GLEC Project Highlights the Importance of Improving Logistics-Related GHG Emission Calculations Through Optimizing Data Access and Exchange
Amsterdam, 12 August 2021 - Ramon Huels, Commodity Manager Logistics at Adient, a global leader in automotive seating, spoke to Smart Freight Centre about his recent experience with our Develop your Sustainable Logistics Roadmap training.
What have you learned from the course/what insights have you gained?
The learnings that I got from the course include seeing a structured way in developing a roadmap and also a structured way to work on sustainability topics. We have done sustainability projects already in the past, but adapting the SFC structure is going to be an improvement.
What did you like most?
First of all, the course was very well organized and structured, which is important to be able to capture everything. I appreciated the full scope of information that we received – a part of the presented solutions were already known to us – but especially going into depth with the solutions and combining theory and practical information, based on practical experiences of certain projects information – that was a very good combination. I liked getting lots of additional information about sustainable transport.
How did the training course influence your day to day work?
Influence on resources and timing
I think that the format of the course is also very well structured – let's say not doing the course over 2 or 3 days, but really over 10 weeks, in one and a half hour sessions, helped a lot with integration into the normal day-to-day work. It was great that there were lots of recommendations for reading made.
Influence on day-to-day work
We have already been working for many years on some of these topics. We started to work on the Roadmap in parallel with the training course – and it also helped us to back up the investigations and information that we did before the training course, because hearing and learning this from experts in this field really helped to support us also in internal conversations. Seeing what other companies are already doing is very helpful.
How did the training impact your approach to sustainability and emissions reduction in logistics?
The training impacted our approach through the structured creation of the roadmap to work on sustainability topics - that’s key. That is something that we have already adapted. Before the course, we had already started to report and calculate our freight emissions – that is something that for us was our main starting point.
There were also new insights into topics related to Logistics, such as packaging, demonstrating how important also the internal collaboration within a company is.
How are you using the insights within your own company?
We have been starting to create our own Sustainable Logistics Roadmap, will align this with our overall sustainability targets and increase the awareness for sustainable logistics in our organization.
What was the key takeaway for you from the training?
In short – the structured approach. What I see in large companies – practices will not be changing from one day to the next. Becoming more sustainable is a multiple year journey – you need to keep going. It can be very challenging, but – we know what we do it for...for all of us individually and the future success of our employers.
What would be your message/advice for future participants?
When a participant is registered, that’s already from my perspective the good news, because that person or company is therefore willing to do more in that direction.
Start to use the templates with the roadmap, and try to dig deeper. Really try to test the things that are learned in real life. With testing – for example, when someone is responsible for procurement and talking a lot with Logistics Service Providers, talk about the topics and these solutions. It’s trial and error – or better try and succeed!
What are you changing within your company as a result of the course?
This course is one aspect of the evolving of our company towards more sustainable practices. There is a global work stream in our company currently going on, completely independently from this training course. I would say we are on a good way into a sustainable future.
Would you recommend the course?
Yes!