At Juran, we constantly strive to understand the issues and problems that organizations such as yours face, and seek to stay abreast of emerging trends so as to better serve our clients’ needs. While traditional areas of focus remain important, we believe that managing for quality is breaking new ground. Increasingly, organizations are being encouraged to look at the entire landscape unfolding before them from the perspective of a balanced array of outcomes characterized by the new “triple bottom line” of people, planet, and profits (Savitz and Weber, 2006).
Quality Management has always taken people and profits into consideration; now, a third dimension has been added that encompasses environmental sustainability and stewardship. Once-separate societies have begun to band together ideologically on environmental issues, taking fitful, yet visible and increasingly concerted action to shore up the “quality dikes” that Dr. Juran posited years ago. These efforts appear certain to result in widespread change in legislation controlling aspects of quality we long have taken for granted.
How are organizations being affected by changes in perceived social responsibility? Three major forces must be reckoned with.
- First, future legislation likely will mandate action by companies; minimally this will involve monitoring of environmental impact (e.g., greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide emissions), and may extend to active management (e.g., CO2 “cap and trade”).
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Second, shareholders increasingly view environmental stewardship as a factor in deciding to invest and therefore, demand transparency of internal technologies and business practices that most organizations cannot yet provide. For example, with the belief that corporate sustainability (including environmental dimensions) creates long-term shareholder value, Dow Jones established in 1999 the Sustainability Indices, providing the first tracking of the financial performance of leading sustainability-driven organizations worldwide. Another initiative is the Carbon Disclosure Project, an organization that collects and distributes information on behalf of investors and businesses, in the effort to motivate environmental sustainability.
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Third, customers progressively show interest in the life cycle of the products and services they purchase, perceiving overall quality based on the environmental impact of product/process design, manufacturing process, production operations, supply chain, and final disposal (end-of-life). This “cradle-to-grave” life cycle plays into consumer purchase decisions, and an organization’s bottom line.
How should organizations best respond? Several methods and tools are available today. These include:
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ISO 14000 Environmental Management System. The ISO 14000 is a standard requiring organizations to establish an environmental management system. It is applicable to any business, regardless of size, location, or industry. The purpose of the standard is to reduce the environmental footprint of a business and to decrease the pollution and waste a business produces.
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Life Cycle Assessments. This is a “cradle-to-grave” analysis of the environmental impacts of a product or service caused or necessitated by its existence, from birth to death. Not limited to greenhouse gases (see carbon footprint below), it encompasses many forms of damage such as ozone depletion, desertification, and resource depletion. The objective of a life cycle analysis is to encourage informed and appropriate choices by providing fair comparison of products and services in terms of negative environmental impact.
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Carbon Footprinting. A carbon footprint (or profile) is the combined total of all greenhouse gas emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, event, organization, or product (The Carbon Trust, 2009). Frequently this is reported as “CO2 equivalent” with carbon dioxide used as a convenient, common currency; a carbon footprint therefore, need not be strictly confined to CO2 alone. This is an expansive definition, and includes many sources over which an individual or organization has varying degrees of control.
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Energy Audits. An energy audit is an inspection and analysis of the energy flow through a building, process or system, carried out to improve energy efficiency and reduce overall consumption. While energy audits are not new (efficiency long has been an issue in corporate accounting offices), the “pollution” factor is gaining in prominence as a driver.
Dr. Juran intuitively made the connection between quality and environmental sustainability, but did not give it a name. In recognition of his contribution, the Juran Institute refers to this as EcoQuality. EcoQuality is not a replacement for designing a product and service that must be “fit for purpose,” rather, it is an extension on what “fit for purpose” will mean in the future. We believe that customers, of their own volition and through social pressure, will create a new landscape for Quality and Performance Excellence, a new zone of quality that incorporates the dimension of Environmental Sustainability in partnership with the Management of Quality. In alignment with the Juran Trilogy®, EcoQuality is intended to enable clients from all industries to respond to demands from customers, regulatory agencies, and shareholders on the issue of accountability in producing products and services fit for ecological use.
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