Page 118 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

CHAPTER 7

Performance

Indicators

and Metrics

DFE Principle 3. To guide product
development decisions, identify key
environmental performance indicators and
metrics that are aligned with evolving customer
needs and corporate sustainability goals.

Measure Up!
Companies that commit to corporate responsibility and environmen-
tal sustainability goals need to demonstrate measurable progress.
Quantitative indicators are important, not only for stakeholder com-
munication, but also for motivating internal process improvement.
Therefore, they should reflect creation of customer and shareholder
value as well as value to society. As described in Chapter 5, environ-
mental performance indicators and metrics are necessary to support
goal-setting, monitoring, and continuous improvement in the design
of products and processes.
Performance measurement has become a mantra of modern man-
agement, embraced by nearly every major school of thought including
Six Sigma, total quality management, business process reengineering,
high-performance teams, and value-based management. “You can’t
manage what you can’t measure” is an inescapable fact. Moreover,
assigning accountability to individuals and teams based on specific
performance targets generally leads to significant improvements
without the need for close oversight.
As discussed in Chapter 3, with increasing commitments to cor-
porate responsibility, the business community has adopted global
environmental management system standards such as ISO 14001,
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