Creating business value by linking industrial ecology with business strategy and product design

This paper introduces an approach describing how an organization can use its own improvement methods and tools to develop a customer-driven environmental strategy that enhances its business strategy. The following steps were briefly described. First, key customers who express the environmental voice of the customer are identified and prioritized. Second, this environmental voice is collected and translated into product attributes that are critical to the environment. Third, the Kano technique is used to understand the different customer perceptions of these critical environmental attributes. Fourth, those customer perceptions suggest appropriate pathways for integrating the critical The anticipated result is improved environmental products that add greater perceived value to customers. The Kano technique ties an environmental attribute and how it is perceived to a business strategy thus providing a platform for environmental issues in the product realization process.