2.5. Green supply chain alternatives
Up to this point we have identified a few alternatives
available to organizations for improving the environmental
performance of their supply chains. These alternatives
may include technological, process, or organizational
characteristics. For example one such alternative
might be an organizational goal to improve the total
quality environmental management (TQEM) [10] within
and between organizations. Similar to total quality management,
TQEM is a pervasive program which should
include suppliers and customers. ISO 14000 certification
may also be a goal for the organization and its suppliers.
This alternative is based on maintaining documentation
and building an information network. Some organizations
who have already gone through ISO 9000 certifi-
cation may find this alternative easy to implement with
little additional cost and effort, and thus may be preferable
to other alternatives. Other alternatives may be
information systems such as electronic data interchange
which may be justified for other reasons, but can be
evaluated from a greening perspective. These three
examples are only a few, emerging technologies, models,
and processes that have yet to be developed can be
evaluated using the proposed decision framework as
well. A good discussion of various systems, requirements
and alternatives that can aid the development of
green supply chains can be found in [15,19]. The
decision framework is now presented.