Jose Arturo Garza-Reyes' Inaugural Lecture: Environmental Challenge & Sustainable Supply Chains video transcript

Right um well good evening everyone first of all thank you very much to camil for the introduction and before I starting my presentation I really like to thank the professor Lynch my de Professor Camilo mes um also I would like to thank my boss and friend professor jasa and of course my BC Professor Mitchell and committee for inviting me to deliver this inaugural lecture. I mean this is something that I do kind of relatively often I mean I feel very very fortunate to be invited to give a lot of different talks pretty much all over the world the last one that I did it was a few weeks ago in India I had opportunity of being a keynote speaker in an International Conference in the Indian Institute of Management in shilong then from there I flew to Vore and I was another kot speaker an International Conference in Bor Institute and Technology then some colleagues from that region in India said well Jose you are around can you please come and be a kot speaker of another conference then let me know two days before and I say well why not so I did a very long trip so I can go to to Madras and be another keynote speaker so I went to Indian Institute of Technology in Madras then I came back to shilong and they say Jose can you please talk to our operation man management students in shilong and I said yeah that that should be fine so no problem few students in one a small room when when I got there actually there were 180 students waiting for me I said okay that's fine so it's something that again I'm very fortunate because I do kind of relatively often I remember when we had the pandemic as well so many institutions in the world but I would say possibly most of the institutions like Co went into online then it was very very easy to organize you know seminars workshops conference etc etc and I was invited very often to talk online it was two times three times a week for a very very long time so what I want to say is that although I am very fortunate in that respect very very rarly I do this here at my own home the University of Derby and because of that reason I feel very very grateful I mean I was waiting for my opportunity in few months ago and I one would that be my opportunity to deliver my inaugural lecture so when Professor Lynch contact me back in the I said absolutely so I will make myself available in January and well here I am so thank you so so much for that uh before I starting my presentation just let me talk a little bit about myself I mean but not in the way in which camil did it in a very formal way trying to uh you know present me like if I were Superman or something like that I would like to to do it in a more personal way and why is that because actually uh the the person that I am comes from three different priorities that I have in life and obviously that shapes a lot the work that I do for the my University and the research that I do also for the University of Derby. I mean my life is not that complicated I would say in terms of priorities I mean I don't want to be a football star or a rock star I don't want to be a millionaire actually didn't have anything of that ambition and when they say well you are recognizing your field of operation management I be happy with that like that's absolutely fine I mean that's good you know something that I am actively seeking so I work very very hard and that happened just a kind of default uh but that comes from my priorities in life I mean this is my family so this is my family this is Alex she came with me 20 years ago actually today is Wednesday Monday she celebrated 20 years of being here in the United Kingdom she came to uh with me when she was 19 she's going to be 40 this may I was 28 at that time and I go to what I call them Champions or holigans sometime because my house is really very very chaot chaotic and Camille was asking me before coming your family in here and I said no way Camille they come this room is going to be a complete chaos so this is this is aen he's St all and I call him CH and actually he's a national taond champion he got his the uh black belt in K boxing in in December and and he's six years old and he's also a dream in Taw and GRE Bel owns also in kickboxing and Adam is the reason as to why I need to come every single Sunday to the university because he also plays competitive football and surprise surprise matches are here you know football pitches next to our sports centers I need to be here every single Sunday apart from you know coming during the week um and obviously Alex she she's my RO I mean she's the person that has always been supporting me and well when I said Alex I got an opportunity to work in that what do you think and she said well if if that is what you want I will be there with you it doesn't matter what and another of my priority is that one which has become nowadays my my third priority so for me actually training kickboxing nowadays is very very important it's part of my life I started five years ago and if everything is well in the 26 and 27 of September I will have my black Bel braing will be having two days of grading the second one I will need to do a lot of sparing fighting and one of those fighting we need to be with three people at the same time one of them is a second kosi black Bel so somehow I will need to survive if I want to be a black Bel and I will have competitions this year in May H June and November as well and in August as well so this is very very important as well he has got me to be very strong not only physically but mentally and actually that strong mental ability is where I need to do my job as well so what I have in here it comes from a lot of the input from my family or from my other priority which is my training as well the University of Derby.

So today is the 17 of January on the 9th of January this year it was my 15th anniversary working for the University of Derby so I started in 2009 I remember Professor Angela and Professor IAS or having my interview here in this building and when Angela Mia they had fting me I didn't have a lot of experience teaching they say yeah well you look motivated you are kind of yeah you see is kind of good you are young yeah we will invite you to come and work for us so I work in the School of Technology at that time with elas and with Angela for about three or four years then at that point it was 2013 more or less well 134 when the the center for Supply change Improvement that I am heading now was created and Professor M li who now is a professor in Glasgow University invite me to come and work with him so I moved from the School of Technology to the business school as a senior lecturer in operation Andes management at that time the business school did not have a single Professor so they were not professor at that time and I remember when I was working in technology about 15 years ago the professors and the scheme that we had in the University it was possibly not the best I knew some professors that were teaching 18 hours a week my record teaching as a lecturer was 22 hours a week you know being in front of the classroom for an entire semester so it was very very difficult and since that time until now things have massively changed in a very very positive way I don't think that we have been in a better position as we are now I feel that we are much more stronger than we were 15 years ago and obviously there are a lot of reason for that the leadership that we have in our College since camil K he has massively uh expanded the research capability that we have when Professor Mitchell joined us as well the university I can see and see the difference I feel very very proud of being working for this institution is I'm very honest I mean I have received a lot of different options and offers to work for other institutions in the UK and in terms of economic Gams we having very very big ones but I have never thought in moving to other part because I feel very very comfortable I feel that Derby is my home and hopefully and this is where I'm crossing my finger or I'm praying to God I will finish my career in 20 25 years here where I stopped one day so this is a little bit of me. In terms of my three priorities now I remember when I was talking to M and I appreciate a lot a lot mink because he was my mentor at that time I learned a lot from him and he's only my age but he was well andan than me and he have progressed much more he said well we are in the area of operation management and right now our field I consider that we can make a massive contribution towards a big problem that we have at the moment which is acing and he said well the environmental sustainability issue that we got as a society is very very big and there is there has been very little exploration of how our profession can contribute to address that problem and since that time Ming and I and then the rest of my team started refocusing our area of operation management to address and to consider that problem operation management is all about being more efficient being more productive. If I look and talk about operation Management in terms of a business school in a business school you will normally have different themes or topics you will have economics you will have accountancy you will have uh Finance you will have marketing you will have HR well one of those is Operation management and I am very lucky because operation management actually overlaps with Engineering in an engineering school here in the UK it will still be called operation Management in the US it would be called industrial engineering but actually I can work and I feel very fortunate for that either in a business school or at in an engineering school so at that time again with me we said well there is a lot about how to help companies to be more productive so they can increase profit there is a lot of work in how they can reduce wage etc etc but there is not a lot of work as to how our profession can contribute towards environmental sustainability so the talk that I'm going to be H presenting to you is basically how Supply chains have evolved to address the environmental problem that we have how we operation managers have acted to try to address this problem and I will show you that actually we have taken traditional approaches of operation management and then making them evolve or readapt them so then we can consider the sustainable element but before starting I mean the United Nations consider that these are the top challenges that we have as a human kind so actually one of the biggest challenges that we have this energy I mean we do not have enough renewable sources of energy so we actually our economies work based on oil and gas mainly and these are not renovable sources at some point in the future so they are going to be running out is that going to be tomorrow is that going to be in 10 years in 50 years we do not exactly know but what we know is that they are going to run out at some point so because of that reason there is a lot of research by companies and government as to what other sources of energy we can use so this is a big big problem food and water security that's another big challenge I mean there are many nation that got problems people that is starving etc etc I mean fortunately we don't have that problem here in the United kdom disease and suffering population growth etc etc so these are the main challenges according to the United Nations however for me the main challenge is that one the environmental sustainability Challenge and why that because if we continue damaging if we continue hurting our planet at some point we will not have a place where to leave and right now we don't have the technology where actually we can put some people you know in an spacecraft and then move on leave in another planet we don't have that technology possibly we have it I don't know in the future but right now if we don't have a planet where to live basically we will not exist and if we don't exist all the other problems are completely irrelevant I remember when I was giving the or the providing or discussing those chats when I was telling you in online when Co came so basically one of my points uh that I was trying to put forward it was yes we got a CO issue so nowadays the world is upside down so we got our economies closed we are actually not allowed to go out of our houses etc etc so this a big problem what is a problem that we will be coming out in the next couple of years three years four years etc etc so there was a lot of coordination of governments to address it however that problem it will not go that easy as the co and when four five years after that you can see we're face to face so we actually came out from that problem but that it still there so that was a bigger problem that coming and that was one of the point that I was trying to put forward global warming environmental degradation pollution habitat restoration Etc Etc

Everything related to environmental sustainability is the biggest challenge that we have right now as a human right and so how critical is that problem I mean these figures are not that up to date but it doesn't really matter because the basically the trend is exactly the same and what are those three videos telling us well basically that in general our standard of livings based on GDP hading which is very very positive I mean that means that in theory we should be having better the standard of living as a human Ty the opposite at the downside is that we have been deing our natural resources so we have not been able to actually balance our development our Economic Development our Industrial Development with the conservation of our planet and that is what he has brought our problems if I show you that graph is exactly the same CO2 emissions you can see Industrial Revolution at some point taking there and increasing yes once more POS positive because our economy has been growing our Industrial Development has been growing so which bring more employment better standard of living so that the positive size the negative size is what we are doing to our planets in terms of CO2 emissions as well now what have been the consequences of that so Point number one so I was trying to convince you that there is a big problem I have tried to convince you that the problem is actually big now what have been the consequences of that problem that we have with I mean you name it loss of biodiversity is a big big issue I mean a lot of political issues again we come with the economic Industrial Development you would the Amazon for examp example which have been deed in order to build you know factories in order to build places where people can leave Etc ETA water pollution is another big problem as well microplastic in the oceans big big problem that we have as well the melting of the polar ice caps as well the aome lawyer I mean I remember that 2018 I had opportunity of going to my own country to Mexico I had a project H funded by the beach Academy at that time and I was invited to deliver a keynote speech and one of the other kinot speeches was the Mexican representative of of environmental matters in the United Nation and that lady was literally coming from the airport from having a meeting with some scientist in the United Nations and then when she was talking to the public she was saying according to the modeling that we have done the United Nations actually if we continue with the same time of CO2 emissions some region some countries in the world will be underwater not by the year 2090 she was mentioned in 2040 and then she was presenting a big big maap in the screen show it to everyone so then I turned my head and look at at the audience and they were absolutely scared of that so the problem is imminent and the problem is something that it will be not in the very long term but possibly possibly in a LIF liftime or the lifp of aen and isan or possibly the Next Generation so it's a big big issue the laration that's another big issue as well um although there is scientific evidence that says that the Earth is in itself and I had the opportunity in 2018 I felt very very proud of that one one of the people that was in the audience listen to my to my talk he was Professor Mario Molina I don't know if you have heard about that name Mario Molina in Mexico in all time there have been four Nobel prizes two literator Nobel prizes one PE Nobel Prize and one scientist one Nobel Prize for science science and that is in chemistry and that was by Mario Molina he was one of the main contributors that discovered that actually there was a big call in in the earth and he was he was in my in my presentation when I finish my presentation there was one person that came to see me and say well actually Professor Mar Molina wants to have a chat with you tomorrow he's inviting you to go to a restaurant to have some chat with you then I was my God he's like my hero you know the only no the only scientist in Mexico has been a Noel late and it's absolutely yes just tell me you know the time and the place and I will be there no no he will send one of his driver he will pick you up from the uh the hotel that night I couldn't sleep so I was over and over thinking she to asleep what about my research what method I use it said I could sleep that night then the next day yes I had a big debate with him very very nice person but the B debate was not nothing about science it was about who was better whether man united or Arsenal luckily I like football so we had a kind of good debate he not be anything about my well my research at all unfortunately he died of a heart attack in 2020 but well I mean this a little you know story that just came to my mind because he was one of the main contributors of that H some of the consequences as well I mean you can see H the the climate change my sister I mean I'm from the north of Mexico very close to the border with us so in my teen years I used to go a lot to to all the Texas Valley to buy ERS and music etc etc my sister lives in Austin with her family right now they got minus 8 degrees and we might say yeah -8 yeah we can manage that well in Texas I can tell you that they cannot manage it because it's something that they are not used to so they got a big big mess in there uh because of the global change uh if we talk about for example Hawai last year big fires in Australia in gree in Spain etc etc here in the UK when I talk to some of the people who have been living here in the UK all their Liv they say well because actually our winter were most most colder right that now so you can see the changes and the consequences of that environmental problem that we have and just to show you and put even more emphasis into the problem that we had this is the Catholic Pope Francis talking to the United Nations in 2016 literally he was saying environmental degradation the very existence of human species I don't think that anybody or at least not a lot of people would debate something like that unless you agree with Donald Trump and you know his scientist I said no that doesn't exist so the scientist they are lying I mean we know that it is a big big problem the same is mentioned by the see David atro one of my heroes as well I remember when I was young having a dinner with my family in Mexico and then looking at some of the program that see David at was presenting at that time he was mentioning exactly the same CL changes humity great threat in thousand of years so the problem is absolutely huge and actually the problem is in our very existence now we got a problem and the problem is critical now my next point is have we tried to do something to address the problem and this is what I'm going to start talking a little bit about my feeli and what we have done to try to address that problem I will see that from a business and management point of view not the engineering or the scientific point of view uh because all your reasons my feel is more management and business oriented at the moment rather than engineering and Technology based have we tried to address the problem well I would say that yes we have try to address it because of that reason we got some concepts or initiatives or targets that countries have set to try to address the problem.

Sustainability who doesn't know about sustainability 1980s nowadays is a boost work and it's a way of addressing the problem does it work it doesn't work that's a different matter but it was proposed in order to try to address the problem uh CC very similar to corporate uh to sustainability the green economy I mean this is a term that it was uh very commonly used about 10 years ago as well but it was proposed similarly to address the problem then I remember when I came to the business school at that time there was a group led by Christine Alison and all the te that were doing a lot of Scot in low carbon then suddenly that term of low carbon disappeared and it became zero carbon and not zero and it's actually one of the top priority and top teams of research that we have in the University so that team and that ideology and objectiv actually were developed to try to address this problem that we have the environmental problem similarly we got circular economy I remember Fred Patterson doing a lot of research on circular economy my team does a lot of research on circular economy it was also proposed to address environmental problem that we are having at the moment similarly I was mentioning some Target that have set by governments to address the problem to reduce CO2 emissions H to using more renewable sources of energy etc etc so I mean very generally I could say yes we have tried to address the problem how well by proposing some of these Concepts and trying to deploy them you know in organizations in societies etc etc now what I'm going to focus is right as I mentioned what supply chain have done to try to address the problem and I will show you once more and I have already mentioned it what we have done as operation managers to address the problem so we have taken traditional Concepts that once more company use to make their operations more efficient more effective and bring the environmental aspect so we can consider it as well so one example of that one quality it's a big big Topic in our area 1980s it was a very very common work every company I remember when I was doing my first degree in Mexico wanted to be ISO certified and we were talking about total quality management and we were talking about statistical process control all these are approaches that companies have used in the past to improve the quality as simple as that now they in many cases help companies to provide better quality in terms of their product and services now we operation managers and Industrial Engineers have taken the same Concepts quality management system and reshaping them so actually they can also consider the environmental aspect the most clear example is ISO 1401 which is an environmental standard so it's basically H following some procedes that companies can Implement so they are not only improving the quality but they are also being more environmental friendly and I will not be going into details into what quality management systems are how exact this move from this into that one and then explaining every single one of them is not my intention my intention is just to provide a general overview of what we are doing in our profession to address the big problem that we have at the moment that is one example another example is that we have R from tqm what that means Total Quality Management I have just mention it so total quality management was very popular in the 1980s many companies still practic it and basically it's an approach that companies can use to once more improve the quality of the product and Services I mean as simple as that one then at some point we realized that tqm was not enough I mean it was good enough in terms of helping us to reduce cost to be more productive provide better quality but it didn't consider the environmental aspect so Total Quality Management evolve into what we call Total Quality Environmental Management and Total Quality Environmental Management is exactly the same as Total Quality manage but now the environmental sustainability is embedded within the concept so companies are not only looking at improving their quality but also improving the environmental performance and this is a little research at some point I did with some of my master students so I was interested or we were interested in investigating whether companies actually implement quality Environmental Management very very small sample some Chinese manufacturers and again we try to investigate the status of tqm particularly in the Chinese manufacturing sector then I will not be going into the methodology and the analysis that we conducted that's not the point of this so basically what we realize with that little study is that companies in China yes they do know about tqm however tqem is not as popular as some other approaches of business Excellence or uh some other approaches that are more uh related to the environment as well example of those approaches are for example green Supply change management so tqm is not as popular as green Supply change management in the China's manufacturing sector divers Logistics I will be explaining that later on so tqm is not as popular as reverse Logistics tqm is not as popular as is saw 90006 Sigma camil was mentioning AIT of Six Sigma as well in the introduction so in summary companies use tqm but is not very popular we also identify the main drivers why the Chinese companies want to implement tqm what are the result that they obtain from the tqm implementation because you can expect something by deploying this approach and then later on actually not getting the expected result so so we actually investigated that and if companies want to investigate pqm and they want to implement it what challenges have they face when trying to implement it so these are some of the little aspects that we investigate in relation to an approach that evolve from Total Quality Management into Total Quality Environmental Management to bring that environmental sustainability element that I was mentioning another approach that evolve similarly to the two that I have been mentioned is that many companies move from traditional production into what nowadays is called cleaner production and what is cleaner production well cleaner production is exactly the same as traditional production but nowadays you bring the environmental aspect how do you bring it well basically you look at conserving energy how can I be more efficient when actually running my equipment on the sh floor how can I save electricity and gas or be spending Less in my production process once that we consider that then actually we're already trying to implement and to deploy some elements of the production looking at designing for the environment what is going to happen with my product when one that it gets to it end life cycle so what that is not useful anymore can I recycle it or is it going to be there in the environment for the next 200 years so starting from the design element is also part of gen production principle subtitution resource reduction etc etc so all these elements are related to make it production processes more environmentally friendly and the theory will tell you what if you are more environmentally friendly in your products processes and service actually you are going to be more efficient so I will show you in some of the later research that we have done that the more environmentally friendly companies are the more profitable they will be so actually there is an alignment between these two elements so there is not contradiction in any of those ones this a little bit of the research that me and my team have been doing on the area of te production I will not be explaining this because every single one of this be a two hour stock from my side so that's not intention so I'm just will be picking randomly picking some of them for example that one which I conducted with some colleagues from Brazil and from Morocco so basically what we did it was to identify some manufacturing principles what is lean manufacturing I will be mention it later on but since I am now talking about Le I will tell you lean was developed by Toyota in the 1950s and lean management or lean manufacturing is all about reducing waste implementing Justin Town implementing Kaman implementing Bok etc etc all these approaches H help companies to reduce wayte so we look at some of those principles with C production principles and develop a benchmarking method that companies could use to actually understand whether in their production process processes they are sustainable or not and we were able to test that method in some companies in Brazil and in some companies in Euro as well then if I look at that one industry 4.0 I mean possibly most of you have heard about that term industry 4.0 we are living now in the fourth Industrial Revolution in the digitalization era a lot of companies are moving into the digitalization of the operation how do they do that well basically implementing what we call industry 4.0 technology some example of those are artificial intelligence or blockchain for example or simulation or the 3D printing or additive manufacturing etc etc digital twins a lot of companies are bringing all that technology to the operations now what we were looking at in this particular research it was looking at whether industry 4.0 enablers also help companies to more easily Implement clean production and or circular economy practices as well again I'm not going to be talking about what methodology would follow and why is valid or why Val etc etc that's not the point but just to show you a bit of the research that me and my team people you know like Simon my P stent W and my my my team are doing J in that particular particular area um another Evolution that we have kind of help to contribute to as operation managers we have moved from traditional Supply change management into what is called Green Supply change management and what is green Supply change management well green Supply change management is exactly the same as the traditional Supply change management but now we are injecting that sustainability or environmental sustainability into the activities that we do when we manage our supply chains I mean some example of that for for example could be let's say when we Source raw materials looking and making sure that our raw materials are sustainable making sure that they produce low pollution when we talk about for example distribution logistic big area of opportunity for us to advance because it's one of the main contributors to CO2 emission so making sure that actually we are or optimize all this distribution uh processes as well so again what I'm trying to show you is how our profession has contribut to address this problem so and how we have taken some of the traditional Concepts and readapt them to bring that environmental element into perspective so this a little bit of the research that me and my team have been doing H in terms of green Supply change management for example that one L I already talk about Lin green practice and process innovation practices so once that we put them together do they actually help companies don't Fe their supply change well I can tell you that based on that study yes company that actually are able to implement all those three practices will be more environmental sustainable in their supply chains than companies that have not and it's a little bit part of the research this one in particular is a bit more optimization and you know mathematical modeling and those kind of things as well but all with the idea of understanding how all those aspect will contribute to make our supply change more sustainable Evolution and this is what I was mentioning so basically we got a huge opportunity Logistics I mean if we want a product to be move we need to physically move it I mean if it is produced in China and then it's going to be sold in the UK we'll have the technology where basically the product is there disappear and then suddenly appear in the UK or we produce it in Mexico and we want to send it to the US so we don't have the technology where it is appear in Mexico and appear in the US out of nowhere so we need to physically move it and our transportation modes are based on the combusting engine and the combusting engine produce a lot of different gases so we got a massive opportunity in here and we have try actually to address that that issue from moving from traditional logistic into green logistic so what is Green Logistics well you got the definition in there but green logistic is is basically making our logistic processes Greener by looking for more efficient ping uh optim optimizing Our Roots as well optimizing our loading and downloading us product etc etc so once more we are trying to bring the environmental element into our logistic processes this is what I always tell the students especially when I go and talk to them abroad you know like the I IM shilong students many of them are going to be the managers and actually they are going to be part of their government in the future because once you go to India and you got the iims basically you got the cream of the cream you got the best students in India when I was to shilom they were telling me who said you know how many application we have last year for our NBA I said no idea well we have 3.4 million applications H for our NBA you know how many students we receive no idea so we receive 250 so we got the cream of the cream and that's why I tell the students you are going to be the next leader of your industries you are going to be the next you know people in government in your country in your regions and these are problems that actually you can start looking at how to address you may not have the background of being an engineer or operation manager but still so you can facilitate in our profession actually that you know to try to look for new ways or in no ways or more efficient way of doing things so we can green our the supply chain now if I talk about listic in particular we bought the traditional forward Logistics what is forward Logistics well forward Logistics and you can see in that very simple thrwing we extract raw material then that raw material is transported to the factories the factories produce on product then that produ one that is finished it distributed to the retailers and then we customers go and basically buy it from the TCO we buy it from cies etc etc whatever we are buying as a product now we bought the reverse one and what is the reverse one so we call it when just like that reverse Logistics I can tell you that if we go back 10 years ago R logistic was not that popular but now that we have e-commerce so R logistic had become very very popular I mean my wife is fan of buying things online and some I like this dress no it doesn't fit very well no it's not what I thought so I will return it so actually there is a inverse logistic process to take back that product to the manufacturer etc etc and you might be thinking yes and how is that environmental sustainable well actually reverse Logistics is not environmental sustainable on its own but it's an enabler of environmental sustainability and it support actually the concepts of circular economy how do that support it well at the end of a product like cycle rather than disposing it and throw it away what can you do with it well basically at some point you can recondition the product and continue using it if it is not working anymore so you can send it for repair and then you get it back already repair you can use it again rather than throwing it away or you can remanufacture the product as well so but in order for us to do that one obviously the product needs to come from the consumer back to some of the players of the supply chains and because of that reason we require a reverse logistic process so once more reverse logistic processes from my point of view are not environmentally friendly person but they contribute to it so they are key player in that I mean an example of manufacturing I mean I can tell you that mobile phone that I put in there just be checking my time it's a manufactur one so what that means that somebody didn't want it anymore instead of throwing it away so basically there was a company that was interested in it he that company took the mobile phone they tested they possibly did some adjustment in there and it was almost new and they they put itel so what is my benefit as a customer that instead of that one costing 700 it cost me300 and for what I wanted it g me exactly the same service so he's helping a company to make some profit and if the company making profit is providing employment and if he is providing employment that is economic development on the positive size of the environment know someone did not thrw away that one but actually we extended the use of that product and that is enabled by rers logistic processes and that is something that nowadays we operation managers work a lot on this is an example of some research that I have been doing on reverse logistic process this particular one is again very o and what that means I mean when we say om we are talking about operation management the Strategic size the soft size when we talk about o we're talking about operation research much more mathematical optimization algorithms etc etc is not my main strengths actually I'm not that clever to to be doing things like that one but I I got people that actually does it for me or does it with me so I'm still able to do some type of research in that particular area of optimization etc etc and this is when we get to the point of circular economy I mean another PO for what is circular economy well first of all I need to explain very briefly what linear economy is what is a linear economy well linear economy is the economic model that we are mainly using nowadays so basically we extract some uh raw material we produce something with the raw material once the product has been produced we distribute it then we sell it and somebody will use it and at some point that product is not useful anymore we thrw it away and actually the economy says yes this is a successful this is a business model that work however there is a condition for it to work it me the natural resources have to be unlimited and they have to be cheap and we know that that is not the case oil gas and many other resources are not renewable so this model that actually we are mainly using in our societies are not sustainable or over the future then some economies from the United Kingdom came and proposed the concept of circular economy and once more I remember thre par on doing a lot of research and on circular economy at that point and what is circular economy well basically what I was mentioning before so instead of a product getting it CH of Life uh being thrown into the Landfield or to be disposed of trying to see what we can do to actually extend his life cycle so it doesn't go to the Landfield uh so it can benefit more people we don't need to produce another product because this is still being used uh now circular economy has become something that many governments believe could be a good strategy to address the problem if you look at China for example a lot of the environmental policies that have been deployed were formulated and deployed in China are around the concept of circular economy if you look at the European Union as well there is a lot a lot of policies that go around circular economy in the UK as well we got good faith about circular economy because of that reason if you look at some of the research Council esrc psrc and many other there is a lot of funding to do research in circular economy so again there is a lot a lot of fi in this concept and obviously we operation managers have taken the concept of circular economy and use it to what we do so nowadays we got the concept of circular Supply change or also called close loop Supply change as well again the concept is an economic one but then we have taken it and adapting it to our using Supply chains to make them more environmentally friend now if we are not talking about Supply change but we are talking about processes now we got a concept of what is called circular production system so it's not entire Supply change but also I can look into a specific processes of companies and then see how we can make them circular so actually instead of being disposing some of the ways of some of the produ how can I recirculate it into my processes or the process of all companies that is called industrial symbiosis what is a waste for me could be raw material for another industry or for another company so that is being circular and again what I'm trying to show you is how we operation manager have taken those Concepts to address this environmental problem that we have very very popular concept again this data is not very current but it doesn't really matter because the tring is exactly the same there is a lot of funding for Research into circular economy there is a lot of policies that have been formulated and implemented based on circular economy if we look at academic Publications for example I mean these are just some examples of special issues in journals around the world that are about circular economy that one I had the opportunity of leading that particular special issue as well what I'm trying to show you is how popular circular economy is nowadays the Fate that government and companies andent have on that particular approach and how we have adapted we operation manager to actually use it in our supply change or on our logistic processes this a little bit of the research that me and my team have been doing on the circular economy that one 2018 but actually it was accepted 2013 so very very new the concept was at that time and we were simply trying to investigate H some of the awareness of circular economy do and companies in Africa know about circular economy this one it was practically based in Africa if they do have they implemented if they have implemented what circular economy practices they have implemented what result they have been obtaining etc etc so a bit of the research on that particular area I remember that paper that we published with Simon and and Aton as well from my team being here so basically we develop a tool that P companies to measure their circularity at the end of the day he just a questionary that manufacturing smmes could take and they can look at the questionary and at the end they will get a kind of a score and that score uh is link to show where they are and basically we develop that tool and if I talk about the methodology well we conceptually developed it from the literature and then basically we pass it through adelfi studies so experts could criticize our tool and then we could do changes into that tool and then one that we had the tool already verified then we valida it in a company in Mexico as well once more is just a little example of some of the research that we are doing in this case on circular economy more research on circular economy that one in particular in the mining sector I mean yeah you could say well circular economy companies struggle to implement circular economy prati practices because X Y and Z yeah but does that apply to every single industry the same problem that a manufacturing for example electronic manufacturing have to implement circular economy would it be the same as the problem that a food processing company has or the same problems that for example a service company have so sometime we need to contextualize our research so we could understand much better than in more detail some of this concept and this is what we did particularly in the mining sector this one was developed with some colleagues in AAS Calientes in Mexico AAS centes is the the smallest state in Mexico but is very very strong uh and very rich I would say because it got a very strong car manufacturing sector and Industry in there I remember that I had the opportunity in 2016 of taking from the UK with some funding from the British Council 15 researchers so I selected 15 early career researchers and took the was centes and the Mexican part selected 15 early career researches from Mexico and we had a onewe workshop over there once more funded by the British ccil and as part of the activity that we did it was a visit to Nissan that has a huge manufacturing plant in our Scali is absolutely beautiful state-ofthe-art plant in there and obviously they talk about a lot about the environmental practices and technology that they have implemented as well so this study in particular was basing that very powerful industry in I was C in Mexico trying to understand the relationship between Echo Innovation practices and circular economy particularly within the context of the automotive sector more research into circular economy as well that we have been conducted some of them related to what I was mentioning all the digital technology industry 4.0 technology as well um more research into circular economy very very popular I was saying and I got people like Simon who became an expert on the circular economy uh his PhD it was about the circular economy and we propose a concept that is called c l which means circular L and it was accepted for publication in December in a top R Journal so that's that's that's very good because it's Simon research uh good paper as well etc etc that will help us with our rest circular economy as well apply from the point of view and the length of our area of operation management very very quickly another of the concepts that have evolved is that one in that is telling me say we have spent already 50 minutes um talking so I can get very very passionate about this and I was telling cam well I can do this cam in 20 minutes or in two hours so please tell me and he said when about 50 minutes I'm going to start going a bit faster I will yeah that was a of the points I that do not talk that fast is just me but I hope that the still is kind of clear what I'm trying to to put forward um so L I already talk about Lan so manufacturing developed by Toyota and then at some point people say well Le helps companies to achieve all that but it doesn't bring the environmental part so it was the concept of green l so Point put together so Le principles and green principles to together with Lan manufacturing you got link then you got Six Sigma Six Sigma was developed by Toyota in the 1980s by Motorola uh and then he was put together because Le had some limitations Six Sigma had some limitations so now we got the concept of L Six Sigma then somebody came with the idea of green Ling which is another adaptation of green Ling and this is something that had been close to my heart since the time when I was discussing it with Le with Ming Le and this is a paper that I put in 2015 and it's basically a latory r view and at that point there was very little about green Le so I was trying to show what resarch had been conducted in the area so everything that you can see in here every single number is a paper so the more number that you can see the more paper had existed or had been done or the more research in that particular area and I remember that I was in Sri Lanka at some point several years ago and I was invited to deliver a kinot speech in a conference and they say it is another big conference just around the corner do you want to be a kot speaker know thank you very much yes please go but they took me there and I saw the conference it's a built environment I said what am I going to be talking about people in the buil environment it's not my area I don't know so you want talk to them about something so I was talking about some aspect of what I am mentioning to you right now and when when I show them this I say guys GRE apply in your industry gets very little res so how can you use green link principles to actually embed them in your construction processes is it possible is it not possible what limitations can you find what do you require to do that there is plenty of opportunity for you to do research in that particular area something that I I mentioned to them um then at some point we look at the effect of Le manufacturing on environmental performance I can tell you that according to research companies that have implemented Le manufacturing will always be more environmentally friendly that companies that have not just by default even without knowing it or with without one thing so all these are L approaches and tools total productive maintenance is one Val stre mapping is another one I will not explain them and this is the impact that they would have on these environmental performance measures so it's something that we actually stud and that we came as a conclusion and well all this has been already published in good Journal as well um a bit of the research that we have done similarly to investigate the practices and the impact of Le on the environment the previous one and was very conceptual and white based research survey with expert this one is actually to cases study we were investigating exactly the same but now using a case study approach so we investigate in some companies in Italy and the result that we obtain were exactly the same as the previous one companies that have implemented L will be more environmentally friendly that companies that have not more research on green L that we have been conducting as well over the years with people you know from a lot of different places then one day I woke up and said so you got Le then you got Sigma then you got Sigma then you got so what about Sigma why not and then I started just you know kind of conceptually looking at okay what are the limitation of these what are the limitation of that etc etc and if I put them together can I overcome those limitations so I dedicated a few weeks a few months you know thinking on those kind of things and at some point I brought that paper which was also publish in a in a good Journal talking about how putting together all three approaches could benefit companies um again I will not be discussing things like that when if at some point something like that catch your eyes you can contact me and then we can discuss it I can share the paper etc etc I will be more than ke to collaborate with those that want to collaborate anything related to that just very briefly and to finish very quickly this is a tool that was developed for ly it's called bar stream Maring very simple developed by Toyota in the 196s basically what you put in here is a representation of a manufacturing process every single one of these is an activity that all together will produce a problem valy stream mapping is used by companies to identify where you can find waste in the process as simple as that but waste of what time then what me and my team did at some point it was to take that tool and to readapt it instead of being looking at some of the traditional metrics such as cycle time you know how fast the Machine Works change over time so if you are producing one product and then you want to produce product V so you need to change the format of the company how long of the of the machine how long it takes you to do that change over so these are the traditional metrics that link would be looking at so we took the tool and readapted to now consider those environmental metrics so now we were looking for environmental wayte as simply as opposed to simply be looking for the traditional efficiency ways is something that we did I had the opportunity of actually testing that little tool in some companies in Peru and one think is the tool so this is the tool that you can use yes but another story is how you use it and how you implement it so because the tool could be very good let's say very effective but if you not it or use it effectively it might not work so then as part of our research we have produced several approaches that would help the companies to actually effectively use an Implement that tool as well and we have the fortune of uh actually testing this implementation framework of the environmental value stream mapping in some companies in South America in Peru in particular this is another approach that we um produce that we propose for companies to implement environmental vry mapping this was tested in some companies in Morocco I mean because I do a lot of work with a lot of different companies and colleagues around the world so it give me the opportunity of testing these models um this is another approach that we proposed all these had been published as well so we can claim to that they can vot to the ref etc etc so we're taking all the boxes of the of the wood research um so and finally this another of the tool this one in particular um I'm I'm very proud of it was avel with some from the un mon Mexico with my colleague Professor Bernard so basically H we develop a similar pool to the one that I was mentioning plus an approach but this one was particularly useful for logistic companies the other ones were for manufacturing so this one is something that a Logistic Company could take and actually use an Implement to identify in their logistic processes where they have in environmental wayte and we actually were able to test it in vhl in montere Mexico which is the third largest uh city in Mexico and the result that we obtained it was a massive massive Improvement it was actually one of the strong elements I would say that we use in the impa case that the ref that we put forward and left for the previous one the development of that tool the implementation of that tool and then the demonstration in a practical manner that actually the tool work for DHL Mexico and just to finish the the talk have been more than 50 minutes uh some conclusion very quickly environmental degradation is actually the most critical Challenge and danger that humankind is currently facing once more hopefully after this 50 something minutes you cont that I mean it's a huge huge challenge that we have now that challenge has come because of an industrial and economic development which is positive but it needs to be sustainable um government and organization have started to take action to address the problem I mean I have show you a lot of approaches uh a lot of tools that have evolved to try to address the problem so if I could answer again that question I would say yes we have tried to address the problem now in particular evidence suggest that supply chain have significant word to address environmental issue yes and we got still a lot a lot of problems and by no means we are close to fully address it but we have started to do that again if we go back 15 years ago when I started in Academia there was nothing at all of this so after think now there is plenty of research plenty of Interest not only from Academia but from governments and companies but still we need to do much more with that one I mean as operation managers we need to design more more e friendly products Pro production and transportation systems and what I always tell the student on when I or when I give my you know lectures I mean especially for the young people that go to Industry I mean our profession of operation management is a very powerful one so we can somehow our societies influence government and influence societies what actually we can change our mind uh towards addressing that problem because it's a very very serious one and it's something I tell my student when you got me you need to always be thinking on environmental aspect yes you want your company to be economically successful yes you want to grow the company yes you want to maximize profit but why is the impact on the environment of what you are doing something that you need to consider because if you don't do that one then the next Generations might suffering it and a lot of people someone say say yes you talk a lot about environmental sustainability and yes you you look like kind of passionate in that field ETA Etc why do you do that one and H well as I mentioned at the very end so I think that we all have compelling resource very powerful reason for doing that and for me you already know it so is that reason I mean this told guys and I was telling you so if our generation is not going to be affected for this well possibly their generation will and their their generation is not affected because they were very very lucky and somehow they will not accept affected then the following generation might and if not the following generation so at some point we will have a big big issue that needs to be T and for me that is the main reason as to why I do kind of plenty of research in this particular area and why I feel very very confident well very passionate not confident very passionate about working in this area does it work anymore what yeah thank you so much

Jose Arturo Garza-Reyes' Inaugural Lecture: Environmental Challenge & Sustainable Supply Chains video

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