هزینه چرخه زندگی برای نوآوری ها در زنجیره های محصولات

The paper indicates how a few innovative actions of companies to reduce emission in the chain of products save costs of pollution control and even provide net benefits for companies in some cases. Costs and savings in the chains of products are assessed with a decision support model by comparing compliance and preventative corporate strategies regarding the far-reaching emission reduction. Ten cases are presented: tomatoes, an animal fat, a vegetable spread, a washing powder, a men's shirt, an office armchair, a kitchen block, a television set, a copier, and a car. The costs of pollution control can in several cases be avoided or reduced through focused actions in the life cycle, including changes in suppliers, adaptation of the manufacturing process and in consumers' behaviour. A distinction is made between consumption of the short-cycle and durable products. For consumption of the short-cycle products, the high compliance costs and the cost-saving innovations are usually found in the primary steps of supply (e.g. agriculture in food and mining of minerals) and in disposal (e.g. packaging). For consumption of the durable products, the high compliance costs and cost-saving innovations are mainly found in manufacturing of some components, during use of products because of electricity and fuel use and disposal of voluminous products.

The life cycles of products evolve in a framework of demands for health and environmental qualities. The demands are posed by various stakeholders such as authorities, companies and social organisations and address every step in the life cycle of a product, i.e. raw materials supply, manufacturing, distribution, use and disposal. The stakeholders who suffer from hazards posed to health and environmental quality, the victims, demand at far reaching emission reduction. The industries response to the demands is largely focused on process adaptation due to regulations, whereas more emission reduction, at lower costs are expected in theory to be achievable by broadening the scope of responses towards all steps in the life cycle of products [1]. In the paper, we underscore this expectation with empirical cases that cover large part consumption. It is pinpointed that anticipation of the demands enables companies to introduce cost-effective innovations. In addition, it is argued that the anticipating companies are capable of accommodating the strict victims' demands in their business, moving far beyond the regulations, provided that it is assured what issues are really demanded and can be implemented and companies are free to act efficiently in the chain. Moreover, the overall costs of the anticipation actions are so low that they hardly influence consumers' prices. We present actions of several companies regarding the far reaching emission reduction in the life cycle for ten products that are exemplary for private consumption. We show that innovative actions reduce emission control costs to a negligible level and can also provide commercial benefit as a side effect of the innovation. Firstly, several costing methods are discussed (Section 2), then a model for life-cycle costs is presented (Section 3), followed by ten cases of life-cycle management (Section 4) and the conclusions (Section 5).

Companies' decisions regarding demands for better environmental qualities are difficult because the demands differ and implementation is uncertain. Hence, various methods to underpin decision-making have been developed although none of them provides reliable results when it comes to implication of the demands for business. After a brief methodological review, the paper presents a model to assess life cycle costs that accommodates demands for emission reduction. The model enables assessments of the costs of compliance strategies by available technologies from the past in comparison with the costs of preventive strategies by innovative solutions in life cycles of products in case companies have to comply with the demands for far-reaching emission reduction. For these kinds of assessments, a decision support model is developed with 28 emission-specific cost functions of emissions, which enables one to underpin decisions about cost-effective strategies in the life cycle of products. The presented assessments cover 10 different products that are illustrative for many other products in private consumption. The assessments indicate many options for innovative cost-effective response to the demands. It is striking how innovative companies can be in view of strict demands for emission reduction and the possibility of flexible response to them, not necessarily by totally new technologies but also by minor changing activities in the chain and redesign of products. If the companies comply by available technologies the implementation of far reaching emission reductions can increase market prices by 10% to 35% in comparison with the moderate demands. That high increase of market prices due to environmental regulations could be obstructed by policy making that generally aim to balance economic growth and environmental qualities. The cases suggest that companies in several cases benefit from the innovative strategies by saving costs of emission reduction in comparison with the compliance strategy, by generation of net benefit due to better product quality, which increases sales, or by lower costs in supplies and manufacturing. Just a few focused actions are sufficient to reduce the costs of pollution controls to a very low level with maximum a few percent price increase of consumers' goods. In some cases, a net benefit can be generated by reduction of inefficiencies in the life cycle albeit at an initial cost that is needed to develop and introduce the innovations. The finding supports the argument that the considerations about products' life cycle have advantages above the focus on production engineering because the cost-effective actions can be found along the entire product chain, such as dedicated trade, additional services, product development and marketing. One difficulty in decision making is that innovations are often very risky because of large costs of development without a promise of success. Another difficulty for decision-making is that the cost-effective actions can only be assessed case by case because the life cycles of products diverge too much for oversimplification. A reasonable simplification with regard to the life cycle costs is distinction between the short-cycle and durable products. The high compliance costs of the short-cycle products are usually found in the primary steps of supply (e.g. agriculture in food and mining of minerals) and in disposal (e.g. packaging). The large compliance costs of the durable products are mainly found in manufacturing of components particularly in case of products that do not need much additional input during use such as furniture and during use of products in case of products with electricity and fuel use as well as periodic repairs. So the producers of the short-cycle products gain if they find and buy from the suppliers that can cope with strict demands at low cost. The producers of the durable products gain from development of durable and energy-saving products that can increase the price but decrease the costs during use, but the challenge is to convince customers about the benefit during use in the life-cycle