Essay
Sustainability Along the Global Supply Chain Spring Term 2011

Herman Miller Case Analysis

Name: Victoria Kondratova, Ekaterina Tarkhova Address: Bischof-Dirichs-Str. 56, 65375 Oestrich-Winkel Submitted to: Prof. Dr. Julia Wolf Submission Date: April 1st, 2011

Table of Contents:

Table of Contents List of Abbreviations 1. Introduction 2. Herman Miller’s Environmental Protection Strategy and its Necessity 3. Cradle-to-cradle Design Protocol 4. TPU verses PVC Approach 5. Implementation of C2C Protocol in Herman Miller 6. Advantages and Disadvantages of C2C Protocol 7. Conclusion Reference List 1 1 2 3 4 5 5 6

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List of Abbreviations

C2C C2G DfE EQAT MBDC PVC
TPU …show more content…

Disassembly (product should be easy to disassemble and have its different components marked so that they could be properly recycled); 4. Recyclability and recycled content (products have to be produced of recyclable components; companies should try to use as much already recycled components as possible).

4. TPU versus PVC Approach
In terms of materials, used in production process, implementation of C2C protocol was supposed to be done with the use of TPU-materials instead of PVC. In order to anticipate Herman Miller´s initiative of “no PVC is used in the production” we would like to analyze it on example of Mirra Chair’s arm pads. We derived a list of advantages and disadvantages of switch from PVC to TPU and present them in the table 1. Table 1 – Pros and cons of using TPU-materials in arm pads of Mirra Chair
TPU + 1) Better image in marketing prospective 2) Reduction of toxic materials in Mirra Chair 1) PVC is durable, easily formed and inexpensive 2) With TPU it becomes more difficult to work with suppliers 3) Growth of claims for PVC-free products on customers’ side 3) Difficult and costly to switch all the production process to new technology 4) TPU is not enough tested material 5) Using of TPU is more expensive (increase in costs of the arm pad assembly by ≈ 30%)

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As we see from the table, it turns out