Driving needs: Supply-chain activities can make a significant contribution to meeting utilities' environmental objectives and goals, while acquiring the best-cost materials and services.  With our industry facing major environmental and financial challenges-both short and longer-term, utilities executives must act quickly and decisively in leveraging the capabilities of supply chains.  The opportunity to learn first-hand from leading companies outside our industry that have achieved success in proactively developing and implementing green supply-chain best practices will provide essential knowledge to move quickly and decisively.

Core issues:

• Gaining the commitment and active participation of senior management and all internal stakeholders for the cost-effective acquisition of greener, cleaner materials and services.

• Integrating green supply-chain considerations into all relevant corporate decision-making processes

• Developing specifications that optimally balance supplier product technical features with environmental and cost considerations

• Implementing sustainable supply-chain strategies and initiatives that accomplish the environmental and financial management objectives of both the entire supply chain and individual companies within the supply chain

• Educating the training suppliers on effective green supply-chain corporate policy and management practices and processes

• Developing, communicating and actively managing supplier expectations and scorecards

• Implementing an active verification process for monitoring and holding suppliers accountable for delivering on their green supplier commitments

Supporting issues:

• Counseling suppliers in adoption of prudent environmental ethics policies, responsible health and safety practices, and effective operating practices

• Deploying leading-indicator green supply-chain metrics

• Measuring the shareholder value of green supply-chain activities

• Managing green/clean supply chains as an integrated portfolio

• Developing and implementing a green supply-chain environmental management system

• Making environmentally and financially sound waste disposal, salvage, and recycling decisions

• Guiding and coaching internal and supplier behavioral and cultural change

Candidate best-practices companies: DuPont, Clorox, FedEx, Hewlett-Packard, General Electric, Boeing, Dell Computer, Procter & Gamble
 

Key start-up dates:
September 30, 2010: Launch Team conference-call meeting
November, 2010 - January, 2011: First best-practices meeting

Building a More Productive Error-Free Plant Workforce

"We want to optimize workforce performance, not minimize the number of performers." ...Plant Manager, MillerCoors

Driving needs: Achieving cost-containment and resource-utilization goals are of crucial importance to electric power plant managers even in the best of economic times.  In today's very challenging economic times, the ability to meet these goals can often have a major impact on the future viability of individual power plants.  Meeting these goals requires successfully managing four immediate workforce management challenges--creating an error-free workplace, improving plant workforce performance, replacing an aging workforce, and holding people accountable for results.

Focus issues:

• Propagating an incident/error-free plant workplace

• Implementing the operating discipline, processes and procedures that safeguard against the errors in judgment that can result in an injury, environmental event or equipment failure

• Enabling and empowering plant-floor people to make daily operating decisions that maximize human and capital asset productivity and effectiveness

• Building the organizational infrastructure--functions, teams, location--that facilitate optimal workforce performance

• Engendering individual behavior and a plant culture where employees feel pride of ownership and accountability for workforce efficiency and effectiveness, safe conduct and equipment performance

• Establishing management-hourly workforce collaboration

• Implementing the disciplined processes for replacement and knowledge capture of the aging workforce

• Valuing and rewarding human performance excellence--balancing behavioral and tangible results

Key start-up dates:
October 14, 2010: Launch Team conference-call meeting
January 13, 2011: First best-practices meeting

• Reaching agreement and alignment between support services and line organizations-including information technology, human resources, finance, accounting, supply-chain management, technical services-on critical value-adding issues
• Developing the process for reaching a common understanding of "value"
• Defining cost and non-cost performance metrics
• Describing and establishing the optimal mutually beneficial relationship-customer/supplier, partnership, etc.-between the line organization and the service provider
• Managing the delivery of support services with shrinking and constantly changing resources
• Establishing the processes and practices for holding the provider and client accountable for results
• Adequately balancing the often disparate requirements placed on a given service provider by various internal organizations
• Funding and/or paying for services rendered by either internal or external service providers
• Evaluating and managing outsourcing options
• Overcoming cultural barriers to process-improvement change
• Making the best use, if any, of a "shared services" model