Environmental supply-line engineering: Eco-supplier development coupled to eco-design-A new approach

Abstract

This paper describes how Lucent Technologies' supply line can merge with initiatives that reduce the environmental load of a telecommunications product during its life cycle. Governments, customers, and corporations worldwide are the principal drivers of this merger. In The Netherlands, such customers as PTT Telecom have begun issuing environmental statements pointing out how the environmental quality of a product depends inherently on the environmental quality of its suppliers' components. Concurrently, Lucent initiated a survey to determine the existence of environmental policies at 144 of its 5ESS® switch component suppliers. The survey determined that 70% of these suppliers lacked formal environmental policies. As a result, Lucent developed a new approach called environmental supply-line engineering and researched the possibility of incorporating it into its product realization processes (PRPs) to improve environmental performance. Eco-supplier development and its interactions with eco-design, the end of a product's life, and technological innovations form the basis of this approach. It resulted in the development of specific tools used to measure the environmental performance of suppliers, technologies, and components.