The news called it a historic agreement, when U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced in a historic climate change deal, that both countries would curb their greenhouse gas emissions over the next two decades. The agreement will give confidence to both companies and investors to support clean energy investment and technological innovation that will ensure the necessary capacity to meet or exceed the stated targets. The idea and the objective is not new, but the agreement sends a powerful signal to the business community, which is pushing more forcefully for coordinated policies and clear market signals to deal with climate change. For example: Nike’s environmental goal for logistics and transportation is to achieve a 30% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020. This is a pretty aggressive goal taking into account a growing business. The US-China agreement may supports Nike’s (and other companies’) strategic decision and hopefully encourages m...
In a world faced with the prospect of tightening supplies, higher energy costs heightened geopolitical risk, and strained transportation networks, advanced supply chain technologies will become mission-critical for many more companies. The supply chain task is not an enterprise problem; it is an end-to-end network problem involving multiple enterprises. Therefore, the solution does not lie in fixing one link in the chain but in devising a community.