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Transforming Fridgidaire Stephen
Potter Stephen Potter is ........ with the Design Innovation Group, Design Discipline, The Open University. It is increasingly recognised that environmental impacts are not just another business factor that needs to be taken into account in the design of a product, but represent a new paradigm change. Such a change affects the whole ethos and culture of a company and the markets in which it operates. Indeed it affects the competitive effectiveness of whole nations. Why else are the Japanese - who are not particularly noted for their environmental credentials - taking the greening of their products so seriously? The links between the effective greening of the design process and commercial strategy were well illustrated when the author undertook a research visit to the US white goods manufacturer, Frigidaire. Founded in 1916, Frigidaire is one of three major white good manufacturers in the USA. It was for many years owned by General Electric, but in 1979 GE sold Frigidaire to a holding company, White Consolidated Industries. This in turn was purchased by Electrolux in 1987. When taken over by Electrolux, Frigidaire was a manufacturing-oriented company with only minimal investment in design. The company competed basically on price and had, according to one of their industrial designers 'a culture of churning out cheap products'. In this context, their general attitude to environmental concerns was purely reactive, consisting of minimal compliance to energy efficiency and environmental regulations, coupled with resisting moves for higher regulatory standards. Given Electrolux's commitment to quality design and the importance of environmental factors in the company's European markets, big changes might well have been expected at Frigidaire. And big changes there were. The new US management sought to transform the company into a 'customer-focused culture' with investment in industrial design being a crucial element in this process. Previously there had been virtually no industrial design and certainly no design management at Frigidaire. Each plant had produced their own models and the company had ended up with an unrelated mixture of artefacts that in no way constituted a recognisable product range. Design-led strategy One of the first things to happen was that design work for all the Frigidaire plants was concentrated at a new Design Center in Hilliard, Ohio. A product development strategy was adopted with the aim to produce an integrated range of well designed, high quality fridges, washers, driers, dishwashers and stoves. As well as fronting the design of current products, The Design Center undertakes strategic work examining new technologies and materials - Frigidaire had never previously undertaken any research into future technologies. This new design-led strategy represented a significant culture change in the company. A strong design focus was seen as the key to addressing customer requirements. In the discussion with Frigidaire management, it was significant that design was viewed as an integrating process for the various company departments. Once customer-oriented design became a goal, design management systems had to change. Proper multidisciplinary project teams had to be established to manage the product development process, rather than the old manufacturing-oriented 'sequential' method of passing projects from one department to the next. As has been noted in other Design Innovation Group studies, a new design approach usually also requires a new management approach as well, if it is to succeed. Design can only be integrative if design management integrates inputs from all sections of a company. Greening of 'design know-how' The incorporation of environmental factor into product design at Frigidaire has thus taken place within the context of an overall restructuring of the company's use of design. Electrolux, of course, have been addressing environmental impacts in the design of their products for many years. However, although Frigidaire can draw upon Electrolux's greening of design know-how, the scope to simply transfer European design features across to the USA is limited. The reason for this is that the market for white goods in the USA is extremely competitive and prices are much lower than in Europe. Thus most of the greening design elements used in Europe are simply too expensive for the USA. In fridges, for example, advanced insulating materials are too costly and so improved electricity consumption depends on a mix of the best use of existing insulation materials, plus improvements to other conventional technologies (particularly better gaskets and seals and an advanced compressor to reduce energy consumption) together with attention to design (such as smaller and multiple doors). Frigidaire have also phased out CFCs ahead of government regulations. Broadly the approach has not been innovation-led, but design-led, in that it involves combining the best of existing technologies in an integrated design process. Interestingly, some of the low cost elements in the USA actually result in greater environmental benefits than European green design approaches. For example, fridges in the USA tend to be made of mild steel bodies and moulded plastic interiors with glass shelves. In Europe, a stronger design emphasis has led to a greater mix of materials - mild steel bodies, aluminium shelving and trim, stainless steel interiors, polycarbonate shelving and panels. The simple (and cheap) construction of the American fridge requires less materials and energy in production and the use of fewer types of materials make recycling easier. Design for recycling In North America, Europe and in a number of other countries, the recycling of materials has become an important design issue. Environmental regulations, particularly in Germany, are moving towards the manufacturer being required to take back and recycle the products they had made. Making manufacturers responsible for products once their useful life is ended seems to make a lot of sense; it is likely to result in them designing products that are easy to disassemble and recycle and possibly adopting modular design for updating in order to reduce the overall waste flow. However, there is a danger that inefficient recycling systems may emerge. Such regulations have tended to require (or result in) specialist recycling facilities for each product area and major company. This could well result in a series of small, under-utilised plants requiring the transport of discarded products over large distances. Most of the benefits of recycling would thus be counterbalanced by increased energy and pollution from building, by operating a large number of poorly-utilised small plants and by the energy used in transporting to these plants relatively small flows of materials. In Britain, some scrap car materials that were previously recycled to local industries via a scrap merchant are now transported 600 - 700 miles to an auto manufacturer's own recycling plant in Germany! Manufacturers are not necessarily the best people to disassemble and recycle their products. There already exist companies that specialise in scrap materials and who have the expertise, technology and market networks to provide a full recycling service. In the interview with Frigidaire, the company was concerned about the effect of such regulations and felt that it was important to encourage the most efficient approach. It was felt they had to 'forestall over-legislation by doing something'. So Frigidaire are designing their goods for disassembly and recycling, but in such a way that it can be done by the recycling materials industry - not by Frigidaire themselves. This has involved collaborative work with the Appliance Recycling Centers of America. The basic aim is to design products so that 'someone can make a profit out of recycling them' by making disassembly easy and materials easily identifiable and easy to reprocess. This raises an important point. Some environmental issues require design management to be extended outside the company to implement effective solutions. Design for waste reduction, reuse and recycling is likely to involve action along the life cycle chain - from supplier, within the company, to collection agencies and reuse/recycling firms. Greening of design needs a design management process that not only involve organising design inputs within a company, but taking into account who else outside the company may be involved in dealing with the environmental impacts of the product. If this is not done properly then costly, and sometimes ineffective, approaches may result. Ecodesign and company strategy In discussion with Frigidaire's Managing Director, it became clear that the environmental performance of the company was viewed as a crucial element in its future competitive edge. White goods are an essentially mature industry and in the USA and all competing goods cost about the same. There is not much by way of product differentiation or brand loyalty and large retailers have a lot of power over the manufacturers. By developing as the leading 'green' company, Frigidaire hope to establish their products as being well designed, economical to operate and of the highest environmental standards. The greening of design is a crucial part of getting brand loyalty and competitive edge in a market which otherwise has little by way of product differentiation. A parallel may be drawn with the European experience of washing machine manufacturers in the 1980s. This also involved a mature technology, with all washers having similar performance. AEG and Zanussi used 'green' factors - reducing water, energy and detergent use, to gain a significant competitive edge. Hoover, in being first to get an Ecolabel, have made significant inroads into the German market and are seeking to snatch AEG's green crown. This is the sort of vision that is now driving Frigidaire in the USA, but other US white goods companies are seeking to match Frigidaire's environmental performance, so the eventual success of Frigidaire's new strategy is far from certain. What is certain is that their old minimal environmental compliance, cheap and cheerful approach would never have worked. Environmental impact is here to stay as a key design factor in the American white goods market. Summary What can we learn about the greening of design from this case study?
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