Panasonic Case Study

Company Policy and EPP—The ISO 14001 Plan

By Gregory Rusciano, Rutgers University

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd, manufactures consumer electronics sold under the name Panasonic in the United States.  The company adopted a strategic Environmental Management System (EMS), which conforms with the ISO 14001 Standard.  Matsushita, which operates worldwide and is based in Japan, has made EMS an important tool in addressing the company’s environmental charter that was established in 1991.  All Matsushita Companies worldwide are required by internal policy to become registered to the ISO 14001 Standard.  The EMS for Matsushita’s principle North American subsidiary, Matsushita Electric Corporation of America, is large-scale in that it encompasses all of the company’s non-manufacturing divisional companies and subsidiaries.  Each Matsushita factory in the US has it’s own registration.  Just as any company that follows the ISO 14001 plan, Matsushita’s EMS is unique because the ISO 14001 plan is basically an outline that must be built upon. 

ISO 14001 framework guides companies in establishing a comprehensive EMS.  The guide is developed by the International Organization for Standardization which does not actually have any involvement in monitoring a company’s conformance with ISO 14001.  To become ISO 14001 registered, a company must be independently audited; as specified by the ISO 14001 plan.  ISO 14001 also specifies the following components: environmental policy and planning, implementation, and operation of this policy. 

            Matsushita Electric Corporation of America’s EMS was developed by a company engineer and is now being implemented and overseen by David Thompson, General Manager of the Corporate Environmental Department.  Mr. Thompson met with the New Jersey Solid Waste Policy Group (NJSWPG) in a recent meeting at the Panasonic Corporate offices in Secaucus, New Jersey to discuss the company EMS.  The plan requires all its manufacturing companies, subsidiaries and all non-manufacturing companies comprised of 100 or more employees to be registered..  The EMS is based on identifying all environmental aspects and determining their impact upon the environment and the company.  Those deemed most important are then addressed through improvement programs.

            Identifying environmental aspects to be evaluated is a collective effort between all participating division companies and subsidiaries.  An annual meeting between managers identifies these aspects.  This process provides a unique opportunity in that the identified aspects could address anything from the overall corporate policy on energy use to issues in everyday corporate activities such as implementing a carpool incentive plan.  Once a list of aspects has been identified, the members of the review meeting will rank each aspect according to several criteria.  Those aspects that fall under state or federal regulation or voluntary environmental programs are given the highest ranking. 

Once the aspects have been ranked, a plan for implementing improvements is then drafted for selected aspects.  Mr. Thompson explained that a great component of Matsushita’s EMS is that any environmental strategy that is not working quite as well as expected can be reevaluated at the next annual meeting.  Thus, the EMS has a component of continuous improvement built into it.  An additional benefit of the system is the fact that each environmental aspect is addressed individually.  This allows for maximum focus on a problem, and ideally, more efficient use of time and resources.  In addition, the system generates a balance of small-scale and large-scale aspects such as those mentioned above.  Because Matsushita is such a large company, ideas like carpooling might not be addressed if the EMS plan was conducted in a different way.

One notable large-scale environmental aspect addressed by Matsushita on a global basis, is its commitment to evaluating chemical suppliers.  The EMS plan is committed to identifying exactly what chemicals are being purchased along with their environmental impacts.  Mr. Thompson explained that most of the 3000 chemical suppliers used by Matsushita are willing to comply with Matsushita’s requests because it is an important customer.  Taking Matsushita’s US sales company as an example, the goals of the plan are to make sure all the ingredients in a particular product are on the EPA list of chemicals approved for importation to the US and that none of the ingredients are on Matsushita’s internal list of banned chemicals.  In this regard, Matsushita goes beyond mere compliance with environmental regulations. 

Mr. Thompson saw two ways of adding Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP) standards into the EMS.  One way is to simply reference Environmental Preferable Purchasing in the company’s environmental policy.  A second, but more complex approach, would be to look at EPP as a specific criteria for evaluating environmental aspects of the products, materials or services the company purchases.  Such an approach would insure that these aspects are deemed “significant” thereby requiring the establishment of specific objectives and targets.  Matsushita’s existing EMS has already addressed certain targeted EPP aspects (like evaluating chemical suppliers).  Because the EMS plan is so flexible the company could set a goal to address EPP aspects more frequently during annual meetings.  Thompson also addressed the issue of restructuring the existing EMS of the company to permanently address EPP issues.  Although the system has not been changed since its inception, he suggested that it could be achieved as long as the new framework was in keeping with ISO 14001 Standard. 

Matsushita Corporation is truly a prime example of a company that has capitalized on the guidance of the ISO 14001 Standard.  ISO 14001 is designed so that it can be molded to the specific needs of a company while still addressing specific environmental goals.  For this reason, Matsushita EMS cannot be duplicated although it can serve as a model on how ISO 14001 can be used to develop a company’s environmental strategy and ultimately, an EMS that can address EPP issues.

Company Links:

Chemical Substance Management Rank Guidelines:

http://www.matsushita.co.jp/environment/99e/14/14e.htm

Green Procurement Standards:

http://matsushita.co.jp/environment/en/file/e_data/ed_w_0003.html

Matsushita Environmental Activities page:
  http://www.matsushita.co.jp/environment/en/index.html

Panasonic Center:

http://www.panasonic-center.com