An empirical analysis of green supply chain management in the German automotive industry

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is the empirical investigation of the status quo of green supply chain management in the German automotive industry from a practitioner's point of view. Several aspects of green supply chain management, such as the point of time of implementation, the driving forces, the relevance of intended goals and their particular realization and the adoption of eco-programs with suppliers and customers as well as internal and external barriers are analyzed. Furthermore, the link to different performance criteria is tested by inductive statistics in order to show the potential of green supply chain management for competitiveness. For this study, managers from the automotive supply industry in Germany were asked about their estimations in this regard. The main conclusion is that managers express the need for green supply chain management on the one hand but also see corresponding problems in terms of required resources on the other hand. Furthermore, the analyses show that green supply chain management leads to higher performance in terms of several performance criteria.

Lean, green and resilient practices influence on supply chain performance: interpretive structural modeling approach

“…Also the automotive supply chain seems to be the most developed in terms of environmental issues and sustainability and it is also more vulnerable to supply chain disruptions. The automotive industry experiences great expectations from customers and society concerning environmental performance, as its products are by nature resource-burning products (Thun and Müller 2010). Moreover, it is also under pressure to become more sustainable and, therefore, more environmentally friendly while achieving the expected economic benefits from a more greening behavior (Koplin et al 2007).…”

“…In Azevedo et al (2011) and Thun and Müller (2010) the ''environmentally friendly packaging'' is identified also as a practice contributing to the greenness of the automotive supply chain. This practice is already deployed by some automotive players that have environmental concerns and want to avoid waste associated with packaging materials and its disposal.…”

An Ontology-Based Knowledge Modelling for a Sustainability Assessment Domain

“…The general aim of it is to provide a complete evaluation of the various aspects of businesses, processes and services. For example, the measures in relation to the main purchasing processes [14] may refer to the following issues: make or buy, supply market analysis [48], spend analysis [49,50], sourcing strategy [51,52], specs definition [53,54], supplier selection and contracting [52,55], supplier development [51,56], management of the order cycle [52], supplier involvement in NPD (new product development) [55,57], supplier integration in order fulfilment, supplier evaluation [52,53,56] and collaboration processes [58,59].…”

“…This property provides specified information of the attributes. Some attributes refer to supplier aspects [48,49] and assumptive strategies and management [55], whereas the methods yield the particulars of input and output attributes [15]. Some environmental attributes (i.e., resource usage, emissions waste and effluents) are considered by indicators [43,66].…”

Effective Life Cycle Management in SMEs: Use of a Sector-Based Approach to Overcome Barriers

“…This characteristic is closely related to the "knowledge of environmental issues" characteristic (see below), since people in organisations, supply chains and relevant stakeholders need to be aware about the relevance of environmental topics in order to foster a culture that supports uptake of environmental initiatives [78,[84][85][86][87][88][89][90]. It is also related to the "owner/manager influence" characteristic as the support of senior managers can significantly aid the process of developing an environmental culture.…”