• Milan Chowdhury

Sustainability and reduction of carbon footprint has become a matter of strategic choice for all businesses today. As business is reaching beyond geographical boundaries, it is often facing different laws and restrictions to comply with carbon emissions. Reinforcement of global climate agreements i.e. the Paris Agreement at local level often becomes compulsion for multinationals operating at local level to lower greenhouse emissions. Besides, lowering of carbon footprint is often associated with positive impacts on a firm’s brand and reputation. Many developed nations have already introduced stringent emission policies like cap-and-trade system and carbon tax - which can directly penalize or incentivize a company’s carbon performance. Low carbon emission initiatives - for example, switching to energy efficient assets, installing solar panels or setting up a green disposal system are often linked with high capital expenditures for business. However, operational optimizations too, may have significant contribution on carbon footprint mitigation with lesser cost. One such operational optimization can be implemented in existing supply chain as supply chains are capable of emitting up to four times of greenhouse emissions of a company’s normal emissions (excluding supply chain). So managing the supply chain operation can make a huge difference on company’s overall carbon performance. Poorly forecasted and planned logistics activity always results in inefficient transport of inventory and thus increases the carbon footprint of supply chain; and poor forecasting and planning is often caused by poor collaboration between supply chain partners (ex: retailer, wholesaler, distributor, manufacturer and supplier), resulting in inefficient transportation of inventory. Demand forecasting accuracy usually gets disrupted by unexpected distortion due to variation of demand caused by Bullwhip effect (BWE) in a supply chain. This Demand uncertainty or fluctuations trigger nervousness among the supply chain partners, they tend to lose confidence and further disrupt the supply chain forecasting by over ordering or under ordering. By mitigating Bullwhip effect (BWE) in supply chain, a firm can significantly improve its demand forecasting accuracy and thus minimize carbon footprints of entire supply chain to meet legal carbon compliance and to achieve significant cost reduction as well. Objective of this paper is to present a systematic approach of information sharing and collaboration among supply chain partners using cloud ERP platforms. As cloud ERP services are ‘on-demand’, billed on ‘pay-as-you-use’ model and offers seamless mobility, all supply chain partners can use it to collaborate with each other with least possible cost to mitigate the impact of Bullwhip effect along entire supply chain and thus to mitigate carbon footprint. Aim of this paper is also to highlight an emerging research area of digital supply chain having potential for betterment of environment and society.

Carbon footprint, Cap-and-Trade-system, Bullwhip effect (BWE), Cloud ERP, Digital Supply Chain.

"Mitigating carbon footprint across Supply Chain: A Cloud ERP approach", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 4, page no.978-985, April-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1904R48.pdf

"Mitigating carbon footprint across Supply Chain: A Cloud ERP approach", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 4, page no. pp978-985, April-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1904R48.pdf