Achieving Sustainability through Poultry Supply Chain

Abstract
Poultry industries are becoming more approachable to the economic, social and environment issues for the society and its people. Now days, industrialists are using supply chain concepts more efficiently to reach such credentials. The poultry industry in Bangladesh, which is the main focus in this research paper, covers a long forward and reverse supply chain along with dealing various kinds of stakeholders. The focal perception is that these chains may able to exploit advantages in attaining economic, social and environmental benefits by utilizing mainstream products and waste resources. The objectives of this paper are to review related literature and develop a supply chain model for the poultry industry. Later, the model tested using real data of a poultry case industry to reveal the benefits of supply chain over society, economy and the environment. Keywords: Economic, Social, environment, Reverse Supply Chain, Poultry

Introduction
Supply chains and sustainability are intricately related matters in the business dome. Environment, society, and economic performance are related to sustainability (Elkington 2004). Industries are under tremendous pressure by stakeholders regarding sustainability practices. Society wants to see that industries are concerned with and invest money from their profits to preserve the interest of surrounded people for the sake of economic, social and environmental improvement. Bangladesh is developing countries having huge population, poverty and environmental problems. Poultry farmers do not have adequate technical knowledge on maintaining sustainable operation, which may add values for the society. It is an obvious challenge to incorporate sustainability concepts in existing industrial operation to get benefited to the society. A significant research gap in this area exists as researchers have done only a few related works. This gap has motivated an approach of empirical testing of a model that considers both reverse supply chains and environmental issues of the existing poultry industry in Bangladesh.

Research Gap and Justification

This study takes both a theoretical and a practical focus within the poultry industry of Bangladesh. The study utilizes existing knowledge in the field of supply chain and enhances and augments this knowledge by implementing sustainability issues. Countries like Bangladesh struggle to operate their livestock businesses with zero environmental hazards. Moreover, they have long experience of economic and social instability especially in employment, education and industrialization. Strong awareness is budding in favour of implementing sustainability and waste management through 3R (reuse, recycle, reduce) (Srinivas 2007) at the industry level. Lack of scientific knowledge on waste management results in tons of poultry wastages being discarded in the lowlands, rivers and vacant lands.
SHAMSUDDOHA 1

As a result, environment issues are increasingly important because of population pressures, limited land resources, food crises and drastic climate changes (Shamsuddoha, 2011). A substantial research justification exists in the implementation of a proper supply chain framework to this particular industry operation. This research proposes a simulation based model for the poultry industry which includes the concept of reverse and forward supply chains along with sustainability (Social, economic and environment issues). The proposed simulation model will be able to examine economic, social and environmental impacts in Bangladesh society. Moreover, this study observes the implications and benefits of various inputs in this industry rather experimenting in the real life.

Research Design
This study covers a literature review on sustainability, triple bottom line, 3R, forward and reverses supply chain and the Bangladesh poultry industry. Both primary and secondary information have been used in this study. Primary information was collected in November 2011 mainly through in-depth interviews with the sample respondents from the poultry case industry. This research used in-depth interviews and observations to gain insights and develop a sustainable environment friendly poultry supply chain model. The total respondents included the top eight executives from reputed poultry industries in Bangladesh. The respondents were nominated based on their widespread understanding and experience. Secondary information was collected from various books, referral journals, conference papers, statistical yearbooks and company record and reports. This study adopted a positivist ontology, empirical epistemology and quantitative methodology based on real supply chain cases of poultry processes. The design science methodology was chosen for this study. Design science is concerned with "devising artefacts to attain goals (Simon, 1969). DSR is based on build and evaluate an artefact of a model (March & Smith, 1995). Here, an artefact means designing and developing soft or hard objects that can meet specific purposes and goals (Venable, 2006a, 2006b). A simulation package was used as a tool to analyse poultry processes in order to investigate the research objectives. The simulation package SIMUL8 (version 17) was used to build and conduct trivial analyses of existing poultry processes in order to investigate the research objectives.

Significant Literature
Diverse definitions offered in existing supply chain literature, which has gained intense recognition. The supply chain term is increasingly used by logistics professionals that encompass every effort involved in producing and delivering a final product, from the suppliers supplier to the customers customer (Quinn 1997). Supply chain also links the partners in one string including internal departments and the external partners and this includes suppliers, carriers, third-party companies, product end-of-life, and recovery processes at end-of-life (Linton, Klassen, and Jayaraman 2007; Lummus and Vokurka 1999; Kocabasoglu, Prahinski, and Klassen 2007; Prahinski and Kocabasoglu 2006). The concept of 3R also refers reduces, reuse and recycle in an operation. These ideas are applied to the entire lifecycle of products and services from design and extraction of raw materials, to transport, manufacture, use, dismantle and reuse, and disposal (Srinivas 2007; Gungor and Gupta 1999). On the other hand, the most acceptable sentiment of sustainability is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs (WCED 1987). Sustainability focuses on ecological issues in conjunction with implied
SHAMSUDDOHA 2

acknowledgment of social and economic concerns (Jennings 1995). Corporate personnel are under pressure to follow dynamic supply chains concepts that addresses social and environmental concerns (Klassen and Vachon 2003). The reverse supply chain is similarly related to the concept of recycle, reuse and reduce (3R) and can be applied to utilize industrial wastes. In contrast, the forward supply chain (FSC) can create a smooth distribution channel that accommodates new employments and economic benefits for society. Both the concepts can be used for economic sustainability. The key literatures show that number of studies conducted in the field of supply chains. However, literatures pertaining to supply chain and sustainability along with poultry industry are relatively scarce in the livestock sector in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh Poultry and Sustainability

As an important sub-sector of livestock production, the poultry industry of Bangladesh plays a significant role in economic growth and employment creation (Shamsuddoha and Sohel 2008). Poultry plays a key role in the countrys economy through its direct and indirect involvement for about 73% of people living in rural areas. Bangladesh has a long history of poultry rearing under traditional backyard farming practices (Reneta 2005). Poultry rearing is dominated by backyard local chickens (Desi or local), which mostly live through a natural scavenger system (Nielsen 2007). Poultry is also one of the alternative income generating activity for the rural poor people in Bangladesh (Shamsuddoha and Sohel 2004). The poultry industry, a fundamental part of animal production, is committed to supplying the nation with a cheap source of good quality nutritious animal protein in terms of meat and eggs (Shamsuddoha 2010). This industry does significantly contribute to society in terms of economic, employment generation, and protein supply. In the early nineties, a number of private parent stock and breeder farms shifted their operations to produce commercial day-old broiler and layer chicks (Reneta 2005). Thousands of poultry farms have grown up through private ownership without getting adequate scientific knowledge on it. Lots of poultry owners practice the triple bottom line framework of sustainability (social, economic and environment) but not in an organized way (Shamsuddoha 2010).

Yet again, survival, resilience and efficiency are described as environmental, economic and social factors that underpin sustainability (Peacocka and Shermanb 2010). Sustainability must be implemented with the existing farm operation to achieve actual sustainable growth in their production and operation. Bangladesh poultry industry does not maintain a structured sustainable operation based on the triple bottom line of social, economic and environment dimensions. To achieve these three factor successes in the poultry industry in Bangladesh, the researcher focused on the total poultry operation and split it up into three phases similar to sustainability concept as described above. Internationally, there are numerous large companies applying reverse supply chain concepts in considering environment, customer satisfaction and so forth. These practices are not always non-profit oriented. In the poultry industry, there are few opportunities for product retrieval, return or reconditioning in the usual sense, as most chicken products are perishable (Shamsuddoha 2011b). However, there are immense opportunities to reuse or recycle poultry wastage. By reusing poultry wastage, industries can make valuable products like fertilizers, biogas, pillows, charcoal, and bakery items. This kind of wastage conversion will help to maintain a sustainable environment
SHAMSUDDOHA 3

(Shamsuddoha 2011a). Until now, sustainability, Environment, FSC and RSC have not received proper attention by the poultry stakeholders.

Sustainable Forward and Reverse Supply Chain in the Poultry Industry

Industries are now structuring different supply chain model to accommodate sustainability, 3R, triple bottom line, forward and reverse supply chain in their existing operation. These concepts are being implemented due to sustainability concern, environmental recovery, customer satisfaction and government pressure (Shamsuddoha 2011b). The researchers developed a simulation-based model that accommodates forward and reverse supply chain in light of sustainability and triple bottom line theory. Figure one in appendix shows three different wings of conventional, forward and reverse supply chain in the case industry, which was modeled using Simul8 a simulation-modeling package. The Mainstream component includes the general supply chain of the poultry industry that starts from parent (mother of chicks) and ends up with the finished product of meat and eggs. The forward supply chain component of this simulation model consists of distributor, farmers, and middlemen of processed and mature birds. This is the how employment and other socio-economic benefits can be achieved based on the volume of bird transacted or reared.

Various bi-products can be made from poultry wastages for home and industry use that is socially, economically and environmentally viable within the Bangladesh context. This approach has the potential of creating new windows of opportunities and creates small and medium enterprises that will contribute towards more employment opportunities (Shamsuddoha 2011b). Poultry owners are currently integrating foreign technology and breed in their commercial farms and this has the potential to make the industry more profitable and sustainable. There are still huge opportunities to utilize poultry wastages, as there are currently not many farmers capitalizing on waste management practices. Poultry rearing along with forward and reverse supply chain and sustainability concepts can play a significant role in keeping the environment intact, generating income through making byproducts from poultry wastage, eliminating poverty, empowering rural women, enhancing nutritional needs, providing food and protein security (Shamsuddoha 2011b). All these areas have great potential to meet social, economic and environmental aspects that will make the industry and society more sustainable (Shamsuddoha 2011c).

The reverse supply chain components consists of managing poultry wastes as it is evident that different poultry wastes including litter, feed waste, feathers, broken and rejected eggs and intestines are available. Among those, poultry litter can be used for artificial charcoal, fertilizer, bio gas, and fish feed; feathers can be used as raw materials for the bed industry; broken eggs and intestines can be used for the bakery and fish industry respectively (Shamsuddoha 2011a). This aspect of waste conversions helps to maintain sustainable an environment in a profitable way (Shamsuddoha 2011a, 2011d). The participating farms adopt a range of environmental practices that help the poultry farm remain free from diseases and allows it to achieve economic and environmental benefits through creating by-products from wastes (Shamsuddoha 2011a). The simulation model is efficient enough to evaluate the volume of wastes that can be used as the input of by-products. Industrialist can simulate the
SHAMSUDDOHA 4

different distributions in various work centers like parents, hatchery, broiler, distributors, farmers and other processing centers to gain a better understanding of potential outcomes and to gain insight with respect to potential opportunities.

Real Life Model in Simulation Environment

The researchers collected historic data from case farm and gave provided input to the different objects or artifacts. Such artifacts designed as work entry, queue, work center, work, and work exit. In this model, a parent is used as work entry that produces on an average of 140,000-hatcheable eggs/week. These eggs go directly to the queue for hatch in a hatchery. There are 80 incubators available to hatch these eggs by rotation. Twenty-one days are needed to hatch eggs that then produce broiler chicks. Day old broiler chicks are called day old chicks (DOC). DOC supplied to the distributors to distribute in different division of Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi and Khulna. Numbers of sub-distributors are employing under each distributor house and each sub-distributor has attached with bunch of ultimate farmers. These farmers rear to grow up the day old chicks (DOC). After 25-35 days, DOC becomes mature chickens, which is ready for supply to the open market and further processing industry.

Reject eggs, feather, culled birds and litter are generating after a certain interval in the process. All these maintained an individual supply chain to produce different by-products. The participant farms procure and process several by-products of poultry litter, broken and damaged eggs and culled birds. Biogas, artificial charcoal and fertilizer generates from litter. Different technologies and methods are using to recycle, reuse and reduce the various poultry wastes. There are so many KPIs in the result area of simul8 package. In this paper, the researchers included only a few of them. There are various ways to compare and contrast the objects/artifacts results and these include graphs, pie charts, random runs, trials run etc. This model runs through five random trials and table one in appendix represents one, three and five trial and the average of all results. Different trial runs give different results with variations that might be useful for the decision makers. Slight variation can sometime save time, money and other resources. The simulation model provides many indicators in the KPI zone such as waiting, working, block and stop percentages of an object, standard deviation, average queue time, minimum and maximum queue time, completed jobs, blocked jobs etc. Entrepreneurs or decision makers in using the information can easily find out where to tune their industry by using the virtual model. This kind of model run does not require real life experiments. It is noted that researchers avoid actual travel time, monetary unit and individual measurement unit initially. The model was run through entering number of eggs as throughput and broiler chicken as output. Within the process, it assesses the number of employment generation and unit of various by-products. The model simulated for a week and units are measured based on throughput. Note that this model also can able to calculate carbon emission by power consumption and so forth.

SHAMSUDDOHA

Further Direction and Conclusions

The concepts of forward and reverse supply chain are related to social benefits, environment protection and its sustainability. It is extremely important for the farmers to know what dimensions and impacts are laying on their operations. Looking at the process as suggested in this study not only utilizes poultry wastes but also helps to achieve sustainability. The study did an initial investigation by using a small sample of historic data. Future research could be extended to test the entire process model to understand the workings of the total industry operation and its optimality. This model was developed based on three aspects of social, economic and environment. Thus, this kind of simulation model can able to simulate any kind of operation by giving proper data input. As a result, various experiments can be done in the virtual model to find out required and optimum output. These outputs will definitely consider social, economic and environmental impacts over both society and industry.

Table 1: KPIs of Different Objects of Poultry Model

Simulation Object Broiler Distribution Performance Measure Waiting % Working % Completed Jobs Waiting % Working % Completed Jobs Items Entered Average queue Size Maximum queue St Dev Items Entered Items Entered Items Entered Items Entered Average St Dev. Items Entered Completed Job Number Entered Completed Jobs Completed Job Run 1 0.0047 99.995 139919 21.36 78.63 110062 108760 80398.57 393000 1.4923 532919 5392 2142 8215 2454 0.93606 26170 33455 140030 137636 1572

3 0.00388 99.995 140104 21.41 78.58 110082 108724 80115.1 4 392704 1.49126 532808 5423 2177 8330 2479.71 0.93296 25984 33361 140070 137631 1617

5 0.00511 99.994 139966 21.51 78.48 109859 108572 79833.4 2 391933 1.48789 531899 5488 2152 8376 2492.57 0.94371 26132 33671 139999 137497 1599

Average 0.00464 99.995 139969. 4 21.46 78.53 110000 108679 80102 392526 1.4892 532496 5471.8 2150.4 8324.6 2481.14 0.94143 26096.4 33528.2 140058 137615 1588.6

95% 0.00547 99.996 140091.55 21.54 78.61 110128.85 108786.29 80390.38 393112.9 1.49225 533055.15 5560.30 2171.87 8424.45 2522.32 0.95257 26222.020 33687.858 140122.78 137702.01 1665.58
6

Chicks Distributors Queue for Broiler Queue for Broiler Distribution

Queue of Bird Feather Queue of Poultry Litter Queue of Reject Eggs Queue of Un-hatched eggs and Culled Chicks Restaurants Parent Hatchery Employments

SHAMSUDDOHA

Figure 1: Sustainable Poultry Supply Chain Model in Simulation Environment

References Elkington, J. 2004. "Enter the Triple Bottom Line in Henriques, A. And Richardson, J. (Eds); the Triple Bottom Line: Does It All Add Up?" Earthscan: 1-16. Gungor, A., and S. M. Gupta. 1999. "Issues in Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing and Product Recovery: A Survey." Computers and Industrial Engineering 36 (4): 811-853. Jennings, P D. 1995. "Ecologically Sustainable Organizations: An Institutional Approach." The Academy of Management review 20 (4): 1015-1052. http://sfx.lis.curtin.edu.au/sfx_local?sid=google&auinit=PD&aulast=Jennings&atitle= Ecologically%20sustainable%20organizations%3A%20an%20institutional%20approa ch&title=The%20Academy%20of%20Management%20review&volume=20&issue=4 &date=1995&spage=1015&issn=0363-7425.
SHAMSUDDOHA 7

Klassen, R. D., and S. Vachon. 2003. "Collaboration and Evaluation in the Supply Chain: The Impact on Plant-Level Environmental Investment." Production & Operations Management 12 (3): 336-352. Kocabasoglu, Canan, Carol Prahinski, and Robert D Klassen. 2007. "Linking Forward and Reverse Supply Chain Investments: The Role of Business Uncertainty." Journal of Operations Management 25: 1141-1160. Linton, Jonathan D, Robert Klassen, and Vaidyanathan Jayaraman. 2007. "Sustainable Supply Chains: An Introduction." Journal of Operations Management 25 (6): 1075 1082. Lummus, Rhonda R., and Robert J. Vokurka. 1999. "Dening Supply Chain Management: A Historical Perspective and Practical Guidelines." Industrial Management & Data Systems 99 (1): 11-17. Nielsen, Hanne. 2007. Socio-Economic Impact of the Smallholder Livestock Development Project in Bangladesh: Results of the Second Impact Survey. Stamholmen, Denmark. Peacocka, C, and D M Shermanb. 2010. "Sustainable Goat Production: Some Global Perspectives." Small Ruminant Research (89): 70-80. Prahinski, Carol, and Canan Kocabasoglu. 2006. "Empirical Research Opportunities in Reverse Supply Chains." Omega: The International Journal of Management Science 34 (6): 519-532. Quinn, F J. 1997. "Whats the Buzz?." Logistics Management 36 (2): 43-7. Reneta. 2005. Reneta Statistical Yearbook of Bangladesh. Vol. 21. Shamsuddoha, Mohammad. 2010. "A Sustainable Supply Chain Process Model for Bangladeshi Poultry Industry." In Doctoral Students Colloquium 2010, Perth, Australia. Curtin Business School. http://ssrn.com/paper=1702070. . 2011a. "Applying Reverse Supply Chain in the Poultry Industry." In Emerging Research Initiatives and Developments in Business: CGSB Research Forum 2011, Perth, Australia, edited by Therese Jefferson, Mohammad Shamsuddoha and Ellen Young, 159-167. Curtin University. . 2011b. "Building a Conceptual Simulation Supply Chain Model for Sustainable Environment Friendly Poultry Industry." Sustainable Poultry IndustryResearch. Graduate School of Business. Curtin University. Perth. . 2011c. "Reverse Supply Chain Process as Environmental Sustainability in the Poultry Industry of Bangladesh." In Doctoral Colloquium 2011, Perth, edited by Jenny Goodison. Curtin Business School, Curtin University. . 2011d. "Using Reverse Supply Chain (Rsc) Process to Achieve Environmental Sustainability." Sustainable Poultry IndustryResearch. Graduate School of Business. Curtin University. Perth. Shamsuddoha, Mohammad, and Mir Hossain Sohel. 2004. "Problems and Prospects of Poultry Industry of Bangladesh: A Study on Some Selected Areas." The Chittagong University Journal of Business Administration 19: 273-286. http://ssrn.com/paper=1295343. . 2008. "Poultry Rearing - an Alternative Income Generating Activity for Rural Women Development of Bangladesh." The Chittagong University Journal of Business Administration, Bangladesh 20 (1): 119-132. Srinivas, Hari. 2007. The 3r Concept and Waste Minimization. Accessed 10/02/2011, http://www.gdrc.org/uem/waste/3r-minimization.html. WCED. 1987. Our Common Future. New York: Oxford University Press.

SHAMSUDDOHA