airship also has engines, crew, and optionally also payload acc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canals
Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flow under atmospheric pressure, and can be thought of as artificial rivers. In most cases, a canal has a series of dams and locks that create reservoirs of low speed current flow. These reservoirs are referred to as ''slack water levels'', often just called ''levels''. A canal can be called a navigation canal when it parallels a natural river and shares part of the latter's discharges and drainage basin, and leverages its resources by building dams and locks to increase and lengthen its stretches of slack water levels while staying in its valley. A canal can cut across a drainage divide atop a ridge, generally requiring an external water source above the highest elevation. The best-known example of such a canal is the Panama Canal. Many can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Collaboration
Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. The form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group.Spence, Muneera U. ''"Graphic Design: Collaborative Processes = Understanding Self and Others."'' (lecture) Art 325: Collaborative Processes. Fairbanks Hall, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon. 13 April 2006See also. Teams that work collaboratively often access greater resources, recognition and rewards when facing competition for finite resources. Caroline S. Wagner and Loet Leydesdorff. Globalisation in the network of science in 2005: The diffusion of international collaboration and the formation of a core group.'' Structured methods of collaboration encourage introspection of behavior and communication. Such methods aim to increase the success of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
