The role of environmental and quality management systems in supply chains

This paper explores the impact of environmental and quality management systems on the performance of supply chains. Customers are forcing many companies to introduce a standardized management system, which meets the requirements of ISO 9000, ISO 14000 and the EMAS-Regulation respectively. The advantages of implementing these systems are fewer quality failures, reduced liabilities, an improved cost structure and a higher learning rate, We present a learning curve model, which incorporates the impact of the quality and environmental management system on organizational learning. This is very important for supply chains with members who can potentially have many quality failures or whose processes have a high environmental impact. If these supply chain members can reduce waste in their material and energy flows, then costs may be lowered while demand from environmentally conscious customers is simultaneously increased. In addition, this paper investigates the impact of attempting too many changes simultaneously.