The design of a product stewardship management system within Akzo Nobel

✍ Scribed by Jacqueline Cramer; Gerard Alders

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Weight: 135 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0968-9427
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0925(199909)6:3<135::aid-ema106>3.0.co;2-c

✦ Synopsis

On the basis of six pilot studies within Akzo Nobel a product stewardship management system has been designed, which enables the company worldwide to structure systematically its Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) policy at product level. The product stewardship guiding principles and practices recently developed by various sector organizations of the chemical industry formed an important input, but they lack a clear organizational structure. Therefore, this approach has been complemented with the ISO14001 International Standard, which makes use of the general management system of 'plan, do, check and act'. Akzo Nobel's product stewardship management system pays attention to both sustaining risk management and complying with regulations (routine activities) and improving the HSE performance of products (non-routine activities) in the short and long run. In this way the company aims to achieve HSE improvements of products and simultaneously economic benefits.