Quantitative assessment of supply chain environmental performance, with a focus on benchmarking

demand for green products and external pressures for a more sustainable approach to business from a number of different stakeholders are some of the reasons that have pushed companies to take into account environmental issues within management. As a consequence, an increasing number of metrics has been developed to measure environmental performance. However, as competition has shifted from a company-versus-company form to a supply chain-versus-supply chain one, also sustainability issues have expanded outside company’s border, including both upstream and downstream networks and adopting a life cycle perspective. The expansion of corporate social and environmental responsibility outside focal company’s perimeter however has clashed recent developments of supply chains, which have become increasingly international, widely outsourcing processes and purchasing raw material, components or products from countries with lower production cost, but in many cases with lower environmental standards and regulations, as well as greatly increased transportation requirements. The driver for this trend has been merely financial, whereas the environmental effects have been greatly neglected, thus compromising the sustainability of supply chains. An increased need for the measurement of these effects has been arousing as a consequence: environmental impacts cannot be addressed at a single company level anymore, but a broad and holistic approach, that encompasses the whole supply chain, is needed. A number of approaches have been developed so far, both from academics and practitioners trying to include such a complexity into a model, however there is a lack of agreement on the methodology required to measure the environmental footprint of a supply chain, both regarding impacts taken into account and supply chain boundaries; moreover, a standardized indicator, which allows benchmarking, is still missing. Adopting a life cycle perspective, life cycle assessment (LCA) has often been referred as the most appropriate tool to offer a complete picture of the environmental impact of a product at supply chain level, however it has often been pointed out that it has a number of limitations, most noticeably poor practical implications for the management and the huge amount of data and resources required, which prevents it to be adopted by small and medium enterprises. This work will try to bridge the identified gap by presenting some ideas and preliminary results about quantitative approaches to measurement of supply chain environmental footprint, with a focus on benchmarking. The purpose of this work is twofold. First, it offers a literature review on quantitative approaches to assess environmental sustainability performance at a supply chain level, presenting leading trends and a critical mapping and evaluation of existing methods. The core of the analysis will address possible benchmarking opportunities including both single supply chain (internal benchmarking) perspective, with a focus on supplier evaluation, and benchmarking of different supply chains (external benchmarking). Second, it offers a framework to summarize the research in the field and identify key features that have been identified by scholars and practitioners to assess environmental sustainability at supply chain level. An addition to the framework will be a contribution on some of the essential characteristics required by an environmental indicator both to be consistent and reliable from a methodological point of view and to be easy to implement and applicable, even for small and medium enterprises. The highlight of the framework will be the consideration of benchmarking potential, an aspect that has not been adequately investigated in the current literature yet. The focus on quantitative approaches for environmental sustainability performance at a supply chain level from a benchmarking perspective is probably the most novel aspect of this contribution as it emphasizes how a widely adopted strategic management process such as benchmarking can be adopted into this field. Additionally, the framework could be used as a starting point for the development of an innovative methodology to facilitate lifecycle supply chain sustainability assessment, which would be based on the features highlighted in the framework and would possibly result in an innovative environmental supply chain indicator, which would allow easier benchmarking applications.