As the world grapples with the immense impact of the disaster in Japan, attention is turning to the global economic impact of the country’s lost production. Japan has long been a critical link in the supply chain of many industries – perhaps most notably in the automotive and electronics sectors. The Financial Times ran a piece today on this which touches on contingency plans to help replace lost production stemming from unforeseen major disruptive events. In this context, a question arises: Will companies enforce their procurement requirements for vendor EHS performance during this period? Elm has long discussed EHS risks in the context of supply chain disruption contingency planning. In past years, the risks have been more focused on matters related to how production redistribution could cause violations of various environmental permit limits tied to production levels. However, the rise of ethical purchasing standards – as voluntary and highly publicized corporate commitments – has altered the definition of EHS risks in supply chains. It may be months or years before some of the Japanese plants are in production mode again. In the interim, companies impacted by the disruption face a conundrum: Do they attempt a rapid production recovery by quickly
Read more →Join us for an upcoming webinar Friday, February 25 about using the iPad in HSE audits. We will present an overview of our experiences in using the device on actual audits over the past 6 months. Included in the presentation will be a discussion of evaluating its potential use and fit within organizations/existing audit processes; benefits and limitations; and a detailed step-by-step simulation of an audit using Elm’s selected application (smartNotes), including actual screen shots. The hour-long presentation will be followed by an open question and answer period. Click here for a full description. There will be a morning session and an afternoon session. Click here for the afternoon session. We hope you can participate.
Read more →The Elm Consulting Group International LLC (“Elm”) will deliver independent third-party Conflict Minerals Supply Chain Traceability Audit services aligned with the SEC mandates for auditor independence to companies across the range of industries impacted by the US Conflict Minerals Law, enacted as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. In 2010, Elm was engaged by a leading US-based electronics manufacturer industry association to conduct the first independent third-party Conflict Minerals supply chain traceability audits supporting the association’s “Conflict Free Smelter” designation for tantalum. Those audits were the first of their kind, resulted in the first “Conflict Free Smelter” designations issued, and generated significant improvements to the initial audit tools/scope created by other stakeholders. Patrick Doyle, Managing Director in Elm’s New Haven, CT office: “Elm is a world leader in conducting Conflict Minerals supply chain traceability audits to support the new Conflict Minerals Law in the U.S. We saw significant value in bringing our experience to assist a broad range of industries and companies. However, we were concerned about potential conflicts of interest with being engaged by a trade association consisting of multiple corporate members that also may have relationships with other Elm clients. In our 2011 strategic planning, we decided
Read more →Lawrence Heim, CPEA of The Elm Consulting Group International LLC will be speaking as part of a panel on sustainability at The Auditing Roundtable national meeting. The meeting will be held from January 24 – 26, 2011 at the W Hotel in San Diego. Mr. Heim will be discussing Elm’s experience with the first third-party audits of Conflict Minerals Supply Chain Traceability conducted under the US Conflict Minerals Act/Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. The meeting agenda can be viewed here: http://bit.ly/etp3sj
Read more →In Tampa Bay, an all-to-real demonstration is playing out of the trickle-down economic impact of a company operation being shut down for environmental reasons. The Tampa Bay Business Journal reported this story. The Mosaic Co. is a publicly-traded company with over $6billion in annual revenue reported last fiscal year. Mosaic mines phosphate ore. The company has been mining in Polk County since 1995 and recently filed for an expansion of operations to access reserves in Hardee County. These ore reserves represent about 10 years of active mining operations. The Sierra Club, along with other NGOs challenged the issuance of a federal permit that would allow Mosaic to expand, alleging that the expanded operations would cause environmental damage to the headwaters of the Peace River and other streams that drain into the Charlotte Harbor estuary. On July 30, in response to the challenge U.S. District Judge Henry Lee Adams Jr. in Jacksonville issued a preliminary injunction against the expansion, saying the Army Corps had failed to adequately explore alternative plans that would cause less environmental damage to the area. The article reports that, if the Mosaic expansion does not move forward, the economic impact would be dramatic. At least 18 companies
Read more →For some time now, we have written about the potential business risk associated with developing sustainability programs for some companies. Just recently, an article was published in the Journal of Marketing that provides empirical evidence of negative consumer perceptions (and therefore reduced sales) of certain products labeled as “sustainable” or “environmentally friendly”. The article is titled The Sustainability Liability: Potential Negative Effects of Ethicality on Product Preference, written by Michael G. Luchs, Rebecca Walker Naylor, Julie R. Irwin, and Rajagopal Raghunathan. The authors are all professors of marketing at William & Mary, Ohio State and The University of Texas at Austin. The article reviews various hypotheses and empirical studies conducted by the authors around the concept about how buyers perceive the attribute of sustainability or environmentally friendly (they use the term “ethicality” to encompass those attributes) in certain product categories. INTERESTING NOTE HERE – there is a fair amount of overlap between the product categories within the scope of the study and those that are included in the Walmart Supplier GHG Innovation Program Guidance Document. If you are a supplier who is involved in WalMart’s GHG Innovation Program, you may want to read The Sustainability Liability. The first several pages
Read more →Even before the BP oil spill, there was a substantial chatter about “EHS risk”, what it means and options for managing it. In many cases, external resources such as consultants are brought in to assist with the effort. These resources possess skills that cut across various competencies, which can create ambiguity within the client’s organization about which department(s) may be responsible for identifying, vetting and hiring these resources. Elm has created a survey that is intended to explore these issues. To ensure your privacy, we have disabled the user tracking option on the SurveyMonkey settings. Therefore we have no way of identifying respondents in any way. Launch the survey here.
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