Incorporating Product Development Tools in Environmental Management Systems (EMS): A New Way for Sustainability Management

Abstract

In recent years’ business has been viewed increasingly as a major cause of social, environmental, and economic problems. Incorporating EMS tools to business can be initiative to solve this problem and raise the environmental awareness in the corporate and manufacturing sector. This management tool established suitably as an administrative tool to address continuous process in total management initiatives in the respective sectors. Even it is well known that EMS renders a robust contribution to the global environmental management, but some studies criticize the ultimate efforts. Their argument is that the EMS can only achieve partial management goals of the organization rather than entire target. So, it’s not yet conceived as a key toolkit to achieve sustainability in industrial scale. This study aims to configure the vision of EMS through some innovative product development tools that could be integrate into the existing EMS platform, more specifically in the ‘planning’ division among all five segments of the EMS. Two approaches through ‘Template for Sustainable Product Development (TSPD) and Strategic Life Cycle Management (SLCM)’ incorporating the backcasting from sustainability principles, have been used to scrutinize the product development system in an EMS user company. By using TSPD the current reality and envisioned future are find out through the three analytical points of view of a product, e.g. market needs, concepts and extended enterprise. On the other hand SLCM has integrated into TSPD all the way from raw materials to the ending of a product based on all sustainability principles. TSPD and SLCM could be used as strategic planning tool in the conventional EMS to guide the product development for achieving sustainability. Finally, this study reveals that the integration process of sustainability could be parallel to existing environmental management systems where some product development tools are supportive catalyst to develop the concept.