Page 112 - Solid Waste Analysis and Minimization a Systems Approach

90 CREATING A SUCCESSFUL SOLID WASTE MINIMIZATION LAUNCH

5.2 Executive Leadership

Support from top management is the key ingredient to successful and lasting solid
waste minimization implementation. Commitment and leadership from executive
management is the most influential factor for a strong program and significant results.
Solid waste minimization can not be treated as a fad or flavor of the month within an
organization. Top management must take a strong and vocal stand on supporting it and
devote the necessary resources to ensure success.
Enthusiasm must be generated at all levels of the organization, but must start from
the top. For a solid waste minimization or environmental program to be successful, top
management must be the biggest cheerleaders and show authentic enthusiasm and
support. It is critical that the executive leadership team understands the benefits and
methodologies of the program and how they complement current business strategies.
An understanding of these items is important to allocate resources and match team
members to projects based on skill sets. The executive team also is responsible for cre-
ating the implantation plan. The success of a solid waste minimization plan depends
largely on how well the executive team understands the value of the program.

5.3 Strategic Goals

The solid waste minimization targets and plans should be aligned with the strategic
goals for the organization. At this stage in the implementation process, quality func-
tion deployment (QFD), or House of Quality, is a very useful tool to drill projects
down to a strategic focus that will have significant impacts on the organization’s envi-
ronmental and economic performance. Figure 5.1 summarizes the House of Quality
process. The overall approach is an iterative process in which a cross-functional team
completes a series of houses using the following guidelines:

1 Primary what—Insert a comprehensive list of the customer and organizational
expectations from the solid waste minimization program in the first column of
House 1 with the importance ratings from customer and organizational surveys
inserted into the adjacent column. Government regulations and employee needs
should also be considered.
2 How—A brainstorming session is held with a cross-functional team in the second
sub-step to determine the important “hows” relating to the initial list of “whats”.
These “hows” form the primary row of House 1. They are an organization’s high
level business processes and address how requirements can be met.
3 Relationship matrix—Relationships of high, medium, low, and none are assigned
to how business processes affect customer requirements. Numerical weights such
as 9, 3, 1, or 0 can be used to describe these relationships. Calculations are then per-
formed: cross multiplication with the importance rankings. The values in these
columns are then totaled.