Business strategic work
Business strategy and LCM
Life cycle management implies a new way of thinking, from managing a single organization to coordinating and motivating change in a net of actors in order to make improvements in a life cycle perspective. This perspective challenges the traditional role and scope of actions for many managers, and calls for new strategies from micro scale motivation to entirely new business models, incentive structures or types of collaboration. This session welcomes contributions on the broad scale of business strategy to enhance profitable and enduring life cycle thinking in industry. It encourages examples and experiences of existing initiatives as well as theoretical discussions and visionary suggestions.
Format: Oral session and posters
Metrics behind management of supply chains
Sustainability has become of strategic importance to organizations, as it can help achieve competitive advantage, growth, efficiency, and financial strength. An important pre-requisite is that, organizations must measure all dimensions of sustainability, environmental, economic and social, in a pragmatic way. In theory this can be covered using environmental and social LCA, but making individual LCA studies for this type of management support is not very effective or flexible.
The challenge for companies is to develop a pragmatic, agile, yet sufficiently robust management system to monitor, assess and improve the sustainability performance of the supply chain, the use phase and end of life phase. Such a system is shaped according to the strategic goals of the company, and can thus differ from case to case, yet they share common requirements regarding robustness, transparency credibility etc.
This session briefly presents real examples that have been or are about to be implemented by companies. The aim is to share experiences and practical challenges.
Format: Oral session and posters
Panel: Management of green product portfolios
An increasing number of companies have established green product portfolios. The portfolios include products that are claimed, by the company, to have superior environmental performance. The portfolio’s economic development, in terms of e.g. total sales, can be followed and targeted. One of the logics behind green portfolio management is to show internal and external stakeholders that it makes business sense to be green.
Green portfolio management can be seen as a new generation of corporate environmental management. Whereas conventional environmental management many times is driven by regulatory requirements and cost reductions, green portfolio management is driven by market needs and revenue. Portfolios can be applied in many ways. It can be used to drive green innovation internally, as basis for communication to corporate level stakeholders (e.g. shareholders and NGOs) as well as to be used in customer relations.
This session will be arranged as a panel discussion combining practical and academic knowledge related to the management of environmental product portfolios. The practical experiences of several international companies will be put in relation to the broader academic foundation of life cycle management. Several issues are relevant: What is the process and criteria for selecting which products to put in the portfolio? How can you work with internal and external targets related to the portfolio? How can the credibility of environmental claims related to the products in the portfolio be established? How can you work with external partners?
In addition to the panel discussion, a lunch session will be arranged on how the environmental burdens and benefits of green product portfolios can be calculated and communicated in a valid, yet feasible, way.
Format: Panel discussion.
Please note that we do not call for tradtional abstracts for this session. It is however possible to nominate yourself for being part of the panel. Register and write a short motivation as “abstract”.
