What if your logistics is already the best? (Part III)

How might rising fuel and energy costs
impact your supply chain? 

We live in turbulent times. Exactly how turbulent we will only be able to judge with hindsight.  The internet is changing everything more rapidly than anyone can keep up with.  

Climate change is boiling us slowly, like the proverbial frog in the pan on the stove who doesn't realise he needs to jump out until it is too late and he is half cooked.

We have also forgotten about the resource shortages that put a lid on the economy just before the GFC in 2008.  Remember when crude oil peaked at over $140 per barrel and the fuel price reached $1.80 per litre?  Well that may look cheap a few years from now if the CSIRO's dire prediction of $8.00 per litre by 2018 comes true, (page 10). The impact of this will flow throughout the global economy.  Jeff Rubin wrote about this in his book "Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization".  Jeff Rubin also speaks about it on YouTube for the non-readers.

"How might $8.00 per litre fuel impact your supply chain?"

The set of changes that are inevitably going to be forced upon us by the climate change and the associated mitigation strategies such as carbon taxes, energy efficiency, alternative fuels and energy sources are collected under the banner of Green Supply Chain (see the white papers section of our website).

There are things you can and should be doing now to get your organisation into a low carbon mindset so that you will be prepared better than most as the heat literally gets turned up on your supply chain.  My thesis is that the impact of this will force you to innovate and consider strategies that you might currently reject.  

Taking a further 25% out of the costs of a currently maxed-out efficient supply chain by collaborating with your competitors may well be a business saving strategy. You and your logistics sharing partners maintain your supplier of choice status; whilst others are driving around half empty trucks paying $8.00 per litre for diesel.

I will be speaking on the subject of Green Supply Chain at the upcoming Smart Conference in June this year.



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