The initial study of industrial competitiveness in accordance with the indicator of the accreditation of environmental management: The case of shoes industry

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published the standard of ISO 14001 environment management system in September of 1996. After the publication of ISO 14001, many environmental accreditation systems were developed. Many famous brands developed their environment system, for example, the system of restricted substance limit of Nike. This study focused on the supply chain of shoes industry to research that how the environmental management system were maintained and what were their approaches to saved energies, reduced the production cost and passed the environment accreditation. In this study, we interviewed one shoe factory, five leather tanneries, and also finished a survey of 15 leather tanneries, as the result, they all passed the ISO 14001 or the Leather World Group accreditation which are required by many worldwide athlete brands. This study found that the environmental accreditation became a basic element to become more competitive, however it is not the guarantee for new order. However in the process to have the environment system, the leather tannery not only fulfilled the management system to achieve the synergy of quality, reduction of the material loss and power energy, and water resource saving. In this fashion, they are not only enhanced the satisfaction of customer but also reduced the cost of production and strengthen their competitiveness.