The free, interactive online tool is intended to help companies prioritize supply chain processes and identify "hotspot" processes as well as opportunities for improvement, according to the green business alliance whose members include ConocoPhillips, FedEx, Kraft Foods, Procter & Gamble and Southern Company, among others.
The GEMI Supply Chain Sustainability Tool will be useful to sustainability and purchasing professionals and will link market-oriented sustainability claims, economic input-output and lifecycle assessment results, and supply chain sustainability performance metrics, GEMI's chair Neville Dias says.
The project is supported by and conducted in partnership with the Northstar Initiative for Sustainable Enterprise at the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota and the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan.
Smithfield Foods assistant vice president for environmental affairs Bill Gill and 3M corporate sustainability manager Keith Miller are leading the development of the tool and serve as co-chairs of the development process.
The new tool builds on GEMI's two existing supply chain sustainability tools, New Paths to Business Value (2001) and Forging New Links (2004) and enhances supply chain transparency using a scalable platform to help guide sustainable procurement and sourcing, Gill says.
