Many companies have begun working on environmental initiatives within their own four walls by increasing energy efficiency and reducing waste. It seems that everyone’s favorite these days is to remove single-use cups with forever-use ones. This internal focus is natural because it is where managers exert the most control, and it is where clear metrics can be established. (Let us know if you’d like to receive our new data supporting that ceramic cups are best for reducing costs and environmental impact.)

Going much deeper into the supply chain
But companies are interactive entities, part of a larger system. Sustainability managers quickly discover that fulfilling environmental objectives – especially in the areas of product design, distribution, or procurement – means working with suppliers and customers. A seemingly simple task such as reducing the packaging on a component can involve lengthy communications and negotiations with a surprising number of people both inside and outside the company. (We recently helped a client create an efficient packaging solution when the prior method used four times the packaging necessary!)

Sustainability in the supply chain is increasingly important because of regulations also. For instance, the REACH Directive requires companies to know (and register) the chemical contents of their products in far greater detail than ever before. They are reaching back into their supply chains for basic information, which can lead to collaborative product redesigns to avoid harmful chemicals.

Insights from the CDP
The folks at the Carbon Disclosure Project have been working to ease the transition to sustainable supply-chain operations by creating a network of member companies called the CDP Supply Chain. As stated in the flagship 2010 Supply Chain Report, “The CDP Supply Chain is a collaboration of global corporations who have extended their climate change and carbon management strategies beyond their direct corporate boundaries to engage with their suppliers via CDP’s annual Information Request. …This year, 44 member companies reached out to 1,402 of their suppliers, and 710 (51%) responded to the request.”

The report summarizes the findings. Members of the CDP Supply Chain are intent on reducing the carbon emissions from their supply chains, and are working on the challenges that currently hinder progress. Some challenges involve education of suppliers, who are generally at an earlier stage of sustainability planning than members; 56% intend to deselect suppliers who fail to meet carbon management criteria in the future. Some challenges will improve with clearer communication. Collaboration and sharing of best practices is a key priority at this time.

Although the CDP work involves manufacturing supply chains, there are other efforts afoot in the world of sustainable supply chains also. The first-ever Forest Footprint Disclosure report looked carefully at forest practices among companies in that industry. Ceres issued a report on corporate water-risk management based on disclosure data from 100 large companies. And other groups (ForestEthics, Earthworks, and OxFam America) are beginning to ask questions about “dirty resources” – raw materials like metals and minerals that are often acquired at considerable environmental and human expense.

Focus Questions for VP Operations & Supply Chain
TFI recommends that VP Operations / Supply Chain as well as Sustainability Executives ask themselves these five questions, toward creating supply-chain sustainability strategies:

o Where are the potential hot spots in our supply chain for illegal or unethical labor practices, or for irresponsible treatment of electronic waste (e-waste) and emissions to air, soil, or water?
o Which of my contract manufacturers (electronics manufacturing services (EMS) and original design manufacturers (ODM)) have made visible to us as much information about their suppliers’ labor and environmental practices as we need to reduce risk of being complicit in violations and bad publicity?
o Have we reduced the mass (weight, bill of materials, unnecessary components) of our products and packaging sufficiently for economic and environmental advantage, and which of our suppliers have been most proactive in this continuous Design-for-Environment (DfE) improvement?
o How are our internal supply-chain managers and buyers rewarded – through cost savings alone or also for reducing the company’s risk from associating ourselves with suppliers violating law or engaged in unethical labor and environmental practices?
o How many times do our products circle the globe from raw materials through product usage through end of life? Have we measured the wasted time, expense, CO2 emissions, and risk in transport, compared to a using a regional-manufacturing, logistics-efficient strategy?

How prepared are you to discuss these deeper levels of your supply chain? And what do you still need to understand in order to make it more sustainable?

Quite a few years ago I had the pleasure of living in Europe, Asia, and the United Arab Emirates. My work took me to the offices and boardrooms of some of the largest companies in the world, many with annual revenues larger than those of some countries.

Each day I interviewed managing directors and presidents about their company policies and economic outlook. Often, I was greatly impressed with their overall vision and their ability to lead large groups of people toward a common goal. However, in many cases I was disheartened at the responses from these business leaders when I asked about their company’s manufacturing policies — particularly the social and environmental elements. During the course of these visits, I also toured the factories, met with some of the workers, and analyzed the network of distributors, suppliers, retailers, and wholesalers that helped bring their products to market. Some companies implemented impeccable processes. Sadly, I also witnessed subpar standards that had me question many of these companies’ practices.

It was then that I realized that the best way for the world to change was for business to change. As a result, I began to direct all of my efforts and energy to create awareness for more sustainable business practices, including supply chains.

Since the days of my global CEO meetings and factory tours, I completed an MBA at the Presidio School of Management, a traditional business school that threads sustainable values into every aspect of the curriculum. Additionally, three years ago I co-founded a company called EcoTuesday, which brings sustainable business leaders together in cities across the USA. I now am honored to work with Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, and non-profit organizations by developing strategic plans and coordinating teams to reach specific, measurable goals. It’s great meeting more and more of TFI’s clients and witnessing their clear understanding between sustainable supply-chain practices and robust company performance.

My international business experience and the formal education I received at the Presidio have provided me with the tools needed to help TFI clients transform their businesses by increasing efficiency, decreasing waste, and saving money within all points of their supply chains. I look forward to using my skills and insights to support our clients in being financially successful and highly competitive in their industries. Additionally, it is important to me that all of our clients are in compliance with applicable product-and-manufacturing regulations and that all of their stakeholders are in alignment with the company’s vision.

Do you believe any business could truly transform without a thorough examination of its own supply chain? (Please reply at the bottom of the blog.)

Celestica, in response to the Montreal Protocol phasing out ozone-depleting substances was the first electronics contract manufacturer to leap-frog from cleaning printed-circuit-board assemblies with CFC (ozone-depleting) solvents to the no-clean process. In doing so, Celestica leaped over the aqueous-cleaning technique requiring costly capital equipment, floor space and power for the equipment, labor hours, and disposal of heavy-metal water with permits and treatments. I interviewed the parties responsible for this change a few years afterward (for my book Lean and Green: Profit for Your Workplace and the Environment), and the smarts behind the leap-frog move were motivated by environmental conservation and competitive savings of time, cost, real estate, and more.

HP, anteing up for a package-reduction challenge by Walmart, did not do as most of its competitors did — incrementally or even substantively reducing the size and weight of the packaging surrounding the products. One HP employee had the idea to make the packaging part of the product itself. The notebook computers, cables, and accessories were packed in attractive over-the-shoulder “messenger” bags — three to a cardboard shipping box without any other packaging material. In one fell swoop, this leap-frog move resulted in 97% reduction of packaging, conservation of fuel, and reduction of CO2 emissions by removing the equivalent of one out of every four trucks previously needed to deliver the notebooks to Walmart and Sam’s Clubs around the USA.

I encourage you to take advantage of the New Year to use leap-frog thinking — in your companies’ manufacturing strategies, supply-chain and logistics designs, Lean programs, sustainability programs, and every other aspect of your workplaces. Make it easier for yourself! Raise up your company’s efficacy 4-5 steps at once instead of inching upward — facing organizational resistance to change each time. Leave the arduous step-by-step improvements to your competitors, who will arrive at the finish line much later and with far more cost.

Will you face more organizational resistance to this one leap-frog improvement than to a more routine change? Perhaps yes. But if you are like me, one of the reasons you get up in the morning and head to your desk is to make your organization and the world better places.

Do you want to try on some leap-frog ideas with the TFI and TFI Environment consultants and/or community (reply below)?

When the CFO at furnishings company Herman Miller became the CEO, the director of Environment, Health, and Safety Paul Murray felt nervous. Murray had convinced the CFO to allocate $40,000/month to invest in resource efficiencies for the company. When Brian Walker moved from CFO to CEO, he asked to meet with Murray. At that point, Murray feared that a CFO-turned-CEO would nix the investment altogether. To Murray’s surprise and relief, Walker suggested increasing the monthly investment to $50,000! Walker explained that while he was CFO he witnessed that the return on investment (ROI) from the environmental investments was simply excellent. In fact, Herman Miller ($2 billion in revenues) not only makes smart investments to reduce its own environmental footprint, but also the company is a design-for-environment leader for office chairs (I’m sitting on one) and other furnishings, and – through subsidiary Convia, Inc. — helps to reduce energy consumption of customers’ buildings with energy-management tools. CEO Walker says, “Sustainability is becoming as prevalent in customer requirements as quality was 10 or 15 years ago, and we’re at the tipping point of this movement where our customers, at least, are no longer saying it’s nice to know you do it. It’s a requirement” (Industry Week, Sep. 2009, p. 24). By the way, 20% of Walker’s compensation is based on the company’s environmental performance.

Last month, a CFO-turned-CEO at a TFI electronics-company client reviewed the High-ROI Environmental Roadmap we had prepared in concert with a multifunctional green team. The roadmap listed a half-dozen Lean and Green initiatives along with their financial and environmental benefits (cost reductions, new revenue, carbon emission reductions, and less use of paper, water, and energy). From reviewing both the environmental and financial ROI, the CEO’s response was immediate: he said he’s one-hundred percent behind one-hundred percent of the projects as outlined.

Another high-tech company CFO (not yet a CEO!) uses his sharp focus on ROI to support his company’s environmental program, with this advice: Determine priorities for the environmental initiatives according to greatest reduction of environment impact and the highest monetary ROI. For example, if you had $500,000 to spend, what projects would you choose to most efficiently maximize the environmental and monetary savings? “It’s important to prioritize in this way,” he said, “because the environmental program could be one of 50 initiatives all fighting with each other for resources. List the overhead, capital, and expense investments separately. Get on the executive agenda and carve out the initiative — just like any other business function.” The CFO added that environmental programs – like training – need to be elevated to the executive level for planned investments, because they span all company departments; the executive staff needs to dedicate funding to be appropriated to the departmental budgets in a way in which the funds cannot be “cannibalized.”

So, if you are running (or starting) your company’s strategic environmental initiatives, don’t tippy-toe around your CFO. Enlist him or her in sharpening the ROI and advocating in the executive suites for these surprisingly large-return programs.

All CFOs (and other financially-minded) readers are welcome to weigh in. (Leave a reply at the bottom of the blog.)

And the networking industry has responded by using more efficient power supplies. But this is an incremental improvement. Significant market growth is available to companies disrupting the way that networking equipment consumes power through alternative designs and innovative power management.

So, this is a call-to-action for network-equipment designers everywhere, as well as to innovative software and parts suppliers serving the networking industry. Let’s discuss ways you’ve considered power reductions and together create a roadmap of likely alternatives for growing up while powering down the networking industry.

Here are some ideas to get us going, so we can discuss these approaches’ benefits from a Design-for-Environment (DfE) perspective and discuss any downsides of using these for standard product operation:

- Solid state drives
- Low Power Dual Quad Core processor and chip set
- A rack that can better manage power efficiency and have the power redundancy at the rack level rather than the system level
- Smart cooling: Fan-less, fewer variable speed fans, liquid cooling, or Pulsed Air Jet Cooling (liquid-cooled racks can reduce the amount of cooling required to keep the environment around the systems at around 25 degrees Celsius)
- Developing an idle mode for systems that currently run 24/7 — while still supporting customers applications and traffic
- Scalable or dynamic power supplies that monitor actual usage and only turns on the power needed
- Active power management with monitoring system vitals
- Use of ultra-capacitors instead of a Lithium button cell batteries
- Modular design for power supplies that grows with additional hardware

And to make our roadmap as Lean and Green as possible, we’ll discuss business questions such as…

- Under which circumstances or application does a power supply with a 90%-and-higher-efficiency rating provide enough savings over a standard 80+ power supply to justify the significantly higher investment cost?
- How do you convince your own company’s management to invest in more efficient designs / components (80+ GOLD power supplies, active power management, solid state drives, de-materialization, fan-less design, etc.) given that it’s the customer and not the OEM that saves money and carbon footprint?
- What are the affects of delivering systems with 1-2 dozen-drive capacity (and power ratings accordingly) initially populated with just a handful of drives from Design for Environment (DfE) perspective, and what alternate techniques can be used to minimize this impact?
- How can we influence regulators around the world to develop highly technical-and-cost savvy (e.g., through EuP study groups)?

Reply below or write to me (PGordon@TFIenvironment.com) to let me know you are interested in creating, exploring, and sharing ideas that will help address one of the most pressing issues today and tomorrow for networking equipment — vital to corporate customers, to cost reductions, and of course to reducing global Greenhouse Gas emissions. I look forward to the challenge!

If you frequent TFI’s Friday Best of Blogs, then you know that we recommend changes to profitably streamline tech companies’ product design, supply chain, product movement, and other operational functions. Our clients know that change is necessary, otherwise they would not have engaged us. But often they need help in overcoming their teams’ or managers’ resistance to change. Organizations have an unfortunate habit of acquiring blockages that impede progress and stymie performance.

Managers can regularly embark on search-and-destroy missions to root out barriers and obliterate them. These barriers can be difficult to find, because they morph into familiar forms and hide in plain sight. If you look carefully, you can uncover these barriers to change:

1. EXCUSES — When you start hearing excuses for why things can’t change, you have encountered a blockage.
2. FEAR — When people get scared, they freeze and plug up everything they are involved in.
3. SECRETS – This is a sure sign of a dysfunctional organization.
4. INSECURITY — When people are in over their head, they know it and their main purpose in life becomes trying to make sure other people don’t figure it out.
5. POSTURING — When people fixate on their image, you are in the presence of a blockage.
6. ROUTINES — Doing things the same way for too long creates “comfort zones,” which are places where fearful, insecure, posturing people go to avoid detection.

By contrast, positive change thrives in healthy organizations, characterized by:

1. Strong, enlightened, progressive, free-thinking, open-minded LEADERSHIP.
2. An appreciation of the value and importance of SETTING AND ACHIEVING GOALS.
3. An atmosphere of HIGH-ACHIEVEMENT, where good enough is not good enough.
4. FULL DISCLOSURE and a willingness to share virtually all information.
5. Employees who understand WHAT IS EXPECTED and WHAT THEY WILL GAIN when they achieve it.
6. A sense of TEAMWORK where everyone believes they are working for the benefit of all, not enriching the few.
7. The ability to EMBRACE CHANGE and LEARN FROM MISTAKES.
8. The capacity to GET THINGS DONE.

How many organizations truly possess all of these attributes? Precious few. The first step to positive change is creating the right conditions for improvements to exist. Life on earth didn’t emerge until there was an oxygen-rich atmosphere. The Renaissance couldn’t happen until dogma gave way to enlightened thought. And an organization plugged with barriers cannot strategically progress.

We at TFI have succeeded in having upper and middle management and all employees understand the imperative of positive change. How? We gain enthusiastic buy-in through addressing key leaders’ business and budgetary goals, inspire people through real-life examples of other companies’ success, show how it’s good for business, educate about the cost of wasted materials/processes, and tie compensation to results. We use a host of approaches depending on the company’s culture. It’s very rewarding.

How have you removed barriers to change in your company? (Please reply below.)

This week I had the pleasure of meeting a CEO whose vision is driving him to move manufacturing from Southeast Asia to Midwest USA. But this was no shock to his COO (sitting with us at the coffee house), because this company — Vista International — is founded on CEO Johan Smith’s bold vision to power a cleaner world and to “Reducing carbon footprint one step at a time” (trademarked). Vista, headquartered near Denver, Colorado, is a technology holding company in the renewable energy industry. During the past 20 years the company has acquired technologies as diverse as energy-efficient lighting for facilities, converting waste to high-octane fuels, high-efficiency wind and hydro turbines, and higher-BTU coal with less pollutants.

Though Smith has lived and worked in several countries and has advised government officials in China, Mexico, St. Lucia (Caribbean), Bulgaria, and Israel, he wants to build the company’s largest-yet production facility in the Midwest USA, serving both domestic and international customers. He mentioned tactfully that he is not entirely comfortable with manufacturing in China. It’s likely also that the energy-efficiency investment portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 strengthens his decision.

The return to regional manufacturing — making products close to customers — is a strategy TFI has been recommending to clients brave enough to counter a trend. The benefits include meeting regional customers’ requirements more quickly and precisely, mitigating risk compounded across multiple national borders, and reducing carbon footprint — the latter being more visible these days to investors and corporate customers. The CEO must share this vision because an operational shift this far-reaching is rarely championed by a singular manager outside the executive suite.

The electronics contract manufacturing industry is full of CEO visionaries who dictated manufacturing locations: former Flextronics CEO Michael Marks envisioned complete supply-chain campuses in Mexico and Eastern Europe to serve customers on those continents. Former Sparton Electronics CEO David Hockenbrocht foresaw that keeping manufacturing in North America would appeal best to his regulated-industry customers; then in the last years of his tenure he pioneered (amongst his EMS peers) the building of a facility in Vietnam (when I asked why, he spoke about the comparatively high education and low labor rates there; I always wondered if his reasons came from his values as well).

I invite you to comment (below): Has your company’s CEO been instrumental in determining manufacturing locations? Does your company’s manufacturing-location strategy prioritize cheap labor rates or a regional strategy emphasizing customer responsiveness, risk mitigation, and smaller carbon footprint?

Myth #1: Employees will resent travel reduction. If because of business travel you have ever (1) missed your kid’s graduation or performance, (2) not registered for an evening course that requires steady attendance, or (3) felt reluctant to book vacation in a fabulous distant place because flying has worn you down, then you know to question this myth. We begin customizing a client’s travel-reduction program by interviewing frequent travelers; these interviews quickly reveal that most travelers would like to curb non-essential travel.

Myth #2: The Sales Department must be insulated from travel-reduction programs, to prevent sales erosion. We used to go along with this view: after all, no consultant wants a client to experience lower sales based on a cost-savings recommendation. But then the evidence starting flowing in, such as from Oracle’s Green Sales program, which has the sales force reduce travel via web-based demos and reduce the number of demos needed based on consultative insights. For example, instead of sending about 5 sales-related people to a customer’s site, they’ll send 1-2 and have the others participate by the web. And what was the affect on company performance? –Profits up and sales decline (owing to the economy) lower than anticipated. For effective travel reduction in the Sales function, conduct objective interviews with Sales as well as customers to uncover non-essential travel, and provide easy-to-use travel-avoidance tools.

Myth #3: Travel reduction is only about reducing airfare. Corporate expenditures on airline tickets can be only 40% to 60% of total business-travel expenses, which include steep costs for rental cars, ground transportation, parking, lodging, and meals. When you capture all travel-related costs and carbon emissions, the significant savings may surprise you.

Myth #4: Travel is a long-term strategy for integrating combined business units. Travel can help bring acquired-companies’ employees into the parent-company culture, but frequent travel is not necessary for the long term. Our research has shown that “internal meetings” is the business-travel category that travelers report they can reduce most readily — even at companies that have grown recently through acquisition. Company culture is driven in large part by the CEO, who — along with other top executives — can regularly address employees using video recordings, video-conferencing, web-conferencing, conference calls, employee newsletters, monthly “What’s on my mind” emails, and other inspiring travel alternatives. This sends a strong message that employees can likewise work productively with off-site employees without traveling each time.

Myth #5: We’ve already reduced business travel as much as we can. Owing to the economic climate many companies have recently reduced business travel. By analyzing why employees travel — through interviewing frequent travelers and requiring all travelers to specify how the trip contributes to corporate objectives — we discover process changes that render classes of business travel unnecessary.

It is undeniable that sometimes face-to-face meetings are best. Having lived and worked a year in EMEA and now back in the San Francisco Bay Area, I can attest to the value and enjoyment of having met with TFI’s EMEA clients in-person during the past year, and now reuniting with my Silicon Valley clients and colleagues. But by using a green lens to re-look at conventional business processes, we find new ideas for savings. And instead of finger-wagging employees (”Don’t spend so much money!”), we inspire them to improve the quality of our lives and the environment.

What travel purposes are sacrosanct at your organization, and should they be? (Please leave a reply below.)

This month Mark wrote in his newsletter the Marbridge Daily about China’s “Old-for-New” recycling program. In short, residents and organizations can trade in old consumer electronics and receive a 10% subsidy on the selling price of new consumer electronics. The program makes sense to me, and yet in China fashion the regulation is different from those in all other global regions. In fact “Old-for-New” is an even greater departure from the European Union’s WEEE Directive (reuse/recycling) than was China’s substance-labeling program from the EU’s RoHS Directive (substance restriction).

I asked Mark about China’s bold new law, and Mark said, “China is gradually working to improve the environment, both through recycling programs like the ‘Old for New’ program for consumer-electronics recycling, and also through use of more energy-efficient products, like “green” mobile-telephone base stations.”

Then he proceeded to give one person’s view of the impact of these laws, from the streets of Beijing: “We’ve had one of the most hospitable summers in my 7 years here – neither too hot nor humid and more blue skies than I ever thought possible for Beijing. I thought the clearer skies might be due, at least in part, to some improvements in environmental policy, such as replanting of forests between here and the Gobi Desert in the north, and even-odd license plate regulations. But the other day someone reminded me that one potentially major contributing factor is the economic downturn, which has seen a lot of factories reduce output (and the accompanying pollution).”

By the way, Friedman’s chapter “China for a Day” also reminded me of my 2004 visit to China (meeting executives at EMS and ODM companies in Shanghai and Suzhou), when with no apparent warning the Central Government banned filter-less cigarettes — without years-long deliberation by politicians in tobacco states or investments by the tobacco lobby. I found it both impressive and scary.

What do you think about China’s environmental policies and the way they are created?

At home, you likely have already experienced the benefits and fun of locating used items through online forums, rather than spending time and (too much) money shopping for them new. Freecycle, Zwaggle, and of course Craig’s List have saved people millions of dollars while simultaneously benefiting the environment through avoided production, shipping emissions, and landfill burden.

Smart companies are starting to realize that they can profit from the same concept within their four walls.

Why purchase a new stapler when an employee upstairs has ended up with three in his desk drawer? Why order new equipment for the test lab when the research lab has a spare one used last year that is no longer needed? A glance at the monthly spend of a typical company for office supplies, equipment, and research materials will convince any manager that this type of sharing and swapping is tremendously beneficial to the bottom line, not to mention conserving the Earth’s resources. The question is, how to set it up practically?

Luckily, most companies already have all the tools they need to create their own “swap meet.” The corporate intranet is a natural place to set up a forum for posting “offers” and “needs.” It can be done through most types of collaboration platforms, discussion boards, or common drive spaces that all employees can access and search.

One example is the Cisco® Resource Exchange and Disposal Online (CREDO) program. Program manager Gideon Schroeder explains that CREDO is “an in-house virtual equipment exchange” that also helps Cisco handle its scrap. “The ultimate goal is to prevent any Cisco equipment or parts from ending up in landfills.” The system – which is ISO 14001 certified – is saving company money and employees’ time, and diverting electronic waste from landfills.

CREDO is for equipment. Another tech company, a TFI client in the electronic hardware business, is setting up an online swap site that will include standard office supplies, monitors, printers, chairs, and other items that tend to accumulate in people’s cubes. It is one antidote to purchasing departments’ practice of blithely buying a fresh set for every new hire.

But how do you actually get employees to use the “swap meet” when they are accustomed to ordering something new, and how do you quantify the monetary and carbon-emission savings from the program? We recommend the following four steps (which we customize for each client according to their company culture and accounting systems):

(1) Generate interest and educate employees on how to use the system, emphasizing the time-saving benefit.
(2) Give employees incentives to track their swaps. To measure the monetary and environment-footprint savings, it is critical to know what swaps have been completed. If employees swap items by walking down the hall, they need a reason to record the transaction online. One way is to reward both the giver and the receiver with “points,” redeemable for rewards or recognition.
(3) Track transactions using categories that match purchasing or accounting conventions. In particular, it is critical to know when an asset item (as opposed to an expense) has been transferred between departments.
(4) Show progress: Create a graphic for the intranet and company newsletter that shows how much money or waste has been saved to date. Also, make it easy also for employees to suggest how to maximize the program’s utility.

Has your company benefited from an internal swapping system? Let’s make this an “information swap” — please send us your comments!

If you have not yet heard the term “enterprise carbon accounting” you can rest assured that — as with financial accounting — the smarter the tools and more automated the approach the easier it is to collect, analyze, and make decisions based on the data. Our client wants to work with sustainability champions at a handful of mid-sized-to-large electronics companies who aim to reduce environmental footprint in operations, facilities, product design, supply chain, and logistics.

If you work for an electronics contract manufacturer, electronic-product company, or component supplier (annual revenues of $500 million or more) and you are up to playing a sustainability-pioneer role, I look forward to hearing from you (PGordon@TFIenvironment.com).

Corporations habitually buy IT equipment, furniture, supplies for offices and cafeterias, capital equipment, marketing collateral, and product-related materials. Managers fear that if they don’t buy enough stuff to consume this year’s budget, then next year’s budget will be smaller. So the process has been “Buy it, then Use it or Store it.” Employees are starting to get disgusted with how their companies are laying off people while offices and storage rooms brim with unused or underused investments.

Replace the old procurement habit with “Identify the need, then Find a solution” — whether that solution is borrowed, second hand, leased, a service, or a better process requiring no additional stuff whatsoever. CFOs need to start rewarding departments that use “Identify the need, then Find a solution” instead of those tactically following “use it or lose it.”

Cisco had it right when they created CREDO — an online inventory that matches surplus items to identified needs. Several years ago we consulted to a client trying to bring this buying-stuff alternative to other companies, but you can easily create one on your intranet. And expand your thinking to include strategic solutions that avoid opening new facilities and taking on other major expenses.

Secondly, imagine the time we’d free up if we halved the time we spent in meetings. Check out four smart tips to reducing hours (even minutes) from meetings that do not further corporate objectives. Executives can insist on dogged project-management practices, comprising milestones and accountability for accomplishing corporate objectives. Leverage priority-only meetings and on-line tools for collaboration and accountability.

Corporations will not overcome their addictions to buying stuff and holding unlimited meetings until a “less is more” culture is embraced by top management and frequently re-enforced through employee training, fun competitions, and rewards.

Before you run to your next meeting or fill out a purchase requisition, take a minute to share with the TFI network your successes with repairing margins, by leaving a reply.

*Watch for an upcoming post in which we’ll write about notable mid- and smaller-sized contract manufacturers whose margins have actually been good.

The beauty of talk such as this stems from the multifunctional, multiregional composition of green teams that develop Lean and Green strategies for product design, manufacturing, suppliers, product movement, cafeterias, corporate travel, corporate procurement, employee commutes, and in all aspects of facilities.

Two weeks ago at the TFI Quarterly Forum in Walldorf, Germany, we witnessed nearly a dozen environmental improvements throughout Forum-host SAP’s facilities. Examples include coffee and tea served in ceramic cups, avoidance of air-conditioning owing to smart natural-air-flow design and grass-covered roofs for cooling, solar panels generating 180,000 kw/year from photovoltaics, and rainwater collection for grounds irrigation and — yes — toilet flushes. And beyond the realm of facilities, SAP designs their software products to run on hardware consuming less electricity, and offers solutions to help customers to measure and reduce their carbon footprints. Taken together, SAP’s environmental and cost-savings initiatives cross numerous corporate functions and regions. We think that’s the best way to drive deep cost reductions and environmental benefits (as discussed in our recent TFI white paper).

If you are located in EMEA, consider attending the Design-for-Environment Workshop that my colleague Graham Adams and I are co-leading 22 June near Tel Aviv. It will be a full day’s experience of Leaning and Greening electronic product designs.

So, take a chance and bring up “trash talk” at your next cost-reduction meeting — in a civilized manner, of course. Last week, when discussing TFI’s High-Return Environmental Partnership, the VP of Operations at one of our electronics-contract-manufacturing clients told me, “As you know, every year I need to figure out how to take cost reductions to another level, so this may be one thing that helps us this year.”

What conversations has your green team had that led to significant savings for the company and environment?

Our clients generously call us thought leaders–in an industry where rules, like budgets, frequently change and competitive stakes are high. I thought you might like to know which books have influenced us. This is our first annotated book list, with picks by 6 of the 20 TFI and TFI Environment consultants.

From Chief Economist Matt Chanoff is Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely. Ariely is an economics professor at MIT, but reading him isn’t like reading any other economist. His insights into how people place value on goods are well researched, quirky, entertaining, and often mind bending. Each chapter offers the entrepreneurial reader a whole new business model.

TFI Environment Consultant Dr. Kim Allen points to The Ecology of Commerce, by Paul Hawken. Because he refused to accept that business and the environment were a tradeoff, Hawken was a radical among environmentalists 20 years ago. And yet his ideas also push into the realm of truly creative and disruptive business. The Ecology of Commerce offers a daring vision of 21st century business, full of both challenge and hope.

Senior Supply-Chain Consultant Douglas Kent admires how Supply Chain Excellence, by Peter Bolstorff, delivers a 17-week process for diagnosing the health of a company’s supply chain. The handbook is easy to follow and has served as a reference tool for companies in numerous industries.

I recommend Agenda for a New Economy, by David C. Korten. Korten wrote this book, with the cooperation of my book publisher Berrett-Koehler, immediately following the Wall Street implosion in 2008 and the failure of the subsequent bailout effort. The book proposes sane alternatives to the same-old USA market structure, and after having lived in EMEA for a year (back in the USA August 2009) I am more open to these smart departures from the norm.

Logistics Consultant Jon Gilbert chose Collapse, by Jarod Diamond. It’s an eye-opening book about what happens when societies lose track of sustainability. Diamond writes about the end of well-known past societies and the root causes behind their downfalls– the over consumption of scarce resources and lack of attention to environmental degradation. Collapse can spark discussion amongst executives and green teams about business sustainability as well.

Senior Consultant Mike Kirschner not only recommends but also was quoted in Exposed, by Mark Schapiro. The subtitle says it all: “The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power.”

Finally, with his second contribution to this list, Matt makes a case for why electronics industry executives would benefit from reading a biography of a Medieval tribal leader. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford, entertains us while showing how Genghis conquered more land, people, nations, and wealth in his lifetime than did the Romans in four centuries of expansion. His secret to building an empire that endured for centuries was to combine fair mindedness and cold-eyed pragmatism. Rather than imposing his own primitive culture on the nations he conquered, Genghis took the best from each and incorporated it into a nearly global empire, with freedom of religion, rule of law that even he was subject to, better security, freer trade, more prosperity than that part of the world had ever seen, and transportation, communications, and logistics systems that operated over vast distances and trumped every foe. Matt says to read this book for insight into a guy who might well have been the greatest leader humankind has yet produced.

What books have you read that you predict will benefit today’s electronics-industry executives? (If you buy a lot of books, do as many of our clients and I have done: invest in an Amazon Kindle, for convenient, and lower-carbon-footprint reading.)

Imagine a “suggest box” at a global electronics company in which—in only 3 weeks—1 in 9 employees submits ideas that collectively save the company millions of dollars and at the same time reduces the company’s carbon footprint. Far from being a wooden box atop a table at the Silicon Valley headquarters (where only half the employees sit), the “suggestion box” is an interactive web tool accessible to employees worldwide for submitting Lean and Green ideas.

This successful employee engagement is called the Environmental Heroes (E-Heroes) Awards Program. I am pleased to have brought this program to TFI Environment’s clients, from my experience as global environmental affairs director at Lucent Technologies. Employees’ ideas are judged by three TFI Environment business and technical experts according to ROI, environmental benefit / innovation, and feasibility. We enter the best ideas into the High-ROI Environmental Roadmap, which we create and execute along with our clients’ “Green Teams.”

We have learned through collective experience that employee involvement benefits a company’s performance. Companies have saved millions of dollars from implementing employees’ Lean and Green ideas.

The E-Heroes Awards Program recognizes employees throughout the company who have ideas (either already implemented or proposed) that will save the company money and achieve other quantifiable business benefits: brand enhancement, risk mitigation, and competitive advantage. We invite employees around the world to submit applications in the categories of facilities’ footprint, product/service design, supply chain, and other Lean and Green action items they predict will result in significant gain to the bottom line while reducing environmental footprint.

There’s nothing “fuzzy” about it: to fulfill its purpose the program must systematically predict and measure cost savings, revenue enhancement, and reduction of environmental harm (or creation of environmental benefit).

This program motivates employees to find Lean and Green solutions for their company, and delivers satisfaction from seeing their ideas benefit profit and planet. At one client nearly 60% of the E-Heroes ideas submitted a year earlier had been implemented, started, or considered for the following year.

Another great benefit from engaging employees is creating enthusiasm for the efforts and programs led by the Green Team. Enthusiasm is contagious and creates a buzz throughout the company, then in employees’ families. Customers, investors, suppliers, and prospective employees learn of the company’s success with the program because the “Heroes” are announced in newspapers and results are posted on the website. In some cases donations are made to environmental organizations of the recipient’s choice; this opens another avenue for press and communications.

If your company is an OEM, contract manufacturer, or supplier, do you think the E-Heroes program, or something similar, could be is a win-win-win for your employees, your company, as well as the environment?

In the mid-1990s TFI conducted a study for Electronic Buyers’ News about promising new teamwork between engineering and purchasing. Now in 2009 we’ve uncovered a whole new level of collaboration amongst not only these two traditional “silos” but also marketing, R&D, facilities, human resources, compliance, IT, logistics, and other functions. It could be the best answer yet to many an executive’s dream that through teamwork, employees’ decisions would lead to company-wide benefit, beyond that of a particular function.

Today’s organizations are responding to calls from many fronts for sustainability. Regulators are requiring carbon and resource accountability, investors want to know how companies are cutting energy costs, consumers and corporate customers are asking for green products, and employees question why their companies are not composting like they do at home. Suddenly, the abilities to track data across functional departments and share ideas company-wide moves from a dream to an imperative.

Fortunately, more companies are discovering the pleasant surprise that the very nature of environmental and sustainability programs brings about not only cost and resource savings, but also extensive cross-company collaboration. When employees are united in their support of the environment, they begin communicating with people in the company with whom otherwise they would have no contact.

TFI has observed the emergence of this collaboration in its environmental partnership programs. We’ve recently co-written a white paper called “Collective ‘Green’ Wisdom: Environmental Initiatives Evoke Unprecedented Multifunctional Collaboration,” which offers a detailed case study of this phenomenon, along with key success factors in forming a multifunctional “Green Team” and ways to avoid the most common pitfalls.

The client profiled in our white paper expects to save more than US$4 million and 4,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent during fiscal years 2009 and 2010, which only came about because of multifunctional collaboration. In this time of simultaneous financial challenge and sustainability directives, such an advantage is even more valuable.

What inter-functional, inter-regional collaboration has been fostered by your company’s Green Team? (If your company does not yet have a Green Team, why not?)

So you need to comply with REACH — what do you need to do? Currently, REACH requires disclosure on 15 substances for many article manufacturers; soon more substances will need to be disclosed and then perhaps some will become restricted. In the meantime, regulators in other regions, such as Korea and California, are ramping up comparable chemicals policies that could have similar or different requirements. The same thing is happening with RoHS and WEEE, and eventually will occur with EuP.

While compliance with specific regulations is important, basing a company’s overall environmental-impact-reduction plan only on regulations is tactical and inefficient. Regulations’ detailed requirements are unpredictable.

My colleagues and I place regulations of product environmental performance into four categories:

1. Substance disclosure and restrictions
2. Waste and reuse / recycling
3. Energy use
4. Carbon/GHG (greenhouse gas) footprint

Regulatory trajectories for all four categories are generally predictable. We use predictive trends and endpoints that, while they many never be reached, are useful nevertheless to create strategies that achieve a level of, as our colleague Gil Friend of Natural Logic says “regulatory insulation.”

While specific details of future regulations in all locales can never be perfectly predicted, we generally know where they are headed:

• Many, if not all, chemical substances used to manufacture and build products can and probably will be regulated–either disclosures or restrictions. REACH is a strong step down this path.

• We’ve gone from recycling cans, bottles, and newspapers toward requiring that more products be kept out of landfills. The natural extrapolation is that we will be required to use more recycled materials in our products, and they themselves must increasingly be kept out of landfills.

• The use phase of a product’s life has typically been the focus of energy-related requirements, but Europe’s EuP Directive extends the energy profile across the entire lifecycle, back toward the mines and wells and forward toward energy and material recovery.

• Carbon footprint, while a function of energy use, is going from cap/trade regulations in some regions and voluntary corporate disclosure toward full taxation and disclosure for all manufactured products incorporating the entire supply chain.

You may be thinking, “These steps are too far out!” But consider that these are the “end points”; these steps are the ultimate extrapolation of these regulatory trajectories.

Amid the uncertainty, here is what you can do now: Start by investigating (1) the substances used in (and to manufacture) your products; (2) how easy or difficult it is to reuse and recycle significant parts of your product; (3) the amount of energy used, and how it can be minimized throughout the product lifecycle; and (4) how your supply chain looks when viewed in terms of carbon footprint. Afterward, you will be able to define and develop changes to your business processes that will take new environmental regulations in stride. You can invest in appropriate tools and education, and stay far enough ahead of regulations that compliance is quickly achieved by generating answers from data on-hand–rather than reactively and repeatedly scrambling to find a budget and resources to address new requirements. In the meantime, you’ll have a whole set of information that can be used for competitive advantage, as more and more markets demand improvements in product environmental performance.

We invite you to weigh in or ask questions about strategic approaches to profitable environmental compliance. (Leave a reply below.)

Note: One way to hear the strategic view is to join the upcoming tele-seminar, on which TFI President Pamela Gordon (author of Lean and Green) and Andrew Winston (co-author of Green to Gold) are speaking.

But the large automated systems used to assemble components onto printed-circuit boards have not yet been covered by an environmental standard. A few of us are interested in developing one, and before we proceed we’d like to know what you think.

First, here are early notions as to what the standard would be like:

Q. What environmental aspects might the eco standard address?
A. Production, usage, and disposal of the systems, according to energy consumption, usage of materials to assemble, and lifecycle analysis (LCA). LCAs typically address the environmental impact of the systems from extracting the materials from the earth through manufacturing, transportation, use, reuse, and recycling.

Q. How would environmental impact be measured?
A. “Eco-points” would be awarded according to all the environmental impacts considered within the lifecycle of the product – in the case of PCB assembly equipment perhaps 7 years. The data would be normalized and weighted to arrive at the sum (1,000 eco-points equals the impact of one European citizen for one year).

Q. Would a standard force companies to “comply”?
A. No, the standard would be voluntary. Suppliers and users of PCB-assembly equipment not wanting to get involved would not need to do so.

It doesn’t surprise me that Assembléon is a driver of an industry standard for energy efficiency of pick-and-place equipment. The company is part of Philips, an long-time environmental leader; I was impressed with Philips’ thought leadership on design-for-environment as early as 10 years ago when documenting their Lean and Green accomplishments.

Here’s why we at TFI Environment are interested in a potential eco standard governing PCB-assembly systems: Many electronic-product companies and their contract manufacturers are measuring their environmental impact, and a significant part is the impact of massive PCB-assembly systems often working 24/7. They want to make the best environmental choices they can, and a standard would provide valuable comparative information. In fact, if the industry is going to the trouble to create standards for pick-and-place equipment, why not also cover everything in the assembly line starting with screen printing through assembly and soldering, and testing?

However, developing this standard could be challenging. Is it possible to have an objective standard? Enjoy this blog entry on the notion of “objective” standards. Can the standard be developed quickly enough to avoid duplication with other eco standards that are broadening their scope of product coverage?

Please give your view on the value of and methods for eco standards for PCB-assembly equipment by leaving a comment on this blog, writing to me at PGordon@TFIenvironment.com, or–if you are in Europe—joining me at the Green Manufacturing Conference in Birmingham, England, where Assembléon will discuss this potential eco standard.

Moving forward in time to the 2008-09 global economic crisis–and specifically to last week’s Green Manufacturing Conference– I now find tech companies embracing environmental-impact reduction as a key corporate strategy to surviving and thriving in the face of slower growing or negative-growth revenues. In my keynote presentation at last week’s Southern California conference, I described corporations’ current triple headache of cost cutting, environmental compliance, and standing out positively in the market, and how creating an aggressive and inspiring beyond-compliance corporate initiative weaves together a strategic solution to all three issues.

Conference speaker Leslie Collins of HP described how an HP product is helping UPS to reduce environmental impact and save $16.9 million in labor costs, $11.8 million in projected capital costs, and $1.9 million in consumables costs by 2013. The HP Handheld sp400 All-in-One scans and prints on packages (using 2D imaging) without needing paper labels, thus avoiding the use of 1,338 tons of paper.

According to speaker David Conrad, head of environment for Nokia North America, in the past 9 years Nokia aggressively reduced the no-load consumption of its chargers by 90% (down to 0.03 watts when in a no-load status), with correlating reductions in environmental impact and customers’ electricity bills as well.

These millions of dollars savings for high-tech companies and their customers are contributing significantly to corporations’ abilities to be economically sustainable. The conference illustrated that the business benefit from lean and green strategies is both systematic (there’s nothing fuzzy about it) and systemic (yielding cost and environmental savings throughout the corporation).

In these days of necessary carbon-emissions reductions, I did not press out-of-region clients and colleagues to travel to Southern California for the Green Manufacturing Conference (even though many of them in cold climates wanted badly to attend). Conference Manager Melanie Cruz of Canon Communications and I (as conference chair) saw to it that nearly all of the speakers were from the local region or were traveling to California for other reasons. Nokia’s Conrad, based in Texas, participated in the keynote panel by teleconference to minimize his company’s carbon footprint. We design travel-reduction plans for our clients as well, leveraging more and more great alternatives to travel to achieve both lean and green benefits.

So, if you are reading this blog from Europe, come to the 25-26 March Green Mfg. Conference in Birmingham, UK. And if you sit in North America, I can advise you of closer-to-you Green Mfg. Conferences and other opportunities to connect with TFI.

What examples do you see of corporate-environmental progress from do-good, to leadership strategy, to economic imperative?

Have you read your company’s sustainability report lately? If creation of such a communication has not been undertaken, yet the company is making honest strides toward becoming lean and green, then perhaps now is the time to consider it.

At a recent dinner, the 19-year-old daughter of friends of mine told me that my generation – the baby boomers – and the corporate culture we built caused the threats now facing our environment, and that her generation is left to clean it up. Her comments struck a nerve. Granted, “better living through chemistry” did explode onto the scene in the post-WWII 1950s, and our consumerism grew into a mode of taking whatever we wanted, from wherever we wanted it, and without thought to the materials being used or their potential damage to the environment.

But, as someone who has been working with corporations for thirty years, I see examples daily of how businesses can be part of the solution, agents of change. Illustrations of this are readily available in the sustainability reporting coming out of electronics manufacturing, including the recent Consumer Electronics Association sustainability report (which we were privileged to write and design).

In a study completed in January 2008 on reader response to sustainability reports, the benefits of looking inwardly and assessing sustainability efforts give good reason to build such an effort into individual companies’ environmental stewardship practices:

* Readers use reports to improve their understanding, benchmark against others, and provide basis for further action.

* Sustainability reports impact decisions by investors, customers, and corporate partners.

* The reports overwhelmingly improved readers’ opinions of the reporting companies.

Furthermore, is it just a matter of time before some governments require sustainability reporting of publicly held companies? As shareholder mindset becomes increasingly influenced by socially responsible initiatives in our personal lives, we anticipate an increasing demand for corporate accountability, driving past “compliance-driven” initiatives toward broader corporate consciousness of environmental stewardship and social responsibility.

For our Environmental Partnership program we’ve benchmarked sustainability indicators such as position on the Zero Waste continuum, Carbon Footprints, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, renewable and non-renewable resources per employee, solid and effluent waste per employee, and correlating cost savings. We’ve also seen how this data, in concert with compelling visuals designed for readability, can deliver competitive advantage through positive impact to business reputation.

Do you have a favorite sustainability report — either inside or outside the high-tech industry? What experiences have you had encouraging your company to report on bona fide environmental benefits? Do you require your suppliers to have such a report?