Currently, many companies start addressing their commitment to environmental sustainability. This happens because natural resources are getting depleted faster than expected due to the uncontrolled production activity of factories. Herman Miller has always been conscious of environment, so the new trends in compliance with environmental policies forced the company to implement the Cradle-to-Cradle protocol.
First, Herman Miller decided to create a special Design for Environment team that would form a list of facts and suggestions based on the principles of the Cradle-to-Cradle protocol. Those recommendations were supposed to assist in making decisions during product design and development. While theoretical implications were clear enough, there were no explicit rules on how to implement the C2C into practice.
For that reason, Herman Miller hired an experienced supply chain manager and a chemical engineer. It was necessary to effectively cooperate with suppliers, but some of them did not want to reveal information about their materials, which made a decision-making process challenging. When Design for Environment concepts were put into practice, the operations of the company were significantly altered. In particular, there was a series of training sessions about the updated manufacturing process. Overall, the environmental trends and commitment of the customers created a great opportunity for a highly engineered product, using the C2C protocol, to become popular on the market.
Herman Miller decided to undertake this strategic environmental initiative because of its innovative and progressive corporate culture. One thing that employees highly valued in the company was its advanced approaches in financial, environmental and social responsibility. Herman Miller also acknowledged that production of office furniture had negative impacts both during production and utilization periods. Therefore, the company decided to change Mirra chair, a mid-level office chair, and design it by the principles of the C2C protocol.
While it was possible to change the components of almost each chair constituent, there were some difficulties with arm pad. The major issue concerned PVC, material that produces many toxic and hazardous influences during manufacturing and disposal stages. PVC is very popular in arm pads production because it is extremely durable, scratch resistant, formable, and rather cheap. However, many press coverages depicted the negative impact of PVC, so the company started to search for a competitive alternative.
TPU became one of those, but it was much more expensive, so most of the supply chain management teams decided to proceed with PVC and save more time for finding more affordable alternatives. Numerous research studies depict that “TPU shows better results in abrasion resistance, tear strength, and is more flexible than PVC” (Patel et al. 284). Therefore, Herman Miller needs to consider TPU for the arm pad production to comply with its own corporate culture and the recent trends. Even though the price for the item might increase, environmental commitment among the customers will positively influence their buying decisions.
While Herman Miller adopts the C2C protocol within its production environment, it should not directly help others to do that. For many decades, the company was considered to be an environmental leader in the industry, while competitors follow its lead on many initiatives (Lee and Bony 3). If Herman Miller helps others, it could lose the competitive advantage of its products that implement the most recent innovations. On the contrary, the company’s strive for development and innovation forces others to develop new designs to stay competitive and profitable on the market.
Herman Miller has always been proactive in the implementation of ecology-friendly principles within its production environment. The C2C protocol is clear about its concepts, but it took time for Herman Miller to adopt it at practice. Mirra chair design change was based on it, but still with PVC. In future, Herman Miller should continue pursuing the environmental trends and stimulate others to reduce negative environmental impact.
Works Cited
Lee, Deishin, and Lionel Bony. “Cradle-to-Cradle Design at Herman Miller: Moving Toward Environmental Sustainability. Harvard Business School, vol. 607, no. 3, 2009, pp. 1-21.
Patel, Jay P. et al. “Effect of PU and PVC Coating on Different Fabrics for Technical Textile Application.” International Journal of Science Technology & Engineering, vol. 1, no. 11, 2015, pp. 279-284.