Sustainable Manufacturing Consulting

Sustainable Manufacturing Consulting

Stay ahead of fast-changing sustainability expectations from buyers, retailers, and consumers

What is Consulting for Sustainable Manufacturing?

Leading manufacturers have always embraced sustainability through waste reduction, lean manufacturing principles, and process optimization.

Meeting today’s enhanced ESG and sustainability demands from buyers, retailers, and consumers requires a new vocabulary, new metrics, and in many cases some form of complex organizational change. Sustainable manufacturing is much more than just resource efficiency or waste reduction in the plant. It encompasses a company’s extended environmental and social impact and how it is managed throughout the business and value chain.

Sustainability planning challenges we help manufacturers overcome:

  • Confusing and contradictory ESG and sustainability terminology that differs across the company boardroom, corporate office, factory floor, and retail environment.

  • Countless sustainability surveys from customers and retailers requiring increasing levels of data, disclosure, staff time, and collaboration to address.

  • Increasing mandates to measure, reduce, and disclose carbon emissions from manufacturing and across the entire supply chain.

  • New expectations on product end-of-life impact driven by a patchwork of State, Federal and international regulations, along with heightened retailer and consumer interest in circularity principles.

The Benefits of Third Partners’ Sustainable Manufacturing Consulting

Third Partners sustainability consultants come from marketing and manufacturing industry backgrounds. We help your company design, implement, and administer continuous improvement plans specific to today’s most critical ESG and sustainability performance challenges.

Taking Action Both Inside & Outside the Plant

With our help, manufacturing leadership teams can effectively leverage sustainability as a differentiator across the entire business, from top level branding and marketing strategy down to the first mile of the global supply chain.

Integrating ESG & Sustainability Initiatives with Pre-Existing Programs

We help manufacturing leaders meet new requirements by evolving traditional approaches rooted in employee engagement, EH&S, total quality management, and lean six sigma systems and metrics.

Earn Recognition From Buyers & Differentiate From Competitors

Raise your standing in surveys, sustainability benchmarking indexes, and similar initiatives from NGOs and industry associations. We help translate a constantly changing vocabulary coming from buyers, retailers and customers into actionable strategies, business KPIs, and performance improvement plans.

Build Progressive, Value-Added Solutions

Stay ahead of stakeholder demands with a comprehensive suite of ESG & sustainability solutions that go far beyond the factory floor to add value to the entire product life cycle from purchase order to end-of-life.

“Change before you have to.”

Additional requirements from retailers, buyers, and consumers require a modern approach to integrating sustainability and ESG principles into manufacturing organizations. The Third Partners team helps manufacturers plan, implement, and proactively prosper through a hands-on approach to sustainable manufacturing consulting.

“Change before you have to.”

Additional requirements from retailers, buyers, and consumers require a modern approach to integrating sustainability and ESG principles into manufacturing organizations. The Third Partners team helps manufacturers plan, implement, and proactively prosper through a hands-on approach to sustainable manufacturing consulting.

Our Hands-On Approach to Sustainable Manufacturing Consulting

1. Internal Engagement and Alignment

Our team gives company leaders clarity and peace-of-mind by facilitating those complicated initial steps of defining ESG and sustainability objectives and deciding where to begin. We offer several kinds of custom executive education and custom training to help leadership achieve internal alignment and to provide critical implementation resources to managers and employees.

2. Governance Strategy

Stakeholders want to see direct lines of accountability, best-in-class KPIs, goals, and execution across each high priority ESG and sustainability issue. We help you implement the policies and procedures that help define, measure, manage and disclose your impact. Effective governance strategies help distribute accountability strategically to the right departments and individual roles while avoiding silos and additional cost centers.

3. Action Plans

From improving workplace inclusiveness to taking meaningful action on carbon emissions, we work with managers on step-by-step action plans to help you make measurable progress on all materially significant ESG and sustainability issues. Our action plans are much more than reports. They contain integrated project management tools and resources to ensure successful implementation.

4. 360-Degree Site Sustainability Audits

We walk the floor and identify opportunities to improve and innovate. Then we look holistically at the whole value chain, from product design to end-of-life. Third Partners has helped manufacturers capture millions of dollars in long term savings related to renewable energy implementation, waste reduction, and supply chain risk avoidance. As independent advisors, we help evaluate the highest yield and most appropriate opportunities for your business.

5. Product & Service Innovation

We work collaboratively with managers to optimize legacy products and services to meet emerging standards from buyers and consumers. Our advisory services help you identify actionable improvements.

Sustainable Manufacturing Consulting Case Study: Regeneron

Regeneron, a leading biopharmaceutical company, sought an independent advisor with subject matter experts to provide scientifically rigorous recommendations for ESG performance in operations, supply chain and manufacturing. Third Partners led a 360° environmental risk and opportunity assessment consisting of discovery and analysis. We then led on-site workshops that engaged over 50 leaders in Ireland and New York to audit the company’s environmental practices in operations, supply chain and manufacturing. Based on the assessment, Regeneron set new ESG goals, established new policies, adopted new technologies and governance mechanisms to take programs to the next level. Regeneron reflected the impacts of this work in their Responsibility Report.

Sustainable Manufacturing Consulting FAQ

In lieu of traditional energy efficiency audits, Third Partners takes a more comprehensive approach to sustainable manufacturing. We look at everything upstream and downstream in your product life cycle, from design to raw material sourcing to product end-of-life. We identify and help execute creative opportunities to add value at each stage of the life cycle. When traditional energy audits are required, we help our clients independently evaluate the energy auditing and analysis solutions with the highest technical rigor and highest return-on-investment for a particular facility. We have helped organizations identify zero cost and government subsidized services along with rebates and incentives.

Meeting today’s enhanced ESG and sustainability demands from buyers, retailers, and consumers requires a new vocabulary, new metrics, and a very well organized action plan. The return-on-investment for companies includes differentiation from competitors, external recognition, operating cost savings, and reduced risk in both direct operations and the indirect supply chain. In many cases, improving performance on environmental and social issues that matter to stakeholders represents a form of complex organizational change and is best facilitated by experienced management consultants such as Third Partners. 

  1. Third Partners helps manufacturers develop, implement, and track new metrics and KPIs that reflect stakeholder priorities on specific environmental and social issues. There are many sources of sustainability and ESG KPIs that manufacturers need help reconciling, streamlining, and implementing more confidently. Success can be measured by improved standing in retailer and customer sustainability rating indexes, enhanced premium pricing power, and improvements in business fundamentals including COGS, gross margin, and EBITDA. 

 

Manufacturers are faced with the challenge of prioritizing the ESG and sustainability issues that matter most to stakeholders. Many companies take on too much, too soon and risk gradual change due to lack of resources, or confusion over what specific terms and initiatives actually mean. Other companies do not take on enough, and expect too much from a basic compliance-driven program. When helping a particular manufacturing company succeed in ESG and sustainability planning, the most important thing we do is to help senior management teams prioritize. Our approach to prioritization and planning includes principles of materiality assessment and may include competitive benchmarking studies and other research to generate new insights. Finally, we package complete ESG and sustainability solutions for manufacturers in the form of stepwise action plans that help the company get from Point A to Point B to where they eventually need to be.  

Contact Third Partners for your sustainable manufacturing consulting needs

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