An introduction to Life-Cycle Thinking and Management
4. How to organise the efforts?
Of course there are many ways to organise a life-cycle-based environmental initiative. Clearly, the size of an enterprise and its previous experience with preventative environmental activities will influence how an initiative is organised, as will the enterprise's ambition level.
Integration of environmental efforts into all aspects of an enterprise may be
accomplished in part by:
High priority from management Internal communication Involvement of all the relevant departments / functions An environmental coordination group Coordination with other initiatives and projects within the enterprise.
High priority from management
The benefits an enterprise achieves from a life-cycle-based environmental initiative depend upon whether the "environmentally active" employees have the full support of management. In practise this support may be expressed in the following ways:
| The necessary resources have been set aside for the environmental initiative - particularly time and educational resources. |
| Management actively participates in setting the strategic goals. |
| There is explicit internal communication throughout the enterprise regarding the ambition level and goals. |
| The employees involved in the environmental initiative feel that their ideas and suggestions are taken seriously. |
Internal communication and visibility within the enterprise
Internal communication ensures that both focus areas and results of lifecyclebased environmental initiatives are common knowledge among employees.The greater the number of employees, the more demanding this task.The visibility of the efforts and the results is an important precondition for support and involvement.
It should be "in neon lights" that a particular initiative is not a single effort, but rather a part of an on-going environmental improvement plan where all employees can contribute with ideas for new initiatives or improvements. Internal communication also ensures that the various departments can see the reason for the initiatives and thus do not work against each other due to lack of information and understanding.
Involvement of all relevant departments
A life-cycle-based environmental initiative affects all functions and departments of an enterprise. For example, a decision to change the material composition of a product not only affects the quality, price and environmental profile of a product, but also raises questions regarding procurement of the new material, potential markets for the new product, consequences to the production process, new logistical demands, etc.
All departments must therefore participate with ideas for environmental initiatives and solutions, based on their particular expertise. This will ensure a range of ideas, as well as creating a realism in relation to the situation in the various departments. The smaller the enterprise, the smaller the number of people who must be involved to ensure participation of all departmental functions.
Figur 7.
Various departments’ contribution to a product-oriented environmental initiative
(from the firm, Brdr. Hartmann A/S).
Each department within an enterprise operates to some degree inside "its own universe" - with its own projects, interests and priorities. A challenge for management and the environmental coordination group is "putting the environment in the spotlight" in every department and creating a friendly competition between departments regarding lifecyclebased environmental initiatives.
Environmental coordination group
A life-cycle-based environmental initiative is so extensive that one person, regardless of his competence, cannot sit alone with daily responsibility for such a project, as depicted in Figure 7. Responsibility ought to lie with an environmental coordination group with a central key person.This coordinator is responsible for ensuring that the group functions, meetings are arranged, minutes taken etc.The coordination group members may take turns doing many of the practical tasks.
The members of the coordination group ought to be selected so that all departments / functions within the enterprise are represented, including management, product development, production, procurement, logistics and sales.The actual number of people who will participate in a coordination group depends upon the size of the enterprise. It is also important that the division of labour and responsibility are clear for each project.
Participation of a range of employees ensures that the environmental initiatives will be deeply rooted in the enterprise and that the focus will be on concrete improvements to a product's environmental profile, rather than mere talk and data collection. Furthermore, broad participation ensures that an environmental project doesn't "die" if a key employee involved in the project leaves the enterprise.
Coordination with other initiatives and projects within the enterprise
Often the various departments within an enterprise have their own "pet projects". This situation can lead to mixed signals and employee complaints that,"We've got our fingers in too many pies!" "A project isn't even finished before a new one is started!"
"Little Enterprise Ltd.", a fictive example, is a small enterprise which produces thermoses. The enterprise has not previously worked in a goal-oriented way with environmental issues, but it is a point of honour that the enterprise has "its house in order". Furthermore, the enterprise puts an emphasis on a good working environment. Little Enterprise Ltd. is beginning to receive environmentrelated questions from their customers, and in order to avoid any unpleasant surprises regarding the environmental impacts associated with their product, the company has decided to improve the product's environmental characteristics using a life-cycle perspective. In practice, the day-to-day management of the company is undertaken by three people. Hansen is the director of Little Enterprise Ltd. and is responsible for management and sales. Kirsten is the secretary and is also responsible for procurement and logistics. Niels is the head of production with responsibility for production and product development. He is also the central coordinator for life-cycle-based environmental initiative. |
Management must therefore consider the connection between initiatives and how to create
synergy in the projects. The priority of various projects must be clear to all employees.
Furthermore, it is a good idea if each department has its own environmental project (see
Figure 7) so that the unity and connection in the environmental effort is visible.
Management must ensure, already in the planning phase, that the resources required are
available among all categories of employees so that the prioritised projects can be
completed.
Good coordination of an individual environmental initiative with other initiatives reduces administrative problems and extra work associated with the day-today functioning of the various projects.
For enterprises with a certified qualityand / or environmental management system, the new version of the ISO 9000 standard from 2000 has provided good opportunities for creating synergy between customer-based quality management and product-oriented environmental management (see Chapter 9).
Finally, it is necessary to check all policies, procedures and instructions to ensure that they reflect a life-cycle perspective and an integrated product policy. These internal documents must explicitly state which departments are responsible for which tasks (see the following chapter).