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Stakeholders such as customers, governments and environmental organisations are more concerned than ever about the impact of supply chain practices on the environment, leading firms to introduce environmental requirements into their supply contracts. While the extant literature on supply chains acknowledges this trend, it fails to inform comprehensively on the concept of “stringent environmental requirement” and its consequences. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this concept and explore how such requirements may translate into supplier environmental performance.

Qualitative methodology was adopted by the study and data were collected through conducting eight case studies in the Bangladesh ready-made garment (RMG) industry.

A number of factors were found to be influencing suppliers’ perception of stringency, such as uncertainty relating to the newness and deadline of buyers’ environmental requirements, the complexity of implementing the requirements, and the use of buyer-specific frameworks. The research also shows that suppliers’ efforts in building environmental capability play a vital role in dealing with stringent environmental requirements.

The case studies are limited to the Bangladesh RMG industry. Given that environmental regulations vary across different countries and industries, the data may not reflect all the possible variations in stringent environmental requirements.

The new insight proposed by this research can guide firms to further understand how supplier environmental performance and the sustainability of their supply chain can be achieved. The research provides broad insight into how suppliers can address stringent environmental requirements and improve their environmental performance.

This research establishes evidence for the relatively new phenomenon of “stringent environmental requirements”, and develops a theoretical framework to demonstrate the relationships among the critical determinants relevant to this phenomenon.

Automated warehouse equipment is often regarded as being inflexible, and yet its use continues to rise even though markets are becoming increasingly volatile. The purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons for, and nature of, warehouse automation implementations in order to further this understanding.

The research is based on semi‐structured interviews with some of the key stakeholders in automation projects. This is followed by a survey questionnaire to widen the findings.

The research indicates that the main reason for automation is to accommodate growth, with cost reduction and service improvement also being important. The implementation process tends to be complex and lengthy, although most projects are controlled within the planned budget and timescale. There is, however, a real risk of disruption and service level failings during the operational start‐up of these projects, as well as some concerns about ongoing flexibility.

The findings provide a useful insight into these areas but further research is required to explore the key characteristics of successful implementations and to understand how warehouse automation can be designed to provide responsiveness to rapidly changing market conditions.

The findings have important implications as regards the need to incorporate scenario planning into the design process and to plan for the management of the ongoing operation.

There has been relatively little previous research into this important area, which involves a substantial proportion of the capital budget of many supply chains. The above findings are of value to academics and practitioners.