bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Benchmarking for continuous performance improvement: Tactics for success
Authors: Kleiner Brian M. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractBenchmarking is a powerful management technique that can help improve an organization's environmental performance on a number of dimensions. Benchmarking is not a cookbook solution but a systematic process of searching for the organization that is the best at a given process (“best‐in‐class”) and continually adopting or adapting new processes to accelerate improvement. As a continual process including planning, analysis, integration, action, and maturity phases, benchmarking should be integrated into the planning stage of the management system. Once processes are strategically identified, they can be improved within the company's Total Quality Management program. Many benefits, such as teamwork and job satisfaction, accompany benchmarking, but the greatest companywide advantage is becoming more competitive.Finding a suitable partner is crucial to the success of the benchmarking process. This article shows the traditional one‐on‐one approach is the most effective because it saves time and money that allows organizations to learn from each other. In addition, examples of where benchmarking partners may be found, as well as several success indicators in the benchmarking process, are presented. Since the ultimate intent of benchmarking is positive change, the difference between reengineering and continuous performance improvement and the role benchmarking plays in each is also discussed.
Corporate environmental performance expectations in the 1990s: More than just compliance
Authors: Cahill Lawrence B. , Kane Raymond W. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractWhat do General Motors and Ben and Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream have in common? Both companies have endorsed the CERES principles, a model corporate code of environmental conduct developed by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES). This model code generally goes well beyond what is now typically required of industry to maintain compliance with already stringent requirements established by regulatory agencies.And the CERES principles are not the only game in town. Many other environmental initiatives have surfaced both in the United States and abroad over the past few years. This article discusses six sets of current initiatives and provides managers with a vital tool for discussing these initiatives with top management and others throughout their organizations.
Continuous improvement at EG&G: The waste reduction pays (WARP) initiative
Authors: Parker William H. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractEG&G is a Fortune 200 company with annual sales of $2.7 billion. It designs and manufactures laboratory and field‐test instruments and electronic and mechanical components for commercial customers. EG&G provides systems engineering, precision component manufacturing, and test‐site operating and management services to many government agencies and laboratories. It employs 34,000 people worldwide.Recognizing the need to improve its business practices as they related to environmental excellence, EG&G initiated policies, procedures, and programs to establish itself as an environmentally responsible company. Waste reduction was designated priority number one in EGG's environmental program. Our major customers are also making waste reduction a high visibility program. For example, on August 3, 1993, the president signed Executive Order 12856 making pollution prevention at federal facilities a goal of this administration. This article describes the EG&G Waste Reduction Pays (WARP) program, developed for use by all its operating entities, and why it is a model program to implement Executive Order 12856. It also depicts how the implementation of the program at federal facilities differs, in some respects, from that at other EG&G operating units.
Pursuing environmental excellence for competitive advantage: Whirlpool's super‐efficient refrigerator
Authors: Willisy Steven P. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractEnvironmental advocates, as well as the environmental professionals in industry, are exploring a new opportunity to motivate improvements to environmental management systems. This new opportunity arises from the possible link between environmental excellence and competitive advantage. When this link exists in a given industry or market, the business person's enthusiasm for environmental initiatives is much greater. However, this link is not present unless a company's key customers consider environmental performance and product environmental characteristics when making purchasing decisions. There are a number of reasons to pursue environmental excellence, but it is not correct to assume that competitive advantage will automatically occur.This article discusses the conditions that are necessary to achieve the link between environmental excellence and competitive advantage. Whirlpool's success in winning the $30 million Super Efficient Refrigeration Program (SERP) competition will also be discussed as a test case for determining whether environmental excellence can lead to competitive advantage in the appliance industry.
Benchmarking environmental audit programs: Best practices and biggest challenges
Authors: Cahill Lawrence B. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractAs Total Quality Management (TQM) has become an important concept in learning how to manage environmental, health, and safety audit programs more effectively, an especially useful. TQM tool has been competitive benchmarking. Companies are using benchmarking studies to identify “best practices” that could be incorporated into their programs. In conducting benchmarking studies, evaluators often also identify the biggest common challenges facing audit program managers.This article discusses these best practices and biggest challenges associated with environmental audit programs. The conclusions are based on a number of benchmarking studies and third‐party evaluations of corporate audit programs. As the sources are necessarily limited to the author's own experiences, there are no doubt many other specific best practices that are not discussed in this article. These will surface over time.
Organizational change and the greening process at amoco
Authors: Hoffman Andrew J. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractImplementing environmentalism in the internal operations of a firm requires a reassignment of responsibilities and functions. New job tasks are created while old ones are altered to incorporate new perspectives and responsibilities that reflect broader societal demands. In essence, what evolves is a new firm, but what exactly does this mean? After a broad analysis of the environmental transformation of American industry, four basic changes within the organizational framework of dealing with environmentalism are identified: an evolution of the environmental management function, alteration of the overall structure of the organization, expansion of the boundaries of the firm, and changes in corporate culture. The author shows how these shifts occur in sequential order as increasing uncertainty promotes the search for answers from more diverse sources. Ultimately, as environmentalism continues to evolve, it increasingly infuses itself into the corporate culture. The following article presents this model and a case study of the Amoco Corporation.
Audits and root cause analysis
Authors: Roig Randy A. , Schneider Peter 
Published: February 2007

AbstractMany current audit programs are very good at determining the compliance issues at a site, but are less successful in developing long‐term compliance solutions. One method for addressing these issues is the use of root cause analysis techniques. These techniques allow the facility to identify and focus on permanent solutions to compliance issues. The authors note the following:Conducting a root cause analysis is not a substantial burden on the audit team or the facility. Most information is already collected during the audit, but is not being used.Looking at the overview pattern of the root cause analysis can provide a picture of the maturity of your audit program.Pareto charts are excellent methods to convey the results of your analysis. They show both the trends of analysis and help highlight the most significant root causes.
Environmental training fosters bottom‐line education and regional economic development
Authors: Johannson Lynn 
Published: February 2007

AbstractThe significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.If Einstein was correct, the question that you should be posing to yourself right now is “how can I make the change to a different level of thinking?” This challenge was given to a group of managers from a broad range of businesses in a training program delivered at the Centre for Environmental Training (CET) in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. It will be examined in this article as part of a case study about the success of a TQEM approach to improving the bottom line of business. At the heart of this story is the germination of a business vision to make improved environmental performance a key factor in regional economic renewal. In keeping with the TQEM theme, this is a never ending story; this article is just the prologue.
Compliance, commitment, and competition: Improving environmental performance
Authors: McLearn Mary E. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractA series of terms has been used to describe corporate environmental activities: waste management/waste minimization, pollution prevention, environmental excellence. Each has a different definition and comprises different activities, yet they represent a continuum of environmental response and improvement. This article considers the characteristics of each activity and the necessary balance among internal and external concerns that corporations seek as they progress toward environmental excellence in a competitive business climate.
Managing life‐cycle costs: Applications and lessons learned at leading utilities
Authors: Gess David , Cohan David 
Published: February 2007

AbstractLife‐cycle cost management (LCCM) provides electric utility staff with a structured process for making decisions based on the true cost of the products and processes they use, rather than on purchase price alone or on other partial life‐cycle costs. Several utilities have used LCCM to evaluate a range of product substitution and process improvement decisions and to implement cost‐saving actions. This article summarizes some of these applications. Each utility applied the LCCM tools and techniques in a way that met their individual needs, such as selecting cost‐effective specific pollution prevention options, making product purchase decisions, making process improvement decisions, managing commodities, and setting priorities for further evaluation. LCCM has helped utilities save millions of dollars by considering the true costs of the materials, products, and processes they use. This article examines the LCCM techniques and tools that help organizations evaluate their options and make decisions with minimum effort.The authors wish to thank our utility partners for their contributions to developing the LCCM tools and techniques and for their participation in applying these tools and techniques to important decisions: Duke Power Company, Entergy Services Inc., Florida Power Corporation, Niagara Mohawk Power Company, Pacific Gas & Electric Company, and Potomac Electric Power Company. The authors thank the following utility representatives for their valuable contributions: Amy Crews Baxter, Reggie Black, Jay Eingold, Shireen Fahey, Tom Fox, Tom Rooney, and Tyrone Williams. The authors also thank key members of the DFI project team: Nathan Chan, Gillian Lam, Mia Morsy, Jim Mullin, and Valerie Peoples.
An electric utility's challenge: Creating an integrated chemical management information system
Authors: Guggenheim David E. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractThis article examines a research effort undertaken by a large electric utility to integrate a broad range of chemical management information in order to improve regulatory compliance, facilitate chemical management, identify opportunities for waste reduction, and support research applications. The chemical management system (CMS) integrated data from pre‐existing MSDS and procurement databases. While CMS generally proved useful for a range of research applications, using CMS highlighted numerous problems in the underlying data and brought into question the feasibility of the CMS approach. In various ways this project highlighted many issues common to many electric utilities that must be resolved in order to achieve a successful integration of chemical management functions. The problems encountered, particularly those related to procurement data, were related to corporate policy and procedures, not to technical limitations of integrating these databases. This article shows how (as with any TQEM effort) the key to the success of a chemical management system is not to design such a system as a peripheral appendage, but rather as a primary component of mainstream business functions.
Metrics, decisions, and strategies: Environmental performance measurement in the electric utility industry
Authors: Fiksel Joseph 
Published: February 2007

AbstractThe twin challenges of increased competition and environmental consciousness are causing companies in the utility industry to re‐examine their methods for measuring environmental performance. A new paradigm is emerging which has already appeared in other industries—treating environmental quality as a potential source of profitability and competitive advantage. This article discusses how utilities and industrial companies can develop an environmental performance measurement framework, integrate it into their strategic and operating business practices, and use it for evaluation of alternative environmental strategies.
Conducting effective audit conferences for improving environmental performance
Authors: Cahill Lawrence B. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractBoth opening and closing conferences are crucial elements of an effective environmental audit program. As many firms reengineer their auditing process, focusing on the beginning and end points of the on‐site process makes eminent sense. This article discusses a variety of issues that often arise during the preparation and conduct of opening and closing conferences that can ultimately affect the success of the audit.
Environmental legislation and regulation in 1995—what to expect
Authors: Bromberg Lisa M. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractThe environment will continue to be a “hot” issue in 1995. Having accomplished its early goals of attracting attention, cleaning up existing environmental problems, and preventing the development of new ones, the environmental movement in the last decade of the twentieth century will be a more measured, moderate response to environmental issues, driven in part by economic realism, economic opportunity, and the forces of political conservatism.
Achieving environmental excellence through TQEM strategic alliances
Authors: O'Dea Katherine , Pratt Katherine 
Published: February 2007

AbstractGenerally speaking, today's TQEM initiatives do not improve a firm's activities beyond the shipping dock and onto consumer and postconsumer use and reuse. Although internal TQEM efforts do improve environmental impacts of a firm's operations, most firms remain focused on the traditional bottom‐line objective of increasing throughput. For these reasons, most firms implementing TQEM miss the many opportunities to improve environmental performance (including cost and quality) through asset recovery, resource sharing, and reuse. However, by taking the advantages of teamwork beyond corporate boundaries, firms can close the loop on environmental improvements.Inter‐firm teaming for environmental advantage, which we define as TQEM alliancing, initiates a cyclical approach to environmental performance improvement. It does so by forging strategic relationships among firms that can leverage each other's environmental weaknesses. TQEM allying is a round‐robin game plan. In this article, the authors show how it allows firms to take their environmental improvement initiatives beyond regulatory compliance (and into proactivity), beyond pollution control (to total pollution avoidance), and beyond profitability (for a quantitative as well as qualitative bottom line), because firms will be integrating external as well as internal functions across different business domains.
Environmental management: What ISO 14000 brings to the table
Authors: Crognale Gabriel G. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractThe field of environmental management has evolved from its beginnings as a regulation‐based, compliance‐driven, “command and control” regime into a continuous improvement, voluntary, environmental stewardship process aspiring to protection levels beyond those required by regulations. This change in environmental management philosophies prevalent at many regulated corporations, both in the United States and abroad, has provided a fertile ground for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in developing environmental management standards that address these corporate aspirations. This task has moved closer to fruition within the ISO through its Technical Committee (TC) 207 on Environmental Management. This article provides background on the environmental management system standards, ISO/TC 207's committees' organization, and influencing factors helping to shape these standards. Equally important, this article focuses on what the standards will mean to the regulated industries in the way business is conducted.
Design for environment: A new framework for strategic decisions
Authors: Ehrenfeld John R. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractFor most of its history of environmental protection, U.S. policy has concentrated on a pollution control strategy based on single medium emissions: air, water, or land. Efforts to mitigate environmental impacts to one medium often resulted in greater impacts to others. While much environmental improvement has occurred via this system over the last quarter‐century, it is generally recognized that alternative strategies which address environmental impacts across all media in an integrated manner will be necessary for continued improvement. Increasingly, regulatory strategies that result in only passive compliance will be insufficient to meet these demands. This article demonstrates why new strategies which encourage proactive behavior are necessary. A new framework for making strategic decisions—design for environment—concerning the relation between our actions and environment is necessary to ensure a sustainable future.
How Niagara Mohawk incorporates environmental factors into policies, plans, and procedures
Authors: Miakisz Joseph A. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractNiagara Mohawk Power Corporation (NMPC), an investor‐owned electric and gas utility operating in upstate New York, has incorporated environmental factors into several facets of its operations, including generation and transmission system planning and operations, system electric operations, and system gas operations. This article describes how NMPC has incorporated environmental considerations in its valuation of new and existing generation resources. What makes this effort unique is that not only are existing environmental regulatory requirements reflected in the planning process, but also prospective environmental requirements are incorporated. This article provides an overview of NMPC's generation valuation process and discusses how both existing and future environmental requirements are addressed.
Environmental logistics engineering: A new approach to industrial ecology
Authors: Freeman Gregg 
Published: February 2007

AbstractIndustrial Ecology is, thus far, the most plausible model for realizing the ideal of sustainability. It dispels the notion that the flow of resources can continue along a one‐way street from nature to mankind. Today, it is fairly well‐understood that economies and ecosystems are structured and operate in strikingly similar ways. Healthy economies and healthy ecosystems depend on elemental diversity and unencumbered interchanges. Yet, maintaining and sustaining both healthy economies and healthy ecosystems continue to be viewed as disparate goals. How can this unfortunate mind‐set be changed? The authors show how logistics engineering could be the best approach to implementing a two‐part solution to this environmental business conundrum.
Developing new environmental excellence programs: Lessons from epa's environmental leadership program
Authors: Feldman Ira R. , Schiavo Michael C. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractInterest in the concept—and implementation—of environmental excellence is at an all‐time high. A wealth of examples from individual companies, trade associations, states, industry coalitions, and the federal government illustrate the growing acceptance by a wide range of stakeholders of a management systems approach to environmental issues. Perhaps nowhere is this more clear than in the collection of public comments submitted to EPA in response to its January 15, 1993, Federal Register notice, which proposed the creation of an Environmental Leadership Program (ELP). The authors, both of whom worked on the ELP, review these public comments and offer a set of “do's and don'ts” for organizations interested in establishing an environmental excellence program. In addition, the authors outline the Green Track proposal, a plan to structure an alternate regulatory pathway based on environmental excellence.
Kodak's safety performance indexing—a tool for environmental improvement
Authors: Kiser David M. , Esler J. Grant 
Published: February 2007

AbstractSafety performance has a direct effect on employees' productivity and quality of work life, and on company profits and image in the community. Enormous human and financial losses can result from poor safety performance, and all such losses are preventable. To prevent these potential losses, safety performance must be continually improved across all levels of the organization. Effective safety programs are the key to improved safety performance. But how do we know when a safety program is effective? How can we measure safety performance and set goals for improvements? How can we track progress toward these goals? This article demonstrates how a powerful performance management tool —performance indexing— can be used to help improve safety performance throughout your company. This tool can also be used to measure, track, and improve environmental and occupational health performance.
Voluntary environmental management system standards: Case studies in implementation
Authors: Diamond Craig P. 
Published: February 2007

AbstractMany anticipate that over the next decade, voluntary environmental management system (EMS) standards will take on the same importance in the marketplace as the ISO 9000 quality standards; the draft international EMS standard (ISO 14001) is on pace to be completed by mid‐1996. In the United States, despite rapidly growing interest in EMS standards, most companies and regulatory agencies are uncertain about their potential benefits and about the process of developing an EMS. Case studies of EMS implementation, particularly in small and medium‐sized companies, are needed to demonstrate the process and identify areas in which further EMS guidance is needed for environmental managers.This article presents seven case studies of EMS implementation in small, medium‐sized, and large companies. Each company is participating in an EPA‐sponsored Demonstration Project in which a variety of organizations are piloting the implementation of EMS standards (the project is being coordinated by NSF International, a not‐for‐profit company specializing in environmental and public health standards and certification). The case studies, written by the companies themselves, share experiences of EMS assessment, planning, and implementation, and discuss challenges that are special to particular industries.