A unique approach to sustainability

We are inspired by the work that the team at Blue North do regarding sustainability with David Farrell, Founding Partner at Blue North, being a speaker at the SA annual conference in the past.

Blue North, a specialist consulting practice that supports organisations in the agricultural and food sectors regarding the proactive clarification, development and implementation of sustainability strategies, believe that farmers play a key role in developing programmes to ensure sustainability, as a sustainable and resilient agricultural or food supply chain is founded upon sustainable and resilient farms.

There are significant opportunities to reduce waste, decrease emissions and resource-use, decrease cost and improve the overall economic performance of a supply-chain, which are easily overlooked. Blue North regards supply-chain improvement as an integral part of a sustainability strategy and readily apply their training, knowledge and expertise in value-chain analysis and the implementation of “pull” supply-chains to capture these opportunities.

This is achieved by conducting a detailed value-chain analysis across supply-chains to understand energy use, resource use and cost-chains and engaging with and facilitating processes with parties across the value-chain to identify and action waste, efficiency and cost improvement initiatives. Next, the benefits of moving from “push” to “pull” modes-of-operation through detailed data analysis and supply-chain simulations using the Symphony software is evaluated. Knowledge and understanding within the business and supply-chain is built to implement “pull” modes-of-operation using the Theory of Constraints (TOC) body of knowledge. Also, the Symphony decision-support software is used to enable “pull” modes-of-operation (www.inherentsimplicity.com).

Source: www.bluenorth.co.za