Why Diversity In Your Supply Chain Matters

Julie Starr • June 10, 2021



In today’s economy, many businesses are identifying diversity as a key priority for their future growth. Alongside other initiatives and corporate social responsibility (CSR), customer increasingly expects the companies they do business with to reflect their own priorities when it comes to ethical, diverse and sustainable business practices. 

Your company might be making huge steps towards improving diversity and inclusion within your own workplace, but how far does that extend into your supply chain? 

With the wealth of information and transparency available on the internet, potential clients will be able to tell if you don’t practice what you preach. So why does ensuring diversity in the supply chain matter? 

Customer expectations

If you think that choosing suppliers comes down solely to price, you’re in for a shock in the future. Consumers have high expectations of the companies they do business with. Younger generations in particular have far less brand loyalty than seen previously. They aren’t afraid to vote with their feet and take their business elsewhere. Focussing on diversity and inclusion only in the context of your own organization is only a superficial fix. 

Companies such as Walmart and IBM have made public commitments to spend a significant portion of their budgets with diverse businesses and those who meet certain sustainability criteria. This is becoming a common company policy in organizations across the world, which recognize the multitude of benefits it can have. 

Using a multitude of consumer research and data enrichment services, you will be able to identify exactly what matters to your target market. 

Talent retention 

The battle to find and retain good employees is one faced by most companies. Yet recent research has shown that employees would consider leaving a company that did not reflect their own personal set of values. Since high employee turnover is indicative of low employee engagement, it’s an issue that needs to be addressed. Better, more engaged employees directly contribute to the success of a company. If you have a diverse supply chain policy in place, make sure that this is communicated to existing employees and stakeholders. 

Profit growth

A growing, diverse population means that companies now actively target minority demographics as potential customers. Additionally, more and more businesses are now set up and run by a more diverse cross-section of people. This economic growth can filter through the supply chain, making businesses more profitable. 

Many organizations are investing in working with diverse suppliers as they realize that they can provide exceptional returns.

Competitive edge

Diversifying your supply chain can develop its competitive advantage by developing new target audiences. Millennials and Genz comprise the most diverse generations in history and they value diversity in the companies they buy from. 

Fostering innovation

Diverse, smaller suppliers, working with larger organizations, often find it easier to innovate and adapt to changes rapidly.  This kind of market agility leads to an innovative culture. Innovation pushes markets forward and opens up new opportunities for everyone involved in the process. 

Key points

By embracing diversity and inclusion beyond your own company can be the foundation of success for your company. Using diverse suppliers can boost profits, open up new target markets to your company. It’s also great for stakeholder management and employee engagement too.

Smart Sensors, Smarter Supply Chains: Enhancing Traceability in Food & Beverage

By Julie Starr • June 20, 2025
In today’s competitive food and beverage (F&B) landscape, traceability is no longer a compliance checkbox—it’s a differentiator. The ability to track every step of a product’s journey, from origin to shelf, is vital for regulatory accuracy and to ensure brand integrity, supply chain agility, and consumer trust. Add smart sensors to the mix: the quiet, tireless observers revolutionizing supply chain intelligence. Traceability Has a Data Problem Despite digitization across many F&B operations, most traceability systems still rely on fragmented or manual data inputs. Batch numbers, barcodes, and handwritten logs often stand between a supplier and clarity when things go wrong. This approach struggles with latency and scale. When contamination or delays occur, root cause analysis is slow, costly, and damaging. Smart sensors shift this paradigm by embedding real-time, contextual intelligence into every stage of the supply chain . Whether monitoring humidity in transit or recording fill-level precision in bottling plants, they remove the guesswork by turning physical conditions into structured, time-stamped data. From Passive Monitoring to Active Optimization Sensors used to be reactive tools, alerting operators to anomalies. But smart sensors now play a proactive role in process control. They measure, and they interpret. For example, temperature sensors embedded in cold chain logistics can dynamically adjust cooling systems or flag threshold breaches before spoilage occurs. These advancements reduce waste and loss at a systemic level. In a production facility, smart sensors integrated with PLCs can enforce recipe compliance, verify clean-in-place processes, and detect micro-stoppages in real-time. This enables operations to pivot faster and isolate inefficiencies before they cascade downstream. Trust is Built on Transparency Consumers are paying more attention to what they eat and drink. They’re looking beyond labels, expecting visibility into how ingredients are sourced, processed, and handled. Smart sensors make this level of transparency achievable —without burdening manufacturers with excessive manual oversight. By capturing metadata throughout production and distribution, these sensors create a digital footprint that’s tamper-resistant and instantly accessible. When this data is integrated with a central platform, brands can respond confidently to audits, recalls, and quality assurance challenges with a level of precision that would be impossible through legacy systems. Intelligence Without Infrastructure Overhaul One common misconception is that adding smart sensors requires a top-down reinvention of supply chain infrastructure. In reality, companies can deploy edge sensors in a modular, scalable way. Many modern solutions offer plug-and-play functionality, allowing for fast integration with existing machinery and MES systems. This is where suppliers like alps-machine.com are reshaping expectations. Rather than pushing proprietary ecosystems, they design sensor-ready equipment with interoperability in mind. This future-proofs investment and keeps businesses nimble in the face of regulatory or market shifts. Designing for Data Longevity Sensors are only as powerful as the context they capture. A smart implementation ensures the data collected can be standardized, stored securely, and accessed meaningfully across departments. This means moving beyond local dashboards toward centralized, queryable datasets that inform everything from supplier contracts to marketing claims. As AI and predictive analytics become more accessible, these data-rich environments will unlock new capabilities—such as predicting demand spikes based on real-time freshness indicators or adjusting production schedules dynamically based on in-transit sensor feedback. Final Thoughts: Smarter Isn’t Optional Traceability isn’t solved by more paperwork—it’s solved by embedded intelligence. Smart sensors don’t just help businesses know what happened; they help prevent the wrong things from happening at all. For companies in the food and beverage sector, adopting smart sensors is less about chasing innovation and more about enabling resilience, speed, and confidence in every decision.

Eco-Friendly Garden Prep: Summer Tips for a Greener Business Space

By Julie Starr • June 5, 2025
If you're lucky enough to have a garden as part of your business, taking some time to set it up for summer is a great investment of your energy. Not only will it be ready for your customers to spend time in, but you can also incorporate some eco-friendly elements into it. Many people just think about the property and what eco-friendly updates they can make , but there are plenty that you can implement in your garden. This gives you the best of both worlds. You own a sacred and beautiful place for your customers to spend their summer, and at the same time, you can do your part for a better planet. If this is the route you want to take, then you also need to consider how to do this with the different seasons. To help you on your journey, here are some top tips for preparing your garden for summer. Plant trees and flowers Planting trees and flowers in your garden is a must. It will make a beautiful scene of nature for everyone to enjoy. Trees will provide people and animals with shade, as well as provide a habitat for wildlife. More trees are needed in the world because they purify the air that we breathe. Flowers, especially if you plant with pollinators in mind, can be an excellent way to attract bees and butterflies, which contribute largely to the earth. Use natural pest control When preparing your garden for summer, you can do this more sustainably and kindly by using natural pest control. Simply by planting trees and flowers, you are likely to attract lots of different wildlife, some of which may destroy your efforts. While all wildlife should be considered, you may need to take measures. Some better and more eco-friendly ways you can do this, as opposed to spraying toxic chemicals onto your plants and into the air, you can implement companion planting, using protective nets over your crops, choosing resilient plants, using natural repellents, and encouraging natural predators so nature can do its thing. Maintain your garden Maintaining your garden in itself can make it more eco-friendly. Composting your garden waste regularly, and kitchen waste can help you to reduce overall waste and create nutrient-rich soil. This is a great cycle of sustainability. You can also keep on top of things that need cleaning and replacing, so you can recycle the materials for other garden structures and projects, and repurpose things around your garden before they become waste. If you have features in your garden like a swimming pool, then a regular pool maintenance service is going to be vital in keeping your water consumption to a minimum, as when it is cleaned and maintained, it will need to be drained and refilled less as well as using less energy. You could also consider how you can use natural purification methods to reduce chemical usage and support biodiversity right in your backyard. Your garden is just an eco-friendly project waiting to be built. Use these top tips to help you get started.