3 lessons we learned from you in 2017...
If there was ever a year for ranty and reflective December blogs...
Suffice to say, it feels like enough has happened in the world in this extraordinary last 12 months to last a lifetime. Something tells me 2018 isn't going to be any less bonkers either.
This year also marked the year we've found our true calling - as a developer of technology platforms that really do help make sustainable business happen. With Manufacture 2030's "bee" in particular set to deliver huge cost and impact savings to the world's factories in 2018.
I thought I'd share the 3 exciting lessons we learnt this year. Probably one of the most exciting and formative 12 months of 2degrees' existence.
1) Build it and they will come (and you'll get by with a little help from your friends)
Manufacture 2030 was launched in March 2017 - from the idea and aspiration of finally bringing retailers, brands and manufacturers together, across industry, to tackle the challenge of halving resource use in the next 10 years. The platform is now home to almost 1000 professionals and over 650 companies spanning many industries and the globe.
The Co-operative Group, the pioneering retailer on the platform, have seen suppliers effectively addressing crucial issues such as food waste; building stronger and even more trusting relationships with their customer; and - working in collaboration with our clients Asda - reduce the duplication of effort and add value to the process of reporting environmental data. A truly supportive and genuinely purpose-driven team to work with as well.
Johnson & Johnson (our pioneer Manufacture 2030 consumer brand) has crowd-sourced insight from all over the world to help drive solutions for their zero waste programs and circular thinking - through a series of platform challenges and activities. We've found them a business blessed with entrepreneurial spirit to improve, learn and do the right thing.
Mars (our pioneer Manufacture 2030 food brand), together with over a hundred other manufacturers from around the world, have helped us develop, test and roll-out one of the most exciting developments in our mission to halve resource-use in the next ten years: bee. A unique online service that makes it easier to deliver improved resource efficiency across your manufacturing operations. Factories around the world are spending less time to make more progress and the average savings are already almost 7% per site. Over the next 10 years, this will mean reducing the amount of resources used in manufacturing by 50%.
We've learnt huge amounts from a fantastic business that really is at the fore-front of business commitments to sustainability - with their "Sustainable in a Generation" Plan.
A huge thanks to all our partners (including WRAP, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the Carbon Trust and the number of academic institutions that have got involved) and of course the hundreds of companies that have contributed around the world in 2017. We look forward to welcoming the new tranche of Manufacture 2030 partners for 2018.
2) More collaboration please! But without all the effort...
2017 has been another great year for collaboration - with tremendous success in programs such as We Mean Business' RE100 (that peaked past 116 members and is already extending their 100% renewable power commitments to their supply chain).
Yes, there's been dissenters (particularly in the form of Trump and the Paris Agreement) - but there are signs that these actions will actually strengthen the commitment and resolve by businesses in the long run and help highlight ineffectiveness in some collaborations. This year has also shown us that there's also nothing like a siege mentality to bring everyone closer together.
We've also noticed that while the overall desire to collaborate grows - so does the need to make it easier to do so. Time, money and even attention spans grow shorter - more and more want collaboration. Without as much effort.
The launch of Manufacture 2030's "bee" marked a critical point of the year for us. We saw a real drive to add to the wider knowledge and best-practice sharing in our popular platforms' forums and activities; to serve the desire to create tailored action-plans from the world's best-practice and get the help needed to actually implement. Busy operational managers are getting very excited when they get the chance to pick the brains of their peers (while not necessarily wanting to reveal that they needed to); and show great willing to share results with others - especially if it means virtually no effort for them at all.
2018 will undoubtedly see more of this "collaborating without moving" and we are evolving to deliver it - whether you notice or not...
3) You can't improve what you just measure.
Very little has happened this year to dampen my continually-burning passion to see the world heed the calls of the supply chain to reduce the audit burden, in favour of guidance and scalable support for them to get the capability to improve. From another very good Sedex 2017 conference at the start; to catching up for dinner with Marcel Jacobs at Philips recently to get excited about their dramatic withdrawal from audit all-together - the tide seems to be turning. Great to also see Sedex 2018 back with "beyond compliance" as the headline, 2 years on since it was centre-stage (and the suppliers cheered, while the auditors shuffled).
"You can't manage, what you can't measure" has been the standard line shared by every data management solution provider in every presentation over the last 10 years. It's undeniably true. But now everyone's either saying or being told that they are doing nothing meaningful with these measurements. You can't realistically expect to improve, what you are just measuring. You hear supply chain owners say that it is the accountability of suppliers to improve, but quite often they don't have the capability to do so. Who really is responsible for helping them?
We believe that 2018 will see a shift from believing that building stronger supply chain relationships comes from collecting more data - to - getting the supply chain improvement (and data) you want, from having stronger relationships.
Manufacture 2030, and in particular "bee", is showing that you can deliver supplier capability-building at scale; and get the performance numbers and the evidence of improvement that both you and your suppliers want.
We can't wait for another year of learning, improving and no doubt evolving even more. And hopefully helping hundreds more manufacturers and supply chains to do the same.
Have a great break!
Oliver
oliver.hurrey@2degreesnetwork.com
www.manufacture2030.com