leaders choose the most attractive industries and/or influence industry structures to
make them attractive for themselves.
The field of strategy is constantly evolving at a fast pace. LCA can be used to
support strategic decision making for instance on which technology to invest in.
However, most companies (95%) do not include sustainability yet, so there’s still a
lot of companies to win.
3 Integrated Product Development at Nestlé [2]
At Nestlé, the world’s largest nutrition, health and wellness company, the life cycle
approach is applied to multi-criteria product innovation and renovation, which
involves Nestlé's partners and stakeholders from farm to consumer and beyond.
In order to embed environmental sustainability into their products, the
Sustainability by Design program led by the Research & Development unit assesses
and optimizes the environmental performance across the entire value chain at the
earliest stages of product development. The identification of environmental hotspots
where relevant, and the definition of actions to address them is carried out using the
internal eco-design tool EcodEX. Furthermore, a new tool aimed at identifying
opportunities for projects to deliver on Nestlé in Society commitments is being
launched in 2017 across the R&D organization.
On the other hand, successful product renovation and innovation requires
building sufficient and necessary consumer, technical and product mastership
knowledge. This consumer-centric approach entails the close cooperation of marketing, operations and R&D units and also spans over the entire product life cycle.
This holistic and comprehensive methodology, as applied by Nestlé, delivers
competitive advantage, leads to the fulfillment of public commitments at company
level and drives the company contribution as member of the food industry to the
achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Informed decision making
takes place at the various steps of project execution, risks and opportunities are
identified, and early warning is brought up at the appropriate time.
However, given the breadth of technical areas concerned and what is at stake, the
interpretation of data and insights resulting from this way of working can be
complex and raise some challenges. The deployment of support tools can only be
justified as long as they are properly and widely used. Deciding which function will
take up the identified actions for improvement, either R&D, operations or both in a
concerted way, requires alignment of objectives and priorities as well as clear
allocation of resources. For a company as large as Nestlé, it is fundamental to
progress from starting the conversation and raising awareness on multiple criteria
for product development to consistently accomplishing it.
Being proactive and understanding that what matters to consumers entails
all aspects of the product—going beyond quality and including sustainability—
enriches the product development process and provides consumers with a product
they prefer, knowing that Nestlé has taken care of what matters to them.
Turning the Lens Around: LCA Success Stories Outside-In
441
make them attractive for themselves.
The field of strategy is constantly evolving at a fast pace. LCA can be used to
support strategic decision making for instance on which technology to invest in.
However, most companies (95%) do not include sustainability yet, so there’s still a
lot of companies to win.
3 Integrated Product Development at Nestlé [2]
At Nestlé, the world’s largest nutrition, health and wellness company, the life cycle
approach is applied to multi-criteria product innovation and renovation, which
involves Nestlé's partners and stakeholders from farm to consumer and beyond.
In order to embed environmental sustainability into their products, the
Sustainability by Design program led by the Research & Development unit assesses
and optimizes the environmental performance across the entire value chain at the
earliest stages of product development. The identification of environmental hotspots
where relevant, and the definition of actions to address them is carried out using the
internal eco-design tool EcodEX. Furthermore, a new tool aimed at identifying
opportunities for projects to deliver on Nestlé in Society commitments is being
launched in 2017 across the R&D organization.
On the other hand, successful product renovation and innovation requires
building sufficient and necessary consumer, technical and product mastership
knowledge. This consumer-centric approach entails the close cooperation of marketing, operations and R&D units and also spans over the entire product life cycle.
This holistic and comprehensive methodology, as applied by Nestlé, delivers
competitive advantage, leads to the fulfillment of public commitments at company
level and drives the company contribution as member of the food industry to the
achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Informed decision making
takes place at the various steps of project execution, risks and opportunities are
identified, and early warning is brought up at the appropriate time.
However, given the breadth of technical areas concerned and what is at stake, the
interpretation of data and insights resulting from this way of working can be
complex and raise some challenges. The deployment of support tools can only be
justified as long as they are properly and widely used. Deciding which function will
take up the identified actions for improvement, either R&D, operations or both in a
concerted way, requires alignment of objectives and priorities as well as clear
allocation of resources. For a company as large as Nestlé, it is fundamental to
progress from starting the conversation and raising awareness on multiple criteria
for product development to consistently accomplishing it.
Being proactive and understanding that what matters to consumers entails
all aspects of the product—going beyond quality and including sustainability—
enriches the product development process and provides consumers with a product
they prefer, knowing that Nestlé has taken care of what matters to them.
Turning the Lens Around: LCA Success Stories Outside-In
441