Infosys-Oracle Blog

Sustainable manufacturing is all about developing technologies to create products without emission of green house gases, or use of non-renewable or toxic materials or waste. Well that is as per the definition, but in practical sense, we can only try to reduce these to the maximum extent possible.

As they Say, If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it. Measurement of current Carbon Emission is first challenge we encounter. This will require a tight integration of various business functions such as Supply Chain Management, Planning, Financials, Logistics, Human resource management and Customer relationship management to support real-time representations of data from many environmental sources that are affected by manufacturing activities. Without a proper integration it would not be possible to get the correct figure on the carbon emissions. For Example, in software industries, carbon emission is usually counted by the use of computers. But, what about the carbon emissions, that happens when an employee travel overseas for official purpose. We have to ensure that we are not missing hidden Sources. A good Enterprise wide system can play a key role in developing the Sustainable Manufacturing strategy, as it provide enterprise wide visibility to all organizational activities.

Another major challenge is Carbon Accounting. At present there is lots of ambiguity over carbon accounting. A clear guideline has yet to come out. The accounting standard should be acceptable worldwide. One of the major thrust in near future would be to develop accounting features and analytics on Carbon accounting which could be the growth engine for the ERP.

In the coming future, carbon credit will determine the future growth of the organization. There could be time when the organization's product/services could be sold in the market only when it has got the specific rating from rating agencies. Sustainable manufacturing is the way to go as it is in the interest of business and society at large. It is high time we start looking at how these challenges can be converted in to opportunities.