Supply Chain

Stonyfield Shifts to Innovative Supply Chain Management with SupplyShift

Organic dairy producer Stonyfield Farm, Inc. announced this week that it will utilize a new tool to manage its supply chain: SupplyShift™ — a new, cloud-based, supply chain management platform focused on sustainability, but flexible enough to assess any procurement need or supply chain risks.“When it comes to managing environmental and social impact across any business, supply chains are everything,” cited Wood Turner, Stonyfield’s VP of Sustainability Innovation. “The challenge comes in getting diverse suppliers aligned around shared values and leadership aspirations. At Stonyfield, we have high hopes that SupplyShift will be the key to a new phase of innovation for us."

By Sustainable Brands | Published 10 years ago | About a 3 minute read

“When it comes to managing environmental and social impact across any business, supply chains are everything,” cited Wood Turner, Stonyfield’s VP of Sustainability Innovation. “The challenge comes in getting diverse suppliers aligned around shared values and leadership aspirations. At Stonyfield, we have high hopes that SupplyShift will be the key to a new phase of innovation for us."

Large, well-established organizations are constantly feeling the pressure to find efficiencies, reduce risks, and improve social and environmental performance in their supply chains. Even leaders in sustainable business practices are finding that supply chains are the most complex and challenging obstacles to keeping true to their sustainability mission as they grow. SupplyShift opens new opportunities for buyers and suppliers to communicate and create shared value while improving supply chain performance, by offering a fresh approach for companies to support their suppliers in transitioning to more responsible practices.

As a global repository for supplier sustainability information, SupplyShift™ will help businesses thrive environmentally and financially, whether they are already leaders in sustainability seeking to raise the bar, or businesses seeking value in reduced risks, improved efficiency and better communication up and down their supply chains. With SupplyShift, companies can efficiently compare their suppliers’ performance data and provide them with feedback and useful information. Suppliers can respond to buyer performance surveys once, reducing their paperwork burden. More importantly, they can easily see how their performance compares with other, similar suppliers, to create a marketplace for supplier sustainability information. SupplyShift brings shared value to buyers, suppliers and consumers, enabling businesses like Stonyfield to continue to lead the way in reducing environmental impacts, while communicating their priorities and performance to customers and supply chain business partners.

Stonyfield says it is using SupplyShift to focus on suppliers’ energy, water and waste management practices, encouraging them to set targets for reducing environmental impacts and track progress. Their scorecard also assesses whether suppliers’ raw materials present risk to forests, specifically focusing on forest cover conversion to timber, soy, biofuels and palm oil. Collaboration is also a key aspect of their approach; Stonyfield’s supplier scorecard asks how the company can better help suppliers enhance sustainability and achieve targets.

Stonyfield is pushing for improvements in policies that extend far beyond its operations, as well — last year, the company joined hundreds of others in signing Ceres Climate Declaration, which urges federal policymakers to seize the economic opportunity of addressing climate change. The yogurt giant also helped form a new coalition, Companies for Safer Chemicals, to persuade Congress to update the nation's out-of-date and ineffective chemical safety laws, and make a business argument that strong reforms will support industry innovation to create safer, cleaner products.