Many Australian qualifications now include a unit of competency on sustainability.

But Manufacturing Skills Australia (MSA) has extended its commitment to sustainability by developing the MSS11 Sustainability Training Package, which has three qualifications targeting Sustainable Operations within a business.

These provide the skills and knowledge required to improve an organisation’s sustainability by identifying, measuring and improving the sustainability impact of products, operations, supply chain and interactions with stakeholders.

Skills to improve business sustainability

The model for the Sustainable Operations qualifications integrates business efficiency, waste minimisation and continuous improvement systems and applies them to sustainability issues. The focus is on the skills needed by frontline managers, middle and senior managers and technicians; anyone with a role in developing sustainability goals and strategies, implementing them via business systems and procedures and ensuring that they are embedded in day to day operations.

A business can target its sustainability activities across a range of functions and areas – from product development to process improvements; from facilities management to supply chain; from governance to maintenance and day to day operations.

So the skills to become more sustainable will start at the strategic level and can include managing sustainability risks, meeting compliance and reporting requirements, high level measurement and calculation, interpreting data and setting strategic goals for sustainability.

Then there are the ‘hand on’ skills such as measuring a carbon footprint, mass and energy balancing techniques, auditing, environmental management systems, analysing the sustainability impacts along the supply chain and the life cycle of a product and identifying and evaluating options for sustainability improvements in a process.