Total quality product design—how to integrate environmental criteria into the product realization process

Recent case studies on the financial benefits of pollution prevention programs well attest to the notion that a commitment to the environment can help profitability not only by avoiding costs and potential liabilities, but also by generating environmentally-based opportunities for competitive advantage. Achieving these benefits, however, represents a complex management challenge that requires embedding environmental concerns in the day-to-day decisions and actions of a company'S employees. This article shows how the marriage of corporate environmental stewardship and TQM, better known as TQEM, is particularly well suited to the area of product design and why environmental health and safety experts can improve a product'S environmental performance.     

Environmental management information systems: New tools for measuring performance

Successful implementation of environmental management information systems (EMIS) has become essential to the success of total quality environmental management (TQEM) programs. Effective TQEM programs will be early indicators of which companies survive and thrive in today's competitive business environment. Highly competitive industries such as chemicals, electronics, and oil and gas are becoming very effective in cooperating to develop metrics, models, and tools that are based on business processes rather than regulatory edicts. Now electric power companies, newly exposed to market competition, are starting to develop and implement these metrics, standards, and tools. That industry provides a model for joining TQEM and EMIS.     

Questions and answers. TQEM performance indicators—how do you measure up?

I have seen a number of corporations accept the philosophy of TQEM and start the process of total quality environmental management with great enthusiasm. I believe that many organizations are attracted because TQM principles demand measurements of success and results that are definable for the environment. It reduces the emotionalism that frequently tends to surround environmental issues. Emotionalism has perhaps been the bane and boon of efforts by corporations and advocacy groups to incorporate environmental issues into the day-to-day functions of organizations. Abt Associates, a well-known research-based consulting firm, recently completed a study of U.S. Fortune 250 firms' environmental management programs. Abt found evidence that environmental performance is a competitive issue. Benchmarking is hotly pursued to develop firm-wide indices of performance. One third of the benchmarking is against competition, another third is against worldwide firms. There is a race to develop “Best in Class” standards now. E2M and Abt Associates have combined resources to study corporate Canada's environmental management programs and compare these with those of the United States. This research will help companies benchmark activities and will build a strong North American data base. Unfortunately it will not be ready in time to answer TQEM's question for this issue. (The study results will be released to participating companies in Fall 1992.)     

Measuring for success in communications for permits

Today, U.S. corporations are discovering the merit of combining the principles of total quality environmental management (TQEM) into their measurement and communications programs. This approach has been particularly productive in the permitting process that is necessary for starting, expanding, or sustaining plant operations—a procedure that can easily be thwarted in the absence of a prominent and aggressive communications component. The need to benchmark and measure such a communication program'S progress is critical both for internal management and for environmental regulators concerned that an applicant demonstrate a high degree of public involvement.     

From a culture of fixing to a culture of preventing at arm & hammer brand

Companies with a total quality management program in place are beginning to understand the need for of a fuller integration of environmental and health and safety functions within their overall quality framework. Intense international competition, a flat global economy, and an increasingly stringent environmental and health and safety regulatory climate are forcing management to consolidate whatever gains they have made on the compliance side. At the same time, a total quality approach demands flattening of hierarchies, increased empowerment in divisions and plant floors, and much greater integration through a team approach of most management functions. Making all of this work puts a heavy premium on communication and individual responsibility. As companies that are going through the process now understand, this calls for major changes in corporate culture and a deep commitment from top management. This article describes the quality improvement process at Church & Dwight, makers of the Arm & Hammer line of products, where the TQEM challenge is orchestrated by a triumvirate representing three management functions: engineering, quality, and marketing/public relations.     

Achieving environmental excellence through TQEM strategic alliances

Generally speaking, today's TQEM initiatives do not improve a firm's activities beyond the shipping dock and onto consumer and postconsumer use and reuse. Although internal TQEM efforts do improve environmental impacts of a firm's operations, most firms remain focused on the traditional bottom-line objective of increasing throughput. For these reasons, most firms implementing TQEM miss the many opportunities to improve environmental performance (including cost and quality) through asset recovery, resource sharing, and reuse. However, by taking the advantages of teamwork beyond corporate boundaries, firms can close the loop on environmental improvements. Inter-firm teaming for environmental advantage, which we define as TQEM alliancing, initiates a cyclical approach to environmental performance improvement. It does so by forging strategic relationships among firms that can leverage each other's environmental weaknesses. TQEM allying is a round-robin game plan. In this article, the authors show how it allows firms to take their environmental improvement initiatives beyond regulatory compliance (and into proactivity), beyond pollution control (to total pollution avoidance), and beyond profitability (for a quantitative as well as qualitative bottom line), because firms will be integrating external as well as internal functions across different business domains.     

Implementing industrial ecology and design for environment practices: Lawrence livermore national laboratory

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), one of the nation's three national security laboratories, is initiating a major research effort in industrial ecology with the goal of increasing the economic and environmental efficiency of the U.S. and global economies. Closer to home, ongoing efforts to reduce LLNL's environmental impact on the surrounding community provide an example of how the environmental efficiency of a major research facility can be systematically improved. In the late 1980s, LLNL initiated its waste minimization and pollution prevention program, changing its focus from end-of-pipe waste management to a proactive and preventive strategy—total quality environmental management (TQEM). LLNL's success in integrating pollution prevention with R&D and operational activities is well illustrated by the waste reduction and energy and water conservation accomplishments described in this article. LLNL represents a model of how industrial ecology, design for environment, and pollution prevention can be incorporated into a comprehensive R&D and operational program. This article describes LLNL's developing industrial ecology program, gives some specific technical accomplishments that have application to many industrial facilities, and presents a case study of TQEM at LLNL's remote experimental test facility, Site 300. The integration of TQEM philosophy with LLNL's scientific capabilities holds much promise for new ideas and creative solutions to national and international industrial ecology concerns.     

Kodak's framework and assessment tool for implementing TQEM

Total Quality Management provides a powerful management foundation and framework to implement an organization's environmental vision and principles. The elements of TQM include customer/stakeholder focus, a high degree of senior management commitment, a long-term focus, and tools such as continuous improvement, empowerment, and a prevention-based approach. This article describes a matrix developed by major U.S. and Canadian firms that serves as (1) a guide to organizations implementing TQEM from the ground floor up and (2) an assessment tool that can be used internally or externally to measure progress toward environmental management excellence and to identify opportunities for improvement. The matrix is based on categories adapted from those used in the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award process. The relationship between individual matrix cell criteria and key concepts such as pollution prevention and sustainability is also described.     

Selecting measures for corporate environmental quality: Examples from TQEM companies

Companies undertaking TQEM programs must decide how to measure continuous improvement in the environmental field at the outset of their implementation activities. In the past three years, the leading TQEM companies have made these tough choices and have begun to share their findings with the larger professional community. The author proposes a model for classifying environmental measurement data and presents examples of approaches adopted by TQEM companies.     

Making pollution prevention part of the coors culture

This article is about Total Quality Management and its relationship to corporate environmental affairs. As the TQM movement expands, the commitment to continuous quality improvement, customer satisfaction, and collaborative, team-oriented workplaces is finding new applications. Just as the success of Federal Express, AT&T, and other winners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award shows that Total Quality Management can transform a business, we also are learning of successes companies are having applying TQM principles to environmental management. Our experience with TQM and environmental management at Coors Brewing Company is in the area of pollution prevention. In addition to our brewing operations, we also operate the country's largest aluminum can manufacturing plant, where we produce 4 billion cans a year, a separate facility that makes the can tops, a glass bottle manufacturing plant, and various support facilities. In all, we have some 7,000 employees, and building a commitment to pollution prevention in an operation of that size requires much more than just adopting quality principles. In this article we show how it also means understanding how those principles will mesh with the corporate culture. What we found is that before TQM can begin its magic, a company must review its own culture to see how problems have traditionally been solved and how challenges have been met.     

What's the difference between reengineering and tqem?

Reengineering has become the latest corporate management buzzword, replacing, in many cases, total quality management as the panacea for industrial ills. How different are reengineering and total quality management (TQM), if at all, and how does each apply to environmental management? In this article the authors examine the concepts of reengineering and TQM as they apply to environmental management.     

Eleven major companies take quality environmental management initiatives within president's commission

The President'S Commission on Environmental Quality (PCEQ) is translating TQEM theory into action at industrial facilities around the United States. Eleven major corporations are undertaking voluntary demonstration projects at twelve facilities throughout the country to actively test TQEM. Corporate participants will share their conclusions about incentives, barriers, management processes, and metrics to produce a “blueprint” for successful TQEM programs elsewhere.     

Understanding the roles of customers and suppliers in quality assurance and quality control

Quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) are basic components of a TQEM program. All too often these functions are loosely defined and used interchangeably. Yet, the quality of outputs and services strongly depends on the caliber of the communications between the “customer” and the “supplier.” A clear understanding of customer needs and expectations is essential to selecting and applying suitable QA and QC. Planning, implementing, and assessing all play a major part in the quality of final outputs. A clear understanding of the customer/supplier relationship and the functional roles played by each is essential to a successful TQEM program. This article identifies, clarifies, and simplifies the quality management responsibilities of the customer and the supplier. The ideas presented are applicable in all work environments, including research and development (R&D).     

Building audits into tqem measurement systems at P&G

This article discusses an approach to building environmental compliance audits into an effective TQEM measurement system. With this approach, companies can move their existing programs from just “meeting the law” to being viewed as “leaders in environmental excellence.” The benefit of this change is that local communities are more likely to allow their environmental leaders the operating flexibility that minimizes cost and the necessary permits for expansion.     

Making sense of environmental accounting

Much as Total Quality Management (TQM) has helped companies decrease waste and enhance value, environmental accounting offers an approach and a suite of tools that can help organizations improve both environmental quality and bottom-line business performance. Its focus is to bridge the world of finance and economics with the world of environmental management. Companies in all sectors have discovered that they can increase profits by meeting and even surpassing environmental regulations. Through environmental accounting, companies can discover more of these opportunities and, ideally, bring environmental concerns earlier into planning, decision making, and operations. This article introduces environmental accounting and some basic principles that should guide organizations' thinking on environmental accounting and environmental accounting systems. It also describes several different objectives for environmental accounting that imply different requirements and orientations. Although the focus of this article is on environmental accounting as an aspect of forward-looking management and decision making in companies, much of the discussion applies to nonprofits and government units as well.     

TQM and the cost of environmental quality

Because management is driven largely by financial concerns, determining the cost of environmental quality is a critical step in developing an environmental TQM program for which management will actively demonstrate commitment and support. Costs of environmental quality can be grouped into three categories: failure, prevention, and appraisal. The total cost of environmental quality can be used as a benchmark to monitor the level of environmental quality and to justify the redirection of resources.     

Evaluating management systems as part of environmental audits

Evaluating management systems is a crucial component of any environmental audit. Evolving regulations and directives acknowledge this importance. Remedying management deficiencies can result in long-term, lasting improvements in environmental compliance with external requirements and internal policies. This article presents ideas and examples from leading companies on how environmental audits can be designed to enhance TQEM systems.     

Benchmarking environmental audit programs: Best practices and biggest challenges

As Total Quality Management (TQM) has become an important concept in learning how to manage environmental, health, and safety audit programs more effectively, an especially useful. TQM tool has been competitive benchmarking. Companies are using benchmarking studies to identify “best practices” that could be incorporated into their programs. In conducting benchmarking studies, evaluators often also identify the biggest common challenges facing audit program managers. This article discusses these best practices and biggest challenges associated with environmental audit programs. The conclusions are based on a number of benchmarking studies and third-party evaluations of corporate audit programs. As the sources are necessarily limited to the author's own experiences, there are no doubt many other specific best practices that are not discussed in this article. These will surface over time.     

Toward effective environmental auditing at the TVA: Management audits versus compliance audits

Companies that incorporate Total Quality Management into their operations are placing increased emphasis on identifying the root causes of deficiencies and problems. This is in keeping with the TQM principles identified by Deming in Out of the Crisis. Deming states that quality comes not from inspection or from management by objectives or results, but from improvements made in the process and products in order to meet customer needs. Deming's approach demands a shift in focus from addressing symptoms to addressing causes. In this article, environmental management audits are presented as the best means to assure that adequate management controls are in place to protect the company, its managers and its employees from penalties associated with civil and criminal enforcement actions.     

Training for benchmarking: The alliedsignal experience

Integration of TQM principles and tools into environmental management decisions is essential to the ultimate success of businesses. Benchmarking is one of the most powerful TQM tools for quickly and effectively improving processes. To realize the maximum benefit from benchmarking, it—like any other TQM tool—must be used appropriately and properly. In this article training techniques are presented that will help companies realize the full potential of their benchmarking efforts.