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Unit of study_

ITLS6202: Sustainable Logistics and Procurement

Procurement of goods and services is an essential business task that has traditionally targeted short-term supply cost reduction. Globalisation and outsourcing creates opportunities for enterprises to better align procurement with longer term corporate strategies. However, this requires collaboration and negotiation within and between organisations, rethinking the role of procurement teams and reconsidering the impacts of sourcing decisions. Stakeholder demands for greater corporate social responsibility require procurement teams to take a strategic approach to spend, category management and sourcing decisions, moving beyond regulatory compliance to facilitate environmentally and socially sustainable outcomes. Ethical and sustainable procurement and logistics creates value for organisations by protecting brand integrity and improving communication, productivity, performance measurement, innovation and supplier diversity. This unit takes a strategic view of procurement, looking beyond the up-front costs and showing how purchasing decisions that consider resilience, entire life cycle costs, environmental and social risks and benefits provide better value. This requires rethinking the involvement of the procurement teams in the design, manufacture, selling and recycling of products and transformation of logistics management practice. Students practice negotiation in realistic industry workshops and gain new insights into effective and persuasive communication for global logistics and supply chain management.

Code ITLS6202
Academic unit Transport and Logistics Studies
Credit points 6
Prerequisites:
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None
Corequisites:
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TLS5020 or ITLS5000 or ITLS5250 or TPTM5001 or SUST5001
Prohibitions:
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ITLS6003

At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:

  • LO1. Integrate and synthesise understanding of a sustainable procurement cycle, including logistics processes, in a variety of industry contexts
  • LO2. Apply a range of research skills to diagnose challenges to implementing sustainable procurement and logistics practice and identify creative solutions to these problems
  • LO3. Devise sustainable procurement and logistic plans that align with corporate strategies of economic, environmental and social sustainability and resilience
  • LO4. Prepare for working in real business environments by working collaboratively with diverse teams, integrating different cultural perspectives in the development of a presentation for an industry audience.
  • LO5. Lead collaborative and cooperative conversations in teams for the development of negotiation strategies and implementation of buyer-supplier negotiations
  • LO6. Demonstrate ethical and social awareness and responsibility in decision-making as expected of procurement and logistics professionals