bovinehost
Administrator
Stuff you may not have known - I certainly didn't:
How can a brand reflect social and environmental consciousness? How do you motivate an organization to do the same? This was the challenge DesignworksUSA faced after our parent company, BMW Group, asked us to explore the idea of balancing positive environmental and social impact with profitability.
As the first design firm to have a Sustainable Management System (SMS) and to be certified ISO 14001, we felt we were in a good position to address the three-pronged (social, environment and fiscal) business model. Our first step was to incorporate SMS inside our own company; the next would be to translate the model to our external clients.
Intuitively, we knew we needed to build a better culture of awareness in the organization. This meant rallying everyone from Engineering to Color and Materials, from Design to Accounting. We gathered a core team of representatives from every department and then set out to implement our plan.
Steps taken to adopt a Sustainable Management System were:
1. Map SMS project scope and goals (Proactively exceed legal minimum requirements, seek cost savings, identify marketing opportunities, etc.)
2. Define attributes of SMS and a successful SMS organization
3. Benchmark case studies of environmental and social successes in product and transit design organizations
4. Investigate technology, energy, architectural/structural, process and materials, assembly and disassembly opportunities
5. Integrate SMS into our product development process including life cycle analysis
6. Follow-up with vendors, manufacturers and clients to measure success and update with improvements
Interestingly, the fiscal side of SMS was an eye opener. Sustainability cannot be embraced by an organization for purely philanthropic reasons; you need to be profitable to survive. However, when employees feel they have a positive social environment, they are more productive. When being socially responsible is closely incorporated into the workflow, it can save money or provide alternative solutions. The cost benefits are many if responsibility is incorporated thoughtfully into the work environment.
As with all of our projects, we launched cross-disciplined brainstorming sessions to integrate SMS into our existing product development process. By adding tools and criteria to each step in our process, it was possible to create a SMS toolkit. However, when it came to implementing SMS into our products and those of our clients we realized that we had to do some soul searching -- the answers were not obvious.
Questions like, "Does SMS need to be reflected in the actual designs?" made us stop and think. Do we have to use materials that show their SMS properties (recycled, handmade and natural) in an obvious way? Given the sophistication and high level of quality BMW stands for, this seemed like a poor direction, unless environmentally responsible materials can be made sophisticated. Perhaps we should create a special logo to add to the products to make people aware of the inherent SMS qualities? This would not work either since we would be building another brand which would need additional support for it to be accepted in the marketplace.
We finally decided that it is more important to commit to SMS behind the scenes and know that whatever we produce or advise others to produce will be in the most responsible way possible. By improving our process and knowledge across the company, we would gradually and inherently change our brand and brand perception to that of an SMS leader. We realized that being responsible does not mean using a magic wand at the end of the design process (e.g. in materials alone). Being responsible means moving awareness upstream and promoting SMS thinking throughout the entire design process!
So how does this translate into real product solutions? On a project with Ernie Ball MusicMan, a well-known producer of guitars, we were asked to come up with new material driven concepts for a bass guitar. The project was approached from five different directions:
- Material and process selection
- Architecture -- component configuration
- Ergonomics -- usability
- Functionality
- Aesthetics
When investigating materials and processes we came up with four promising directions. From there, we looked at configurations that best capitalized on the different materials. Next the concepts were filtered by ergonomic and functional considerations giving birth to new hybrid solutions. Then the aesthetics were refined. The final solution is a bass guitar, dubbed BoNgo that was just introduced to the market at the NAMM show. The first generation is made of wood; however, our hope is that it evolves into an even more sustainable material specified in our research.
How can a brand reflect social and environmental consciousness? How do you motivate an organization to do the same? This was the challenge DesignworksUSA faced after our parent company, BMW Group, asked us to explore the idea of balancing positive environmental and social impact with profitability.
As the first design firm to have a Sustainable Management System (SMS) and to be certified ISO 14001, we felt we were in a good position to address the three-pronged (social, environment and fiscal) business model. Our first step was to incorporate SMS inside our own company; the next would be to translate the model to our external clients.
Intuitively, we knew we needed to build a better culture of awareness in the organization. This meant rallying everyone from Engineering to Color and Materials, from Design to Accounting. We gathered a core team of representatives from every department and then set out to implement our plan.
Steps taken to adopt a Sustainable Management System were:
1. Map SMS project scope and goals (Proactively exceed legal minimum requirements, seek cost savings, identify marketing opportunities, etc.)
2. Define attributes of SMS and a successful SMS organization
3. Benchmark case studies of environmental and social successes in product and transit design organizations
4. Investigate technology, energy, architectural/structural, process and materials, assembly and disassembly opportunities
5. Integrate SMS into our product development process including life cycle analysis
6. Follow-up with vendors, manufacturers and clients to measure success and update with improvements
Interestingly, the fiscal side of SMS was an eye opener. Sustainability cannot be embraced by an organization for purely philanthropic reasons; you need to be profitable to survive. However, when employees feel they have a positive social environment, they are more productive. When being socially responsible is closely incorporated into the workflow, it can save money or provide alternative solutions. The cost benefits are many if responsibility is incorporated thoughtfully into the work environment.
As with all of our projects, we launched cross-disciplined brainstorming sessions to integrate SMS into our existing product development process. By adding tools and criteria to each step in our process, it was possible to create a SMS toolkit. However, when it came to implementing SMS into our products and those of our clients we realized that we had to do some soul searching -- the answers were not obvious.
Questions like, "Does SMS need to be reflected in the actual designs?" made us stop and think. Do we have to use materials that show their SMS properties (recycled, handmade and natural) in an obvious way? Given the sophistication and high level of quality BMW stands for, this seemed like a poor direction, unless environmentally responsible materials can be made sophisticated. Perhaps we should create a special logo to add to the products to make people aware of the inherent SMS qualities? This would not work either since we would be building another brand which would need additional support for it to be accepted in the marketplace.
We finally decided that it is more important to commit to SMS behind the scenes and know that whatever we produce or advise others to produce will be in the most responsible way possible. By improving our process and knowledge across the company, we would gradually and inherently change our brand and brand perception to that of an SMS leader. We realized that being responsible does not mean using a magic wand at the end of the design process (e.g. in materials alone). Being responsible means moving awareness upstream and promoting SMS thinking throughout the entire design process!
So how does this translate into real product solutions? On a project with Ernie Ball MusicMan, a well-known producer of guitars, we were asked to come up with new material driven concepts for a bass guitar. The project was approached from five different directions:
- Material and process selection
- Architecture -- component configuration
- Ergonomics -- usability
- Functionality
- Aesthetics
When investigating materials and processes we came up with four promising directions. From there, we looked at configurations that best capitalized on the different materials. Next the concepts were filtered by ergonomic and functional considerations giving birth to new hybrid solutions. Then the aesthetics were refined. The final solution is a bass guitar, dubbed BoNgo that was just introduced to the market at the NAMM show. The first generation is made of wood; however, our hope is that it evolves into an even more sustainable material specified in our research.
