Green Supply Chain Management Literature Review

Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM)
Green supply chain management is the integration of supply chain management with
environmental and green practices applied in every phase of supply chain (Toke et al., 2010). In
recent years, the world and various NGOs promoting environment protection, preservation and
environmental control, organizations are working together to put efforts on minimizing negative
impact to the environment, such as pollution, carbon emission, climatic change and so on, that
caused by their operations.
Green supply chain management, in other words, managing the supply chain by applying
green, sustainable and environmentally aspects. As every supply chain activities may cause harm
to the environment, there are no shortcuts to achieve effective green supply chain. To achieve an
effective green supply chain management, organizations have to collaborate with every parties
involved in the supply chain, discuss matters and working towards the same goal (Wan et al.,
2013).
According to Wan et al. (2013), the purpose of green supply chain management, besides
preserving and protecting the environment, it is actually value adding the material flow by
controlling and harmonizing the material flow, capital flow, information flow and work flow. It
also aim to produce and provide high quality products or services with lower cost and
environmental impacts.
Based on the study made by Wan et al. (2013), there are three aspects to look at in green
supply chain management which are important to managing and sustaining environment:
1. Integrating chain management of industrial chain of goods/products manufacturing
inclusive of environmental aspects
2. Providing environmentally beneficial outcomes throughout the industrial supply chain by
integrating technological innovations
3. Broader range of industrial players participating in industrial production environmental
management, which strengthen on environmental governance
In every phase of the supply chain, every activity contribute wastes to the environment.
Starting from supplier, when raw materials are extracted, energy wastage and pollution have
already begun. After supplying the raw materials to the manufacturer, the manufacturing
processes also bring negative impacts to the environment. Once the goods are manufactured,
they need to be transported to the wholesaler, retailers and customers, carbon emission is the
main effect among the three parties.
Green supply chain management can be broken down into 5 parts, which are green
design, green manufacturing, green distribution, green marketing and reverse logistics
(Ghobakhloo et al., 2012). The five elements have significant relationship with environmental
issue as they can reduce and minimize the effect on harming the environment.
Green Design
Based on the study made by Cyrus et al. (2013), green design is the consideration of
designing products associated with environmental safety and health throughout the whole
product life cycle during product planning, new production and process development. The scope
of environmental safety and health covers as many as including environmental risk management,
safety of products, occupational health and safety, pollution prevention, conservation of
resources and waste management.
According to Ghobakhloo et al. (2013), green design also consider all material and
energy flow of products throughout the whole supply chain, which is from the extraction of raw
materials till the disposal of the product. To achieve green product design, a product is designed
to have lesser impact to the environment during the production and after disposal.
There are two considerations in designing products with environmental aspects, namely
design for recycling (DFR) and design for disassembly (DFD). Design for recycling focuses on
designing product using recyclable or reusable materials, which will not creating as much waste
as the original design. Design for disassembly is designing product that is able to minimize the
complexity of the structure, using replaceable parts, common materials, fasteners and joint types
that can be easily assembled or removed (Ghobakhloo et al., 2013).
Green Manufacturing
According to Cyrus et al. (2013), green manufacturing is about use raw materials with
relatively low environmental impacts which are highly efficient and generate little waste and
pollution or reduce the use of virgin material that may indirectly bring impact to the environment
during the manufacturing process. Besides materials or input used for manufacturing, technology
used for manufacturing process, mainly machinery, which is environmentally friendly and cause
lesser pollution, is used to achieve green manufacturing.
According to Ghobakloo et al. (2013), another aspect of green manufacturing is reducing
emission, there are two primary emission reduction, namely control and prevention:
1. Control emission of harmful materials are stored, treated and disposed in an
environmentally friendly method
2. Prevention emission of harmful materials are reduced, altered or prevented through
emission process innovation, better housekeeping and material substitution
To achieve minimal energy and resources consumption for flow system, Cyrus et al.,
(2013) have concluded it is based on three fields of study, namely pinch analysis, industrial
energy and energy and lifecycle analysis:
1. Pinch analysis minimization of energy consumption of chemical processes by analyzing
and achieving the thermodynamic of the energy during the process
2. Industrial energy reducing the consumption of materials that may cause emission of
harmful gases to the environment and the usage of renewable energy
3. Energy and lifecycle analysis an approach that all energy inputs are accounted for
manufacturing processes
Green Distribution
Distributing products or services to customers involves loading, transporting and

unloading processes, these processes can contribute a lot of harm to the environment, especially
carbon emission which comes from vehicles on road and other harmful gases that comes from
coal or fuel burning in trains and ships. Besides having harmful gases, the use of electric-derived
transportation mode is also wasting the energy that we conserve.
In order to achieve green distribution, the transportation planner has to plan on how to
make the transportation works sustainably, for example, train services that are accessible in
everywhere and works on having efficient intermodalism so that changing of transportation
mode during distribution is convenient and involves lesser energy or resources.
According to Ghobakhloo (2013), green transportation is defined as transportation
services that have lesser negative impact on human health and environment when compared to
other transportation services that serve the same purpose.
There are several methods in achieving this goal:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
The use of hybrid vehicles

The use of electric transportation
Higher road accessibility and better road planning
Installation of eco-friendly converter in the exhaust pipes
Renewable energy instead of fuel and gas
Green Marketing
Green marketing is advertising products or services that shows its corporate image of
environmental responsibility, supporting green lifestyle and clearly shows that how the products
and services having a strong relationship or having strong support in achieving green
environment and to human health (Ghobakhloo et al., 2013).
Green marketing has a strong relationship with product design, specifications, processes
and also product packaging. Before a corporate works on green marketing, it needs to modify
and make changes to these aspects so that the products can fulfill every environmental
requirement and therefore a green marketing can be effective.
Reverse Logistics
According to Toke et al. (2010), reverse logistics is the return or a backward process of
goods along the supply chain resulting from reuse, recycling or disposal with minimal waste or
energy that result in efficient forward and backward distributing processes.
Recycling of goods is defined as process used products into new products to prevent
waste of potentially useful materials. It helps reducing the usage of fresh raw materials, energy,
pollutions, harmful gases emission as part of the goods are recyclable to be used in
manufacturing. Reusing of goods is defined as goods are used again for the same function,
replaceable or refillable content that make the goods to be used once again (Ghobakhloo et al.,
2013).
Transportation is another important factor that affect reverse logistics, corporate plans on
efficient transportation used during the backward flow of the goods, therefore customer service
department and after-sale service plays an important role in handling reverse logistics matter.

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Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM)

Distributing products or services to customers involves loading, transporting and

The use of hybrid vehicles

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