For calculating the GHG emissions for scope 3.4, you begin with uploading the relevant master data. This involves setting the organizational boundaries for companies and plants, identifying suppliers and business partners, categorizing product groups, and detailing product information. Additionally, you need to specify units of measurement (UoM), any custom temperature conditions, and locations such as connection points, if applicable. All those data can be usually found in your ERP system, except for the connection points for which there is default content in the system.
Next, you define the footprint inventory scope. This step requires replicating relevant business transactions, such as goods received from supplier and goods return to supplier, as needed to ensure all data is accurately captured.
After defining the footprint inventory scope, you can maintain individual transport settings - to allow the system to identify details that are not available in the master data or business transactions. This includes selecting the main mode of transport or choosing a unique entry from multiple available options like supplier addresses. You can maintain the transport settings for the required granularity, for example, defining the main mode of transport per supplier or even per product group level.
Next, you maintain transport operation footprints, which are the emission factors required for calculating the transport footprints. You can either upload your own data packages or reuse pre-delivered data packages within SFM, such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emission factor package or data from Global Logistics Emission Council (GLEC). Then, the system automatically generates transport activities that clearly specify the source, destination, and mode of transport—indicating whether goods are being received from suppliers to the plant, returned to suppliers, or internally transported between plants.
After that the system automatically determines routes and legs for each transport activity via the automatic routing. This involves calculating the distance for each leg within a route to ensure precise footprint calculation.
As the next step, you can trigger the transport footprint calculation. The system will automatically assign the right emission factors based on mode of transport, the country where the transport operation is happening and the temperature condition. Finally, you can analyse the results. This step helps in identifying the major contributors to the overall transport footprint.
After calculating the transport footprints, you conduct the central footprint inventory calculation. This involves linking the transport footprint inventory to Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) or Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) calculations.
As a result, you analyze the overall transport footprint contribution to the corporate footprint. This helps understanding the broader impact of transport activities on the organization’s environmental footprint.
By following these steps, you can manage and optimize your transport operations effectively, ensuring accurate data collection, analysis, and environmental impact assessment.
Here, you fill focus on the first two steps of the overall process flow.
Note
Transport Settings, Transport operation Footprints, Manage Transport Activities and Calculate Transport Footprints are the new applications introduced as part of ERP centric transport functionality.
Business Example
AlmikaSoft wants to track the carbon emissions associated with its transport operations, i.e., transport from supplier, transport to supplier, and internal transport. The transport from suppliers happens for goods received from suppliers, transport to suppliers is for goods returned to suppliers and internal transport for stock transfer between the plants. For simplicity, we assume that AlmikaSoft outsources its transport operations. Hence, all calculated emissions are associated with scope 3 emissions.
Upload Master Data
For ERP‑centric footprint calculations, high‑quality master data is essential. You need supplier, business‑partner, company, and plant details to generate accurate transport legs and routes, and product related information such as temperature conditions to assign the correct emission factors. Reusing this existing ERP master data enables accurate, highly automated calculations.
Here is a screen indicating imported suppliers.
Note
Locations and temperature conditions are optional data that are pre-existing in the system. You can also manage locations via the Manage Locations application.
Create Footprint Inventory Scope and Upload Business Transactions
To ensure that the transport emissions are used for the overall footprint calculation (e.g. for PCF or CCF calculation), the inventory scope is enhanced to include Transportation Details. The value Standard (Business Transactions) indicates that business transaction data is used to determine transport activities. Standard (Business Transactions) is also the defaulted value when creating footprint inventory scope.
Here is a screen indicating defined footprint inventory scope.
Here is a screen indicating uploaded business transactions.
You can deep dive into each of these business transactions to see their details. The data from Goods Receipt from Suppliers, Goods Return to Suppliers and Goods Transfer are used to determine transport activities Transport from Supplier, Transport to Supplier and Internal Transport respectively.
Here is a screen indicating detailed transport business transactions for the month of March.
In the next lesson, you will deep dive in steps three to six of the overall process flow. You will learn to maintain transport settings and operation footprints, and generate transport activities, routes, and legs for each activity.
