Supply Chain Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words - 1

Supply Chain Management - Essay Example These end users regard companies who refuse to abide by the regulations as irresponsible and try to avoid them. This means that should all factors in the supply chain process be put in place but common actions on abiding by regulations that borders on the wellbeing of people and the environment be ignored, there is no way customers would accept or patronise products from such irresponsible companies (Bowman, 1997). This way, the core motifs of companies in going into production would totally be defeated. It is in light of this that corporate organisations and companies have always taken steps to be accepted in the face of customers and the general public as corporately responsible. To achieve such tags of corporate responsibility, companies take a number of corporate responses to address specific issues. In the following sections, three companies and how they have taken specific corporate responses to address certain issues that borders on the environment and the growing challenges o f global supply chain have been addressed. GlaxoSmithKline As a company, GlaxoSmithKline has taken a number of initiatives that are based on the principles and core values of supply chain management: particularly, supply chain business process integration to address a number of social and environmental issues (Lambert, 2008, p.15). Three of these and how the company facilitated change in the given directions have been discussed below. Environmental degradation As a pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline has been faced with several issues that concerns environmental degradation. Environmental degradation has been explained as an act that deliberately or unintentionally causes damage to the environment (Burgess, 1998). Such practices have bordered the company because it depends on some raw materials that are acquired directly from undertaking environmentally threatening acts like the cutting down of trees. In the course of manufacturing also, there is the release of large volumes of waste fumes into the environment. Through the supply chain management practice of manufacturing flow management, the company has been able to ensure that what could otherwise had been serious damage to the environment has been controlled. According to Goldsby (2003), manufacturing flow management â€Å"includes all activities necessary to move products through the plants and to obtain, implement, and manage manufacturing flexibility in the supply chain (p. 23)†. Specifically, the company has been engaged in the purchase of production plants that have been designed to internally recycle waste fumes for the generation of power. This way, waste fumes are not thrown into the open atmosphere. Rising energy and materials prices Recently global events including outbreak of wars and political uprising in major oil producing countries have led to rising price of crude on the world market. This has apparently led to increase in the cost of energy. Most commonly, increase in prices of e nergy leads to increase in prices of raw materials (Copacino, 1998, p.31). This is because of the high cost of transportation that increase in the prices of energy brings about. For GlaxoSmithKline as a company, steps have been taken with reference to the order demand