Needing ideas for a business solution

Hello everyone,

I'm a university student in project management and our university has been having several organizational changes resulting in change of staff and way of doing things. We were given a task that me and my group are having issues resolving (since none of us know anything about the project and since our university advisers just came in they don't share anything with us). I thought it would be nice to ask for advice and more importantly ask for ideas, if you don't mind that is.

To make it short, we are fictional consultants and need to find a working solution for a fictional international logistics company. They are trying to send our project to the U.N. in order to ask for funds but for this, the company needs to actively be invested in helping the U.N. meet its Sustainable Development Goals. That means change its way, its politic etc, that while remaining in logistics.

We only were given one thing, a schedule of facts of what the company has done since its creation, which pretty much was failing at what it did, but no numbers, nothing useful. We can assume the company is using outside companies for its transporting and we know that the company mainly transported palm oil from or to Singapore and the origins are unknown.

Apparently, hearing from our advisers we are supposed to be innovative and aim towards the SDGs but without numbers, simple facts about the company we have been a bit stuck. That said, I would love your advice as to how you would bring a logistics company to follow as many SDGs as possible. What would you change? Perhaps you would use a technology, or force your transport companies to use a different fuel?

I'm really up to any ideas and thank you for your time

 

Well, I would start by either discovering the answers to the following questions or, in lieu of that, making my own assumptions about the answers and proceeding with those assumptions:

1. What are the UN SDG's in order of priority? Before you can meet SDG's, you need to know what they are, of course.

2. It sounds like this company does not have its own transportation fleet and is actually a logistics broker. Nonetheless, it is necessary to find out what types of transportation are used and what the volumes are. If the primary mode is overseas shipping, the potential solutions would likely be different than if it is ground transportation (or air transport, for that matter.)

Again, if your advisors will not provide more information, it is your prerogative to make your own assumptions and then develop the solution.

Finally, one potentially interesting solution might involve using recycled palm oil to power the trucks that deliver new oil and pick up the used oil.

 

Sounds good to me. I can't believe how much oil there is.

 

FYI, I have seen some very successful businesses that developed out of a university project.

 

Like Google?