IBM Corp. yesterday rolled out a modeling tool aimed at helping manufacturers understand the carbon impact of their supply chains on the environment and analyze the trade-offs they must make every day among service levels, quality, cost, and carbon dioxide emissions.
IBM expects manufacturers to use the Carbon Tradeoff Modeler tool to analyze both the carbon emissions and trade-offs within the four walls of the enterprise and the emissions impact of their end-to-end supply chains, including suppliers, logistics providers, and other partners.
“We’re seeing a lot of companies looking at carbon emissions, along with water usage and other concerns, in the manufacturing process,” said Karen Butner, global supply chain management lead at the IBM Institute for Business Value, in an interview with Managing Automation. “But some are also beginning to look at these issues up and down the supply chain as they realize they can’t pass the buck.”
IBM isn’t the only company looking to cash in on growing sustainability awareness among manufacturers. Earlier this week, insurance company Fireman Fund announced what it called Manufacturers’ Green Coverage Endorsement, an insurance program that, in the event of a loss, replaces manufacturing plants and equipment with greener alternatives. Also this week, Hewlett-Packard Co. announced its Enterprise Printing Assessment Service, which analyzes a company’s printing operations in terms of carbon emissions. And in January, Llamasoft rolled out a new version of its supply network modeling software, complete with tools to help manufacturers calculate their “green quotient.”