Projects

The Steelcase Wood Products Division is now looking to establish a consistent methodology and set of metrics for quantification of division environmental performance.  The measurement and characterization of current processes at Wood Products operations will serve as a baseline both for comparison to past operational practices, but more importantly as a minimum operational standard moving forward.  This baseline will help managers estimate decision impacts, make tradeoffs, and improve division environmental performance using a well-defined set of methods and metrics.  This work will entail a number of specific objectives including:

1.    Development of a set of environmental performance measurement methods and allocation procedures for the highly dynamic Wood Products Division, maintaining adherence to international environmental impact metrics (such as ISO 14040). 

2.    Apply metrics of energy consumption and carbon footprint for benchmarking and ongoing monitoring of division environmental performance.  Specific data collection requirements will be established for these two metrics to direct data collection operations and integration with division accounting and operational databases if possible.

3.    Establishment of a baseline quantification of energy and carbon metrics and, to the extent possible considering the availability of historical data, undertake a comparative environmental impact case study of division operations before and after recent consolidation and conservation efforts. 

4.    In cases where historical data collection is possible, completion of a comparative environmental impact analysis of past and current Wood Products Division operations.  To supplement this comparison, sensitivity analysis on the framework will be carried out to determine efficacy.

5.    Establishment of a long-term plan for monitoring and data analysis.


In particular, this effort will assist division managers in:

1.    Accurately estimating the environmental performance (energy and carbon footprint) of the Steelcase Wood Products Division based on a series of standardized environmental performance metrics.

2.    Identifying tradeoffs among decision options for changes in operations, product lines, and outsourcing.

3.    Tracking environmental progress using standardized, comparable metrics over time.