The Role of Success Factors and Obstacles in Design for Environment: A Survey among Asian Electronics Companies Casper Boks Oriol Pascual Design for Sustainability Program School of Industrial Design Engineering Delft University of Technology Landbergstraat 15, 2628 CE Delft, The Netherlands Tel: +31 15 2787082; Fax: +31 15 2782956 c.b.boks@io.tudelft.nl, o.pascual@io.tudelft.nl Abstract: Taking an exhaustive list of success factors and obstacles, mentioned in literature in the context of both i) dissemination of ecodesign information throughout companies, and ii) successfully bringing ecodesigned products to the market, it was found based upon a survey among Asian electronics multinationals that some success factors and obstacles can be confirmed as issues alive in the industry, but some were falsified as being of relatively little importance. The general perception is that in these companies, the ecodesign process is systemized as much as possible, as it is mainly seen as a compliance rather than a creativity issue. This evidently creates a number of obstacles whenever sophistication of the process requires the need for bilateral communication and cooperation between internal stakeholders within the company. 1 INTRODUCTION In the community of researchers and practitioners that are involved with Design for Environment (DFE) it is common to express dissatisfaction about the frequency, quality and speed of the process of implementation of DFE practices in the electronics industry. Around the turn of the millennium, it was still common, for researchers and companies alike, to express optimism about opportunities for competitive advantage leading from ecodesign activities. More recently, calls for proving this perceived benefit, especially on an overall business scale, have become louder and louder. Whereas in the late nineties the focus was on showing and proving that products with improved environmental attributes could indeed be made at little or no extra costs, little evidence was created that such individually successful activities could be integrated in existing business processes in order to really obtain the promised competitive advantage. The call for evidence is now becoming clear, and although repercussions of economic recession will undoubtedly have contributed to this retrenchment of environmental optimism, the lack of demonstration that existing paradigms can successfully materialize in regular industrial activities should be regarded as the principal source of dissatisfaction. This paper commences with a short summary of an extensive literature study identifying barriers and success factors for successful ecodesign implementation in industry. In section 3 the research project that was initiated to validate and expand current knowledge on these issues is introduced. It is analyzed which of the success factors and obstacles mentioned in literature are (still) relevant and perceived as important, using the results of a study among Asian electronics companies. 2 LITERATURE STUDY In literature, deadlock mentioned in previous section has been discussed, although the cross-fertilization between environmental management literature on the one hand, and on the other hand the body of literature usually published and read by the ecodesign community can be regarded as immature. But even within the ecodesign community, authors like Lindahl [1], Johansson [2], Handfield [3], Mathieux [4], Tukker [5], Pascual [6,7] and others have addressed the fact that the relatively high levels of awareness about environmental issues as well as efforts invested in environmental product improvement do not sufficiently materialize into great numbers of ecodesigned products that make it successfully to the market. Summarizing this body of literature, a long list of potential barriers can be enumerated. A similar exercise can be done for success factors studied in literature. However, studying and interpreting this body of literature, little care appears to be given to making clear in what context success factors and obstacles are defined. In particular, the distinction between the role they play in, on the one hand, disseminating ecodesign information to appropriate people in appropriate departments (such as design, engineering, sales & marketing, purchasing), and on the other hand, in ecodesign principles materializing in products brought on market, appears ill-stressed. In the current research project this distinction is addressed more clearly.