Challenge

The Bosch Bursa plant in Türkiye manufactures injectors for powertrain combustion engines destined mainly for the European market. The manufacturing site aims to reduce CO2 emissions by at least 15% by 2025 for Scope 1 and 2 and logistics.

To address its packaging and transportation emissions, the plant needed to build collaborations with its most important partners: suppliers, customers and logistics service providers (LSPs).

Solution

Bosch Bursa engaged in several projects tackling aspects of its logistics operations that focused on creating synergies and collaboration with stakeholders in its supply chain:

• Increasing filling rate in bulk packaging: by taking a “go and see” approach in the warehouse, the site realized that raw material boxes were delivered with a filling rate as low as 35–50%. To increase the filling rate, Bosch’s packaging team reviewed the needed quantities over time, the frequency of delivery and the handling. Since this would affect suppliers’ ways of working, the team collaborated with suppliers to define the optimal filling rate while ensuring load security to avoid damaging the materials. By partnering together, Bosch and its suppliers reached an optimal filling rate to ensure the least number of deliveries with the best quality. As a result, the company reduced its emissions and its suppliers achieved less handling for its products, fewer printed documents and more efficient operations. The site was able to multiply the filling rate of the boxes by around two to three times, and the measure saved 300 MtCO2/ year by considerably reducing the number of boxes to be purchased, handled and cleaned.
• Repairing reusable packaging: Bosch Bursa switched to 100% returnable plastic packaging, with standardized boxes for inbound and outbound European deliveries. The site also partnered with a local service provider to repair (by rewelding) damaged packs that would previously have been scrapped. After implementing the repair of damaged boxes, the site saved 200 MtCO2/year.
• Switching air to sea: using a logistics dashboard highlighting emissions data by type of transportation revealed that air freight generated 62 times more CO2 than sea freight for the same load. Through proactive customer engagement and negotiation of alternate delivery timelines, the site successfully shifted to predominantly using sea freight, resulting in a reduction of 7,700 metric tons of CO2 emissions over two years.

Impact

In just three years, the site has averted the emission of 30,000 metric tons of CO2 through a series of innovative logistics decarbonization projects. This achievement is the result of effective communication and collaboration with both suppliers and customers, allowing for greater flexibility in prioritizing sustainability across network design, packaging and logistics operations. In recognition of these efforts, the site received the Bosch Corporate Sustainability Award in the Resource Efficiency category in 2022.

Featured in our paper "The “No-Excuse” Opportunities to Tackle Scope 3 Emissions in Manufacturing and Value Chains"