From the Blog

A Design for Sustainability Approach

Life Cycle Thinking Diagram
The engineering mission at Hypertherm, a New Hampshire based manufacturer of industrial cutting solutions, is to develop innovative technologies, products and solutions that provide superior value to our customers, our owners, and our planet.  To fulfill this mission, Hypertherm relies on the results from Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) to guide our designs and decision making as we create new products and manufacturing methods, and improve existing ones (as described in our previous blog post).    Even “hot spot” or screening LCAs deliver detailed information and guidance on how to design products and services that are more sustainable.  This guidance can be applied over years to long term product and business strategies, allowing us to make both iterative and breakthrough changes.    However, one downside is that these complex and in-depth analyses can be time consuming to conduct, and require outside resources. Our Goal: Our goal then was to continue to employ LCAs, but to lessen the time and cost of executing a full LCA, allowing our engineers to continue to answer some basic questions at the moment that a design decision might be made.  For example, they may question the impact of material A compared to material B.  They may wonder about a design change and how it could impact energy consumed by the product when it is used by a customer.  They may need to be reminded about the impacts of a change in the weight of the product, or how they can design it to be more easily recyclable. The Process: Foundational Training: To address the need to quickly evaluate tradeoffs, we began by offering a Design for Sustainability (DfS) workshop, led by EARTHSHIFT.  EARTHSHIFT is a consultancy with expertise in product stewardship, and it provides the tools, knowledge and support that enable companies to assess, reduce and effectively communicate the environmental impacts of their products. All design engineers in the company attended the ½ day workshop.   They explored life cycle thinking, sustainability megatrends that society is facing, value creation through a sustainability approach, life cycle assessment, stakeholder analysis, and DfS “rules of thumb”.  Small groups executed hands on challenge activities and brainstorming to apply the lessons learned to real-world examples.   The engineers demonstrated immense creativity in brainstorming opportunities for creating shared value, both economic and societal, for Hypertherm and numerous stakeholders.  They also came away with a better understanding of DfS concepts, and how they could apply them to their everyday design work. Creating our Own DfS Scorecard:  After gaining foundational understanding from the DfS Workshop, our engineers still needed a way to measure the impacts of their design decisions.  They needed a tool that would give them more immediate feedback than an LCA.    Representatives from across our engineering and business teams, along with members of our Corporate Social Responsibility team, met to develop an internal DfS Scorecard.  We had developed a corporate-wide set of 2020 Sustainability Goals back in 2010, and knew that our DfS scorecard would have to connect back to these overarching goals. Next, we consulted a number of leading organizations and found inspiration in guides published by the United Nations, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and even the Harvard Business Review. However, none of these were specific enough to our products and therefore didn’t provide the guidance that our engineers needed during the research, development, and design stages.  So with this research as background, we created our own scorecard comprised of 11 criteria, 10 of which mapped back to our 2020 Sustainability Goals. Lastly, we needed to integrate the use of this scorecard into our existing product design process.   We did this by introducing the engineers involved in upcoming new product design to the scorecard, and encouraging its use as early as possible in the design process.  Our newest product, to be launched this fall, is the first to have used the scorecard through the entire stage gate design process.  The scorecard is also being used for other new products in the design phase, as well as products still in the research and development phases. Outcome: Our newest product, and the first to be designed since the scorecard was introduced, shows improvement in 7 of the 8 applicable criteria.  It was designed for easier removal of e-waste at the end of its life.  All components and packaging are recyclable.  The entire product, as well as the magnetics, are significantly lighter, while delivering more power.   The power conversion efficiency and cutting energy efficiency are both higher.   Customers are also able to share in these improvements, as the new product does work faster, while using less energy than its predecessor.   Of equal importance to our future direction, the engineers involved in the design have used the DfS Scorecard and seen the benefits that have come of it.  Engineers on other teams have seen the application of the scorecard in this product and have been able to see it in use before using it themselves.
Hear more from Shelly and Robin during FABTECH Session F47: Automating the Shop Floor and Reducing Lead Time, November 17, 2016 from 8:00 -10:00 AM.  View session details here.   [x_author title=”About the Author” author_id=”30″]   [x_author title=”About the Author” author_id=”31″]

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