Evaluating the Potential of Localised Production for More Sustainable Supply Chains
Palas Atenea Policroniades-Borraz
Evaluating the Potential of Localised Production for More Sustainable Supply Chains
| Even though sustainability is a strategy widely accepted in principle when developing and delivering new products it is not widely practiced. Despite the extensive discussions about the environmental impacts of existing production structures, the adopted solutions have largely led to small modifications to existing system. This work focused on evaluating one of them: changed production structures –localisation-This work explores some of its potential benefits through a simple model and its economic viability through the analysis of four economic production functions of twelve industrial sectors The functions are used in conjunction with a simple model cost to compare the cost of production between a large company with low labour cost and a small company with high labour costs. The difference in unit cost provides an indicator of the technological improvement required to enable localised production. The results will suggest which sectors are more likely to give benefits trough localisation and in which areas more research is required to identify them. Finally, in order to understand how industrial systems work and which are their possible deriving environmental benefits a discussion on MFA takes place. |
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