Sustainable Product Development Saves Energy, Fuels Innovation and Drives Revenue Growth

Manufacturers cite “significant improvement” in revenue growth, product innovation and energy use from sustainable product development, according to new study

New Hampshire, USA – According to early findings from a new research study, “Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing: What’s Happening Now… and What’s Ahead?” manufacturers have much more to gain than just a better reputation by embracing sustainability in their product design and development efforts.

In particular, according to independent market research and analyst firm, Four Winds Research, select manufacturers are experiencing not only a significant improvement in energy use, but a significant improvement in revenue growth and innovation, as well, as a result of their sustainable product development efforts.

That’s good news, because in today’s tough economic climate – it’s the ability to not only address environmental or social concerns, but to drive business forward -- that companies need most.

But some companies are beginning to realize that they can do both. While the cost-savings and environmental benefits of improved energy efficiency, waste reduction, or a reduced carbon footprint are often cited as key benefits of employing a leaner, more sustainable approach to design and manufacturing, the research suggests that additional financial benefits are also possible.

For many, it may come as somewhat of a surprise that a growing number of organizations – from automotive and aerospace manufacturers to makers of high tech electronics products and industrial machinery – cite increased revenue growth, as a result of their organizations’ sustainable product development efforts, with some even seeing a significant improvement in both revenue growth and innovation. In addition, many manufacturers are experiencing improvements in product quality, as well, according to the research.

So, how do they do it? Nearly sixty percent of those surveyed indicate that their company leverages lean or green design strategies (i.e. fewer parts, less material, reduced complexity) to achieve cost savings and minimize environmental impact, while nearly fifty percent indicate that they employ design for sustainability (DfS) principles and lifecycle thinking to support ROI across the triple bottom line (people, planet, profit).

In addition, early findings reveal that approximately thirty-five percent of manufacturers surveyed indicate that product design software is “used widely” to identify and evaluate more sustainable design alternatives; and over thirty percent use “up-front” LCA (lifecycle assessment) tools and methodologies during the conceptual design phase to identify and estimate the potential environmental impacts of design decisions. Also, in seeking to achieve their sustainable product design objectives, companies also most often cite “the ability to identify and use more eco-friendly materials in our products” as a top priority.

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in the new research study, “Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing: What’s Happening Now… and What’s Ahead?” To learn more, or to participate in this research effort, see: Participate in a New Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing Research Study and Be Eligible to Win an iPad 2! 

For more information, contact: Amy Rowell at amy.rowell@fourwindsresearch.com.

About Four Winds Research
Four Winds Research is an independent market research and analysis firm focused on topics related to sustainability. Its current research efforts are centered around identifying the key issues and challenges facing designers and engineers today as they attempt to create sustainable products; understanding how organizations can effectively apply sustainability principles in product design and development both internally and across the supply chain; and the critical role that sustainability metrics, tools, and technologies promise to play in product design and manufacturing in the coming decade. To learn more, see: www.fourwindsresearch.com

New Global Study Examines Sustainable Product Design Tools, Strategies and Practices

Participate in a New Sustainable Product Design Study and Be Registered to Win an iPad 2!

New global study examines the sustainability practices, strategies, and tools being applied in product design and manufacturing today

New Hampshire, USA – Four Winds Research, an independent market research and analysis firm focused on topics related to sustainability - announced today that it is seeking participants for a new global study on sustainable product design and manufacturing.

Sustainability managers, engineering and design professionals, regulatory compliance officers, environmental health & safety professionals, quality managers and other practitioners who are either currently involved in supporting sustainable design and/or manufacturing – or expect to be - are all encouraged to take part in this important baseline study.

To participate, individuals are asked to simply complete a short survey. All responses will remain strictly confidential. Deadline for participation is September 1st, 2011. 

All qualified survey participants will be entered into a drawing for an iPad 2!

The study, “Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing: What’s Happening Now… and What’s Ahead?” seeks to gain greater insight into the sustainability issues and challenges facing manufacturers today –  and to identify important trends and developments in sustainable design and manufacturing. The study will also take an in-depth look at manufacturers’ concerns involving sustainability or sustainability-related issues – from questions surrounding increasingly strict regulatory environmental compliance requirements and pending legislation, to the level of adoption of lifecycle thinking and sustainable product design tools or strategies in manufacturers’ product design and development efforts.

Increasingly, sustainability is a topic that is of growing interest to manufacturers – but it is also one that raises many questions for organizations and individuals alike. Is it difficult to design products with sustainability in mind? Does it require special tools? Does it involve special training? Will it change the way I design, or require additional steps in the design process? Can I still work with my existing suppliers or will I have to find new ones? And what about the materials or processes that I’m using to manufacture my products – are these sustainable? If not, what are my alternatives? What about using an LCA (life cycle assessment) to help guide my product design efforts? How does all this impact my work?

Today, product designers from across all industry sectors – from footwear and apparel to high tech/electronics and transportation – wrestle with these and other questions in their quest to support sustainability initiatives within their companies. What we’d really like to know is - what’s happening in your organization? Is sustainability important? In particular, is it important at the product-level? If so – how is sustainable product design currently being tackled by your product development teams?

Tell us.  By taking this short survey, you’ll be helping to shed light on this very important – and often highly debated – topic. Whether you’re a sustainability expert or just beginning your journey – your feedback is invaluable.

For more information, contact: Amy Rowell at amy.rowell@fourwindsresearch.com.

About Four Winds Research
Four Winds Research is an independent market research and analysis firm focused on topics related to sustainability. Its current research efforts are centered around identifying the key issues and challenges facing designers and engineers today as they attempt to create sustainable products; understanding how organizations can effectively apply sustainability principles in product design and development both internally and across the supply chain; and the critical role that sustainability metrics, tools, and technologies promise to play in product design and manufacturing in the coming decade. To learn more, see: www.fourwindsresearch.com

How Hazardous Are Your High Tech Electronic Products?

Expect that many of you may have already made note of the recent updates to the RoHS legislation w/respect to its impact on the design of electronics' products - but thought this reference might still be of interest, “RoHS Recast New and Improved?”

At first glance, it seems this article is written from the perspective of the European manufacturer, but as it turns out, this particular electronics’ manufacturer, TTI, is actually based in North America - and is simply paying close attention to this legislation because of its European customer base. 

One of the key changes involves an expansion of the definition of what constitutes an electronics’ product. For example, greeting cards and toys containing electronics are now subject to the same RoHS compliance requirements as other electronic “gadgets.”

In particular, according to the press release,

The Council today revised the directive on hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment. This will extend protection from dangerous chemicals to more electrical appliances and improve the safety of products such as mobile phones, refrigerators and electronic toys (62/10 +COR4, 8117/11 ADD1 REV1).1

First adopted in 2003, the law bans six hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment, including lead, mercury and cadmium.

The review extends the scope of the ban to more products, while harmonising it across the EU: the ban will now in principle apply to all electrical and electronic equipment as well as to cables and spare parts. Certain transitional periods are provided for, though: monitoring and control devices and medical devices will be covered in three years, in vitro medical devices in five years and industrial control appliances in six years.

The law adopted today also obliges the Commission to regularly review and adapt the list of restricted substances according to a number of criteria. This means that further substances in electrical and electronic equipment may be banned in future.

So, ultimately – what do these RoHS changes mean for a manufacturer or supplier of electronics’ products? In short, increased scrutiny. As TTI’s Ken Stanvick puts it:

"If your company chose to do little or nothing to insure demonstrable compliance to the “old” RoHS directive then your company will be faced with a significant outlay of time and resources needed to catch up and legitimately supply RoHS compliant products, or subassemblies or components used to assemble finished products to the EU market."

Translated? If your company is involved in the design of electronics’ products – or supplies parts, components or subassemblies containing electronics – then it will need to both support and document its compliance efforts in this area. Failure to do so threatens a manufacturers’ ability to participate in the European marketplace – and is likely to threaten the ability to participate in markets worldwide, as RoHS legislation is enacted elsewhere.

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in our upcoming research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.”

So - do you have what it takes to design sustainable products? Or wish you did? Tell us more. By taking this short survey, you’ll be helping to shed light on this very important – and often highly debated – topic. Whether you’re a sustainability expert or just beginning your journey – your feedback is invaluable.

See also:

Council Tightens Rules on Hazardous Substances in Electrical of Electronic Equipment

RoHS Recast New and Improved?

Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing: Are We There Yet? (survey)

Looking for an Easier Way to Design Sustainable Packaging?

Then you might want to check out Earthshift’s new PackageSmart tool – a product the company describes as, “a simplified life cycle assessment tool for evaluating the environmental impacts of packaging.” The goal is to help packaging engineers to more easily identify and implement more sustainable packaging alternatives, and to integrate this kind of environmental assessment early in the design cycle.

As the makers of SimaPro LCA (lifecycle assessment) software, Earthshift has a wealth of experience to draw on in developing such a tool. But what is perhaps equally impressive is their commitment to making the tool “user-friendly” to the community it is intended to serve.

Key features, according the company, include:

·                 Comprehend Ability Quickly analyze weight changes, different materials, recycled content, take back program, shipping and distribution pathways.

·                 Transparency Find the source of your impacts, dig back through life cycle inventory data, and add your own data. Apply multiple metrics, including Walmart and Global Packaging Project.

·                 Affordability & Action ability Share your work with internal teammates or external LCA consultants with web based annual licenses.

·                 Consistency & Accuracy Choose your own Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and your own Life Cycle Impact Assessment Method (LCIA).

Such tools represent an important step towards making sustainable product design more accessible to the engineers and designers responsible for understanding the environmental impacts of their design decisions. An annual subscription for this web-based tool starts at $2000 for 1-5 users, with price discounts applied for larger groups. To learn more, see PackageSmart.  A free two-week trial is currently available.

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in our upcoming research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.”

So - do you have what it takes to design sustainable products? Or wish you did? Tell us more. By taking this short survey, you’ll be helping to shed light on this very important – and often highly debated – topic. Whether you’re a sustainability expert or just beginning your journey – your feedback is invaluable.

See also:

Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing: Are We There Yet? (survey)

PackageSmart

Earthshift

Who’s Responsible for Mainstreaming Sustainable Products?

“Should marketers be focusing on motivating consumers to make green choices? Or should companies instead focus on making their mainstream products and services green?”

David Schatsky, principal at Green Research, posed these questions to his readers in a recent blog post, “Where is the Green Gap?” in response to some research presented by Ogilvy & Mather, “Mainstream Green: Moving Sustainability from Niche to Normal.” Schatsky makes an important observation. Is it the consumer attitude that needs to change - or the product itself?


At the end of the day, while we hear a great deal about consumers needing to change their behaviors to achieve a greener outcome – that consumers must be educated so that they will make wiser, more sustainable choices, or that a significant portion of the environmental impact of a product often takes place during the “use phase” of the product lifecyle – the fact remains that, ultimately, consumers are not the ones responsible for the sustainability of a product. Manufacturers are. 


Just as they are responsible for making mainstream products that are safe, affordable, high-quality, and/or easy-to-use, manufacturers are responsible for delivering sustainable products to this market segment, if the goal is to drive sales of sustainable products among mainstream buyers.  It is simply unreasonable to expect that mainstream consumers are going to change their buying behavior, and begin buying “greener products” unless the alternative “greener” product offerings are competitively priced, and performance is comparable.

That said, the question I would pose to manufacturers is, if the goal is to drive adoption of greener products among mainstream consumers –isn’t it essential that they focus their efforts on actually making their mainstream products and services “greener?”

Clearly, it’s a challenge for manufacturers to rethink how their products should be designed and manufactured in order to achieve product-level sustainability goals for mainstream customers – but unless this path is chosen, there is little hope that adoption of “greener” products will ever truly go mainstream.

The good news is that the tools to assist product manufacturers and designers to more easily conceive of and to produce greener products, are becoming more widely accessible, and training to support the use of such tools, is on the rise. Companies like Autodesk, SolidWorks, PTC and Sustainable Minds – are all on a mission to make sustainable product design more accessible to the masses. Which, hopefully, means that – in the coming decade, we will begin to see more of just what Schatsky is asking for: companies that are focused on making their mainstream products and services greener as a matter of course, and doing so without sacrificing either product performance or affordability.

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in our upcoming research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.”

So - do you have what it takes to design sustainable products? Or wish you did? Tell us more. By taking this short survey, you’ll be helping to shed light on this very important – and often highly debated – topic. Whether you’re a sustainability expert or just beginning your journey – your feedback is invaluable.

See also:

Where is the Green Gap?

Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing: What's Happening Now and What's Ahead? (survey)

“When It Comes to LCA Tools, It’s the Wild West”

At least that’s the view taken by The Green to Gold Business Playbook authors, Daniel Esty and PJ Simmons. As noted in a recent article on the subject:

“Assessing environmental impacts of individual products or services (we’ll call them ‘products’ for short) is one of the most important things you can do in creating the diagnostic foundation that your company needs to pursue Eco-Advantage. Product-level impact analyses can help fine-tune your understanding of eco-related risks and opportunities, pinpoint specific areas for you to target for improvement, and help you evaluate complex options and trade-offs in product and process design.

But conducting product impact assessments is tricky. There are many competing methodologies and tools available for product “life cycle analysis/assessment” (LCA) -- from ‘LCA Light’ rapid assessment tools to costly software tools that can intimidate PhDs.”

Couple this with initiatives being launched by the engineering software community – and you’ve got lots of options to choose from. There are even free tools – like the open source LCA offering available from Earthster.

So what to do?

Probably the most important message here is that the need to assess the environmental impacts of our products, and of the product design and development process – is important, and only promises to become even more critical in the years ahead. So, if companies haven’t already begun to take steps to address this challenge, it’s time.

If you're an engineer or designer involved in product design, there are a number of options for you to consider. If you're looking to gain a basic understanding of what environmental impact assessment is all about, Sustainable Minds is a great place to start, and is suitable for any design professional, independent of the CAD tool they may be using. Autodesk Inventor professionals may want to explore EcoMaterials Advisor as a first step. Solidworks professionals may want to investigate Solidworks Sustainability Xpress, and PTC Pro/Engineer professionals may want to explore Windchill Product Analytics.

Each of these companies offers extensive educational resources, as well - from Sustainable Minds' free weekly introductory webinar and Autodesk's Sustainability Workshop to Solidworks' new Guide to Sustainability primer. For those students or professionals who have already embarked on the quest to better understand and apply sustainability principles in their work, it's worth mentioning that Solidworks recently launched a green design contest in honor of Earth Day, and Autodesk, too has a number of initiatives in place to reward innovative sustainable product design. So, the good news is that there are many resources available, and many companies eager to help you take those first steps towards embracing sustainability in your design efforts.

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in our upcoming research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.”

So - do you have what it takes to design sustainable products? Or wish you did? Tell us more. By taking this short survey, you’ll be helping to shed light on this very important – and often highly debated – topic. Whether you’re a sustainability expert or just beginning your journey – your feedback is invaluable.

See also:

Solidworks Launches Green Design Contest

How to Undertake a Life Cycle Assessment of Your Products and Services

Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing: Are We There Yet? (survey)

The Green to Gold Business Playbook: How to Implement Sustainability Practices for Bottom-Line Results in Every Business Function

Sustainability and Profitability: It’s Not Only Possible, It’s Essential

Want to Be More Profitable? More Innovative? Embrace Sustainability.

That’s the message that you’re going to be hearing more and more. It’s not a matter of juggling one at the expense of the other – sustainability is all about gaining greater efficiencies – from promoting greater productivity and energy efficiency to reducing excesses – use of less material where possible, and use of materials or processes that require less energy or resources, or don’t depend on the use of scarce materials. What’s important to point out is that sustainability – and the life cycle thinking that goes along with sustainable thinking – is, by definition, a driver of innovation and greater profitability.

Early corporate social responsibility initiatives, however, seemed to cloud this issue a bit. The emphasis was on social responsibility – with the sense that the cost of being socially responsible was something that corporations needed to take on, simply because it was “the right thing to do.” But, the economic part of the equation cannot be ignored. In short, in order for any sustainability initiative to be successful, the resulting products or services must be competitively priced and of comparable quality.

As noted in a recent article on the subject, Coca-Cola customer sustainability director Jake Backus puts the point simply:


“Consumers will not switch to a more sustainable product unless it is equally good or better than the current one, and equally priced.” Coke is [also] buying new machinery for its producers of plastic bottles so they can make them from plant-based material rather than oil-based matter. The plant-based plastic is likely to be cheaper in the long run. Efforts already made by Coca-Cola in 2009 achieved $100m worth of savings because it cut down on packaging.


At the same time, sustainability does require looking at the economic equation over the long run. The authors go on to describe another leading manufacturer’s sustainability journey – one that acknowledges the importance of looking beyond short-term financial gains:


Unilever wants to double its sales while reducing its environmental impact, something that chief executive Paul Polman has encouraged profit-focused shareholders to support. Polman railed against investors looking only at short-term growth and ignoring longer term sustainability issues. At the World Economic Forum last year, he made an impassioned plea to fellow business leaders to “ignore the demands of short-term shareholders and lead from the front on sustainability and climate change,” The Times reported last autumn.“

In short, manufacturers are beginning to embrace sustainability because it truly can be good for the planet and society, as well as good for the bottom line. And, indeed, must be good for the bottom line, if it is to represent a sustainable solution. For others, sustainability is driving innovation that contributes to top-line growth, as well.

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in our upcoming research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.”

So - do you have what it takes to design sustainable products? Or wish you did? Tell us more. By taking this short survey, you’ll be helping to shed light on this very important – and often highly debated – topic. Whether you’re a sustainability expert or just beginning your journey – your feedback is invaluable.

See also:

The New CSR: This Time, It’s Profitable

Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing: Are We There Yet? (survey)