The Supply Chain Xchange

During my time working at a large-scale fulfilment operations center, I was tasked with improving sustainable packaging compliance—an initiative that had been running for years with limited results. The rationale was straightforward: unnecessary packaging generates waste, increases carbon emissions, and adds cost that is ultimately passed on to the customer.

Supply chains run on decisions, but much of the work that supply chain and sourcing teams do every day isn’t decision-making at all. Instead, the bulk of their time is spent preparing the information required to make good decisions.

Sourcing team members, for example, may spend hours interpreting supplier data, reconciling formats, checking for inconsistenci...