Sustainability-oriented cross-functional collaboration to manage trade-offs and interdependencies
| 29 mar 2018
O artykule
Article Category: Research Article
Data publikacji: 29 mar 2018
Zakres stron: 3 - 17
Otrzymano: 01 wrz 2017
Przyjęty: 05 mar 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ijme-2018-0002
Słowa kluczowe
© 2018 Andrea Szalavetz, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.
Figure 1
Examples of trade-off-laden sustainability issues requiring CFC
| Trade-off | Description | CFC | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trade-offs between particular process parameters and sustainability | Shift to high-speed cutting (e.g., to achieve better-quality surfaces) increases the energy demand of processing. Moreover, high-speed cutting enhances tool wear. Reducing tool wear requires the application of special coating or the use of cooling lubricants, which, however, implies environmental concerns. Energy consumption is higher with a worn tool. However, early replacement of tools increases not only costs but also waste of resources. | Process design, operations, R&D, quality, and environmental management | Vijayaraghavan et al. [2013] |
| Trade-off between the environmental impact of particular product parameters | Strength-to-weight ratio and energy density: some materials considered for automotive components, e.g., carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer composites (or magnesium, aluminum, and other alloys) feature a better strength-to-weight ratio than pure steel. They would effectively reduce vehicle mass and thus contribute to fuel efficiency. However, the production of these alternatives to steel-based components requires more energy and produces more greenhouse gas emissions per unit of mass than what conventional steel would. The catalytic-converter problem: catalytic converters reduce toxic exhausts but increase the consumption of precious metals. | Strategic planning, product and process design, supply chain management, and environmental management | Robèrt [2000]; Kirchain et al. [2017] |
| Design for product longevity or for remanufacturing vs. technology development for improved environmental performance of new products | Against intuitive ESO considerations, improvement in the environmental performance of products would call for shorter product life, as the benefits associated with new models featuring superior environmental performance may outweigh the environmental costs related to early product replacement. New-generation consumer goods, e.g., refrigerators or vacuum cleaners, consume less energy in use. Ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon (Freon) emission by old vintage refrigerators is eliminated in newer vintage pieces. This calls for replacing inefficient products before their designed lifetime. However, the disposal of old models is associated with high environmental burden. However, an opposite trend is observed in the case of successive generations of smartphones (of identical companies, e.g., Apple). Life cycle assessments of successive product models show a consistent increase in greenhouse gas emissions, as new product families become increasingly complex. | Strategic management, innovation management, R&D, marketing, and& environmental management | Gutowski et al. [2011]; Suckling and Lee [2015] |
| Different stages in the product life cycle would require different and contradictory product design attributes | The use of low-impact, e.g., recycled, material (design phase) may be in contradiction with product life span and remanufacturing considerations (end-of-life phase), as these latter would require durable and often relatively high-impact material. Notice that the early stages of the design process have the greatest impact on the environmental performance of the products. However, designers in this stage have limited information about environmental properties of the product and thus concentrate rather on aesthetic and functional aspects. | New product development, process design, operations, marketing, and environmental management | Lagerstedt et al. [2003] |
| Trade-offs with respect to moving to a paperless manufacturing environment | Shifting to paperless shop floors as well as warehousing operations eliminates (reduces) the costs related to printing and paper disposal. Paperless manufacturing and warehouse picking may also improve the productivity of both the core and the support functions, which, in turn, can have beneficial resource efficiency implications. However, paperless manufacturing and warehousing may have nonnegligible energy costs and implications for WEEE. Notable in this respect is the warning by Bull and Kozak [2014] that comparative life cycle assessments regarding paper and digital media are problematic, contingent on a series of assumptions. For example, the energy intensity of enhanced Internet use and of the storage, retrieval, and processing of orders of magnitude more data is also hard to calculate [Coroama and Hilty, 2014]. | Strategic planning, production planning, operations, IT, logistics, and environmental management | Mleczko [2014] |
| Lean vs. green | Just-in-time management practices reduce waste (e.g., excessive inventory), eliminate inefficiencies along the supply chain, and contribute to more effective use of resources. However, this practice requires more transportation, resulting in more emissions. A similar trade-off can be observed between excessive work in progress (inventory), which may lead to late recognition and, thus, to the propagation of defects between subsequent processing stages. The outcome is wasted production capacity (processing parts that are already defective) and reduced resource efficiency. However, the reduction of this type of inventory through lean practices can increase lead time, because without buffers, bottlenecks in the system are more difficult to be prevented. This causes higher overall (in particular, standby) energy consumption. | Strategic planning, process design, operations, logistics, quality, and environmental management. | Colledani et al. [2014]; Carvalho et al., [2017] |
| Scope vs. depth | There is a trade-off between the scope and depth of sustainability agendas: if companies try to achieve improvement along a wide variety of sustainability dimensions, they may fail to have breakthrough achievements in areas of primary importance. They need to set priorities in terms of aspects with the greatest impact on environmental sustainability (e.g., prioritize a selected life cycle stage). | Strategic planning, product and process design, operations, logistics, R&D, communication, and environmental management | Csutora [2011] |
| Proactive vs. reactive | In the context of resource constraints, ESO firms usually need to make a strategic choice between investing in innovation for sustainability or scaling up (or extending) existing green technologies (the latter choice promises immediate and less-uncertain environmental performance improvements but may not resolve specific environmental problems). Similarly, firms usually need to select between complex pollution prevention technologies and pollution control technologies (a reactive strategy with immediate tangible benefits). Despite the immediate, low-risk, easy-to-measure benefits of the reactive strategies, firms choosing this latter option may, over time, face rising abatement costs. | Strategic planning, product and process design, operations, R&D, and environmental management | Klassen and Whybark [1999]; Pinkse and Kolk [2010] |
| R&D targeting product stewardship vs. clean technology | While product stewardship innovations envisage incremental product improvements and development of products with lower-than-before life cycle costs, clean technology innovations leapfrog existing products and processes to achieve radical reorientation toward ecologically sustainable directions. Decision-makers face complex trade-offs because of competing product stewardship solutions (e.g., advanced, internal combustion engines with turbocharging systems in the automotive industry, or flexible fuel vehicles) and competing clean technology solutions (electric battery vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles [EVs], and so on), featuring different ecological impacts and unpredictable development trajectories. | Strategic planning, R&D, product and process design, marketing, and environmental management | Penna and Geels [2015]; De Stefano et al. [2016] |
| R&D targeting electric drivetrain technologies of automotive companies vs. vehicle weight reduction | A complex trade-off situation for ESO automotive companies. According to the results of the referred paper, vehicle weight reduction (in traditional vehicles) promises higher cumulative emission savings than shifting to EVs or hybrid vehicles. Strategic managers need to consider, however, the substantial government support targeting EV technologies, the evolution of consumer preferences, competition in the EV market, and the opportunity for changes in the incentive structure. R&D and product design staff need to consider weight reduction-related safety concerns. | Strategic planning, R&D, product and process design, marketing, communication and government relations, and environmental management | Serrenho et al. [2017] |
| Trade-offs related to manufacturing strategy selection: additive (3DP) vs. conventional manufacturing | The 3DP paradigm is associated with less waste, reduced inventory, higher resource efficiency, less transportation, easier inclusion of lightweight structures (improving, e.g., fuel efficiency); but the drawbacks include higher energy use in production partly because of low throughput; adverse impact on the environment because of the powder elaboration process; toxicological hazards related to the materials used in the 3DP process; unresolved quality problems (higher defect rate) because of the low maturity of the 3DP process. | Strategic planning, product design, operations, R&D, and environmental management | Chen et al., [2015]; Paris et al. [2016] |