When manufacturing products you use a lot of energy processing metal, forming plastics, assembling electronics to name a few. In the products there are in most cases sub-processed components, wire harnesses and others made of copper, tin and all sorts of metals. The supply-chain of subparts to assemble a full product is normally spread out over the world, creating a huge impact on the global CO2 footprint. Imagine a product that has passed through 10 countries before it ends up at the customer. This is absurd and cannot continue. So how can a product company impact this global problem? There will continue to be a drive in the market for better, smarter, cheaper, faster yet smaller products also in the future, therefore manufacturing will always be an important part of our society. But you have a possibility and a responsibility as a product company to take a holistic view on the supply, manufacturing and logistics strategy from a total cost perspective considering also the sustainability aspect. Local is smarter. Manufacturing products more locally is smarter, both from a lead-time, quality and environmental aspect. But often also from a total cost perspective. You can easily get lost in numbers when the full, consolidated holistic view is not assessed properly. At HANZA, we have created a 360-degree manufacturing, supply and logistics analysis service that we offer customers to review the current strategy and possibly come up with proposals for better and more sustainable solutions. Some companies have already acknowledged their problem but have no plan for the solution, this is where we come in. We have also established so called manufacturing clusters in strategic regions from where we offer complete manufacturing solutions of products that contains different technologies. Due to a minimum of transportation and logistics, we can support the environmental goals in our customer's sustainability strategy. Interested? / Thomas Lindström, Senior Vice President, Head of Business Solutions at HANZA