Adopting sustainable manufacturing practices can improve productivity, competitiveness - says visiting professor

Adopting sustainable manufacturing practices can improve productivity, competitiveness – says visiting professor

Feb 24, 2009 News

The Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA), in collaboration with the Sobey School of Business, St. Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, recently hosted a seminar to enlighten manufacturers on sustainable manufacturing at the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre (Red House) under the theme: “A new frontier for Caribbean manufacturing.”
The guest speaker was Dr. Harvey Millar, a professor at Sobey School of Business, who discussed several topics, including defining sustainable manufacturing, adopting Triple Bottom Line performance using sustainability as a source of competitive advantage, and designing and implementing a sustainability strategy.
Sustainable manufacturing was defined as adopting manufacturing strategies and activities that meet the needs of the enterprise and its stakeholders, while protecting, sustaining and enhancing the human and natural resources that will be needed in the future.
It was said that consumers and governments are putting pressure on manufacturers to ‘green’ their operations and, rather than undertake a reactive response, several firms are approaching the issue of sustainability as an opportunity to differentiate themselves and to build competitive advantage.
Many adopt the triple bottom line concept of social, economic and environmental performance.
Numerous firms that have sustainable manufacturing practices have experienced enhanced growth, profitability and competitiveness.
Dr. Millar contends that if sustainable manufacturing practices are adopted it can result in profitability and competitiveness.
He said that sustainable manufacturing offers a way of reducing a lot of inputs, especially harmful ones such as those that consume a lot of energy and materials.
According to him, sustainability is a strategy that can assist in improving productivity of manufacturers.
“If you can reduce your inputs for the same level of output, in fact you are improving productivity,” he explained.
He noted this fact because he said a lot of manufacturers are concerned about the whole concept of productivity.
Dr. Millar said that people are realising that some products that contain lead, mercury and other substances can be damaging to the environment if they get into water systems or soils. They can then affect agriculture.
“So the idea is that we need to make sure that, when we produce products and services, we can borrow from the earth to do that, but we have a responsibility to future generations to make sure that we do not harm the earth in any way.”
Triple Bottom Line concept
Traditionally, Dr. Millar said, companies always focus on the bottom line which is: “What is my profit going to be? What are my costs?”
According to Dr. Millar, if a company truly wants to move to a state of sustainable manufacturing practice, it must change its measuring system and must now change the way it sees the bottom line and redefine it to have three dimensions, which are economic dimension, the social dimension and the environmental dimension.
He also stated that governments have a key role to play in this entire process, not just a regulatory one, but in fact to be a partner.
According to him, the role of government is to create what is referred to as an enabling environment. “Certainly governments tend to provide legislative frameworks that companies tend to look at, but the caution in this is that governments would need to ensure that its role is not one of being a total regulator and companies are simply trying to comply, because that is not a productive strategy.”

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