Environmental Objectives for New Product Development Decision-Making

Organizations that develop new products need to consider many factors related to the environmental impact of their products, including government regulations, consumer preferences, and corporate environmental objectives. To date, such organizations have struggled to find the best way to incorporate environmental issues into new product development decisionmaking. This paper compares environmental objectives to other types of objectives that influence decision-making during new product development. Specifically, this paper examines objectives related to product performance, unit cost, time-to-market, development cost, and safety. Based on the conclusions of this analysis, this paper describes how the procedures used to consider safety issues can be expanded to include environmental concerns quite easily, thus creating a practical and effective design for environment (DFE) process. To show the effectiveness of this type of DFE process, the paper shows how it embodies principles that lead a firm towards becoming an ecologically sustainable organization. This approach has been used at a consumer products manufacturer.