Duane Wood, Management Systems & Inspections Services Marketing Director at LRQA on the future of sustainable supply chains.
At the Sedex conference in London this morning, the theme of ‘Impact through Leadership - Defining ‘Beyond Compliance’ in Responsible Sourcing’ was addressed by many of the keynote speakers including representation from Walmart and Forum for the Future.
So what does the future of sustainable supply chains look like? At LRQA, trust and safety sit at our heart; we have been in the business of assuring supply chains for many years. So for LRQA, we could consider the concept in relation to the future sustainability of supply chains is ‘beyond certification’.
Beyond certification
Put simply, this means that certification is the starting point on an organisations’ journey. With supply chains facing increasingly complex demands, we believe that by working collaboratively with organisations and addressing their stakeholder needs, we can understand their issues and develop tailored assurance solutions to fix them.
We live in a changing world and there is no doubt that there is a need to move quickly to build relevant and tailored assurance solutions that not only alleviate the problems that many of the world’s leading organisations are facing in relation to the future sustainability of their supply chains, but importantly are designed to deliver stakeholder trust.
Trust is circular
What goes around comes around and none more so than trust. With a heritage of over 250 years, for LRQA, trust is absolute for our organisation; it is the foundation stone that we have built our business on over the years resulting in the sustainable and resilient organisation that we have become today. Organisations want a provider that they can rely on; one that can take them beyond supply chain compliance and into the future landscape of supply chain sustainability. Underpinning all of this is trust - or circular trust.
We are already delivering these types of services; organisations can trust us to deliver the right assurance solutions and that in turn enables them to transparently demonstrate their commitment to supply chain sustainability to their own customers, which again drives trust and in turn brand reputation.
As Walmart said during one of the opening sessions this morning, “Change is the only constant”, but against this backdrop of change, we believe that by being agile and listening to our customers’ needs, new and innovative assurance solutions can be tailored to drive what is a worldwide commitment to sustainable supply chains of the future.
