Increasing environmental concern and a raising number of legislations is forcing organizations to rethink their business. As the product development process mainly determines the performance of a product and future impacts throughout the life cycle, organizations need to implement considerations of sustainability. This paper presents a method for prioritizing and developing suppliers in order to reach a sustainable vision, i.e. a predefined description of how an organization stipulates the sustainability performance of its future products. Mapping the supplier-base onto the phases of the product life cycle together with considerations on their purchasing volume provides an overview of suppliers’ strategic influence on the product. Combined with a life cycle analysis this provides a graphical representation of the suppliers’ sustainable importance during the product life cycle. Evaluating suppliers with the highest sustainable importance against their development potential enables a strategic layout of how suppliers need to develop in order to reach a sustainable vision.     «

Increasing environmental concern and a raising number of legislations is forcing organizations to rethink their business. As the product development process mainly determines the performance of a product and future impacts throughout the life cycle, organizations need to implement considerations of sustainability. This paper presents a method for prioritizing and developing suppliers in order to reach a sustainable vision, i.e. a predefined description of how an organization stipulates the susta...     »