Riding The Cycle - Formway profits from Lifecycle management
01 Aug 2007
If you've ever sat in a Life Chair, you'll know what the fuss was all about. The chair, designed by kiwi-founded company Formway, adjusts to meet the specific needs of the person sitting on it.
The chair, launched in 2002, helped shape Formway's philosophy that balanced people-friendly furniture with environmentally sustainable design. It's a balance that has paid off for Formway, winning the company industry accolades, customer loyalty and - perhaps most importantly - thought leadership that translates to bottom line success.
From the Start
The Life Chair was the first Formway product to use environmental innovation as a major focus during product design and development. For their efforts, the Formway team won the INDEX/NeoCon 2002 Gold Award for Sustainable Product Design.
While some manufacturers may feel burdened by the need to be environmentally responsible, Formway has embraced the creative opportunities if offers. Product innovation and design direction can flow quite naturally from environmental life cycle thinking - gaining insight into the environmental impact of a product and building in features that minimise that impact.
To design the Life Chair, Formway collaborated with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Product Ecology, creating a detailed EcoDesign brief intended to eliminate or minimise environmental impact.
The EcoDesign brief specified what kind of materials and production methods could be used, as well as requirements for longevity in the final product. EcoDesigned products are built to last, and also to be reupholstered, refurbished and reused. Finally, when the product ends its life, it is designed to be easy to disassemble and recycle.
The finished product contained 30 per cent recycled content, and was over 90 per cent recyclable. It was made from approximately 18 per cent fewer components than its primary competitor. Snap fits, hinge pins and spring clips eliminate the need for adhesives. And on the people side of the equation, user instructions are integrated into the chair itself (pull out from the seat).
Lifecycle as a Lifestyle
Since the Life Chair, Formway has introduced life cycle thinking into all its products. Formway has successfully bid on entire office fitouts designed to meet the Green Star standard in Australia (soon to be introduced in New Zealand).
The Green Star standard aims to help the building industry make the transition to sustainable development by rewarding environmental leadership. It requires all suppliers involved in a project to disclose their environmental practices in sourcing products and designing processes.
Formway has developed office fitouts for the City of Melbourne's Council House 2 (CH2), and the Department of Conservation's Conservation House. Both organisations intended to showcase the offices, so they needed an unprecedented level of innovation in sustainable office design. CH2 was intended to be "Australia's first truly healthy office".
Specifically, the office fitouts for both the City of Melbourne and the Department of Conservation aimed to cut emissions, reduce solid wastes, and eliminate or significantly minimise the presence of potentially hazardous substances in products and processes.
As with the Life Chair, Formway has developed products that are both sustainable and extremely usable. The office fitouts create an atmosphere of collaboration and inclusion, as well as being specifically designed to enhance indoor air quality by using non-toxic materials.
Win-Win-Win
Formway has discovered how to successfully design sustainable products that also meet very real organisational needs. But sustainability has also had bottom line benefits. For over 10 years Formway has enjoyed strong growth in products and distribution, including expansion into Australia, vertical development of distribution channels and entry into new markets. By taking leadership in sustainable products early, Formway has become recognised as a company of experts who get the environmental details right.
That reputation for expertise is only bolstered by significant hires such as Jake McLaren, an EcoDesign specialist from the UK who is now Formway's environmental manager.
McLaren says sustainability is for everyone. "Marketers, designers and engineers need to be encouraged to look for opportunities that add value to a company and benefit the environment simultaneously," he says.
What's surprising is that sustainability doesn't cost any more in the case of most products and services. Sustainability has become mainstream.
Five Steps to Sustainability
So how does Formway create products that are sustainable from end to end? It's a five-step process.
1. Eco Innovation (Product design)
2. Supply chain management
3. Environmental management systems
4. Product stewardship
5. Stakeholder communications
Like nature, the five steps are cyclical and overlapping rather than linear. Product design takes into account the entire life cycle of the product. Supply chain management ensures that all suppliers are using sustainable practices.
Environmental management systems ensure that the manufacturing process has the least possible impact on the environment. This is benchmarked through schemes such as the Landcare Research Enviromark scheme.
Product stewardship ensures the product is able to be refurbished, reused or recycled at the end of its life cycle. This not only includes practical innovations as with the life chair; it also involves the intangible element of fashion. If a product stays in fashion, it stays out of the landfill.
In the middle of the whole process is stakeholder communications, which ensures everyone - all Formway's business units, its customers and suppliers, and industry groups like the NZ Green Building Council - is on board, and understands the importance of sustainability.
Built into the process is continuous innovation process, to ensure that both Formway and its suppliers are making use of the latest advances in sustainability.
Formway's road ahead is paved with innovation, developing products that are ecologically responsible, economically necessary, socially desirable and culturally acceptable.
For other companies, sustainability provides plenty of opportunities. The New Zealand Building Council is introducing the GreenStar interiors tool, and the Environmental Choice New Zealand ecolabel will help highlight sustainably built furniture.