Published 01-23-09
Submitted by IBM
ARMONK, NY -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 01/23/09 -- A new IBM (NYSE: IBM) offering can help companies reduce carbon dioxide emissions, fuel usage and costs by providing a detailed analysis of their supply chain logistics and suggesting improvements.
The Supply Chain Network Optimization Workbench -- or SNOW -- uses advanced mathematics to provide a smarter, deeper understanding of overall supply chain logistics. This allows clients to optimize decisions for cost, service levels and lower CO2 emissions.
"Making your operations 'greener' and making them more economical are complementary, not contradictory," said Eric Riddleberger, global leader for IBM's business strategy consulting practice, who heads up the company's corporate social responsibility consulting efforts. "When you improve the overall efficiency of a system you can almost automatically lower cost, waste, and environmental impact."
Using IBM's SNOW consulting offering to provide a detailed analysis of its operations allowed Chinese shipping and logistics giant COSCO to reduce the number of distribution centers it uses from 100 to 40, lowering logistics costs by 23 percent and reducing CO2 emissions by 15 percent. This allowed COSCO to avoid 100,000 tons per year of CO2 emissions, while maintaining service levels for clients and incurring no additional costs.
SNOW was developed by IBM's China Research Laboratory and is built on a service-oriented architecture foundation, using WebSphere and other IBM-brand software products.
The tool is designed to look across five major logistics areas:
Companies are coming under tremendous pressure from many constituencies -- shareholders, employees, governments and non-governmental organizations, and most of all customers -- to reduce their environmental impact. At the same time, they are under increasing constraints to reduce costs and improve efficiencies, particularly in the current economic climate.
An IBM global corporate social responsibility survey of more than 250 c-suite executives shows that most understand this trend are responding to it -- 68 percent of them already are focusing on CSR activities to create new revenue streams and 54% believe it's giving them a competitive advantage. In addition, 85 percent said they were using CSR initiatives to reduce costs.
This trend holds despite the current global economic crisis. In a survey released in December by Industry Insights, an IDC company, 47 percent of the respondents said they will buy new applications in support of green and sustainability issues. A Forrester Research survey also released last month showed 52 percent of respondents saying they are creating or implementing a green IT action plan, with reducing energy-related operating expenses to lower costs as the primary motivator.
SNOW joins a growing list of consulting offerings from IBM designed to help clients address CSR issues throughout their operations, including:
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