Rethinking the logistics chain to make it more sustainable while respecting the needs of customers and citing the efficiency of the management of the chain as an important contribution towards the reduction of CO2. These are the themes addressed by Carlo Martinetto, Supply Chain Senior Vice President of Iveco at the IV International Convention SOS-LOGistica, that took place in Torino last week.

An in depth analysis of the management of the process with a particular focus on the essential activities of the operations to and from the factories and the importance of linking the logistic and the sustainability of each phase of the planning of the activity was the subject of Martinetto’s contribution, that related the role of Iveco, on one side a user of logistics services as a vehicle producer and from the other, as a supplier of vehicles to the logistics industry.

Iveco is committed to producing vehicles that improve the efficiency of road transport while maintaining the fullest attention to their environmental performance in service. This is achieved in practice by adopting state of the art technical solutions to improve vehicle productivity and reducing noise and pollution emissions in advance of legislative requirements. In managing its own supply chain, Iveco’s sustainability commitment amounts to implementing the logistics performance improvement measures outlined in the convention.

This means the continuous measurement and analysis of the supply chain performance with the objective of identifying areas in which there is waste, non optimised vehicle specifications, vehicles not fully loaded and inefficient transport distribution routes and the measures necessary to eliminate these occurrences. The result of this activity during 2008 has been to reduce the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by an estimated 3,000 tons.

The presentation was concluded by making reference to the positive impact on sustainability derived from the approach to product development activities. Such benefits include end of life product recyclability, designs for energy efficient products and logistics and production processes focussed on reducing their environmental impact.

Also in this case the efforts made by Iveco in bringing to the market vehicles already exceeding current recyclability requirements were underlined as were Iveco proposals regarding revisions to vehicle maximum operating dimensions, introduced with Transport Concept, to improve operating efficiency. In addition the work being carried out on new product developments not only to produce more energy efficient vehicles but to reduce the energy used in their manufacture.