EFQM Case Studies
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EFQM is a global non-for-profit membership foundation based in Brussels, Belgium. With more than
500 members covering more than 55 countries and 50 industries, we provide a unique platform for
organisations to learn from each other and improve performance. EFQM is the custodian of the
EFQM Excellence Model, a business model which is helping over 30 000 organisations around the
globe to strive for Sustainable Excellence.
EFQM Members share a common goal: the pursuit of excellence. The EFQM Excellence Model
provides a common framework and language that facilitates the effective sharing of information
between organisations; transcending sectorial, cultural and maturity barriers.
As part of this network you are able to engage with like-minded individuals and share experience on
the development of innovative solutions that can help your organisation address some of its most
important challenges.
In line with our promise, to “Share What Works”, EFQM is uniquely place to identify good practices
that have been adopted by our members. The EFQM Recognition Schemes, which involve
independent assessors visiting applicants, help us to identify, verify and share these practices within
the EFQM Members. In 2010, we launched the Good Practice Competition to enable any
organisation, regardless of whether they are a member of EFQM or one of our Partner
Organisations, to share an approach that works for them.
The applicants are asked to upload a short video explaining their approach. A jury of experts in the
field then agree a short-list of finalists. The final judging process is a combination of a public vote,
via the web portal, a vote by attendees at the EFQM Learning Edge, after the finalists have
presented their practice in more detail and the Jury.
The theme of the competition changes each year in line with the focus of the EFQM Forum; an
annual event for business leaders and the excellence community to share ideas, experiences and
knowledge.
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Sustainability is a hot topic. There’s no debate on that point. However, it’s one of the few things
when it comes to sustainability that is not up for debate, from what we mean by sustainability to
what we need to do to be sustainable.
The objective of the EFQM Sustainability Good Practice Competition was to identify a number of
practical examples of approaches that could be shared and would encourage and inspire others. We
received a total of 24 applications from 12 countries; from Europe, the Middle East and India. The
standard of the applications was very high but our jury of experts in the field of CSR narrowed them
down to 5 finalists.
Ricoh’s Sustainability Optimisation Programme won the competition. As well as being popular with
the voting public, the Jury felt that the approach excelled in a number of key areas:
The extent to which the approach was integrated within the core business strategy of Ricoh
The exclusive use of internal expertise and knowledge in developing and supporting the
programme
The financial and environmental benefits achieved, both for Ricoh and their customers
Finally, the Jury felt that the concept was adaptable and could inspire numerous organisations in
other industries and sectors.
In this Case Study, we will explore the approach taken by Ricoh in more detail; how it was developed
and implemented as part of Ricoh’s Sustainability Strategy.
EFQM Case Studies
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The Ricoh company was founded in 1936 in Japan making photographic paper and cameras. Later
the company expanded to manufacturing several types of office devices, and exporting overseas.
These days it’s a global technology leader employing 108,500 worldwide. Production of copiers and
MFPs, Ricoh main products, is built upon the technologies the company has developed over many
years in various fields such as electrophotography, imaging, chemistry, optics, networking and
software. Integrating new technologies into
existing resources, Ricoh will continue to
innovate.
Ricoh's sales and support network reaches into
every corner of the world. The Ricoh Group has
sales and support, production, and R&D
operations worldwide under five regional
headquarters in Japan, the Americas, Europe,
Asia-Pacific, and China. Ricoh serves customers
directly in more than 50 countries worldwide.
Customers in other locations are supported by our authorized distributors and dealers.
Whilst Ricoh’s product lifecycle is complex, and described in further detail later in this document, we
have structured this case study around the simplified process shown below. Ricoh has developed
strategies to understand, manage and minimise the environmental impact in each of these phases.
Ricoh Europe is primarily responsible for developing and implementing strategies in the “In-Use” and
“Collect, Recycle & Reuse” phases.
The Sustainability Optimisation Programme, the focus of this case study, was developed to minimise
the environmental impact during the “In-Use” phase.
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Ricoh has a long establish record for sustainability. They have been listed in Global 100 Most
Sustainable Corporations in the world for 7 years in a row and the FTSE4Good Sustainability Index
for 8 consecutive years.
Ricoh is determined to keep up its efforts to realize its target of reducing its environment impact to
one-eighth of the fiscal year 2000 levels by 2050 in absolute terms. The company’s philosophy is
that it is important to generate profits and remain a going concern so that it could continue to
contribute to reducing environmental impact and to help realize a sustainable society.
The Ricoh Group has analysed a variety of data, collected from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) reports and a number of other sources, and has modelled a number of scenarios. By
2050, it is predicted the world will have 9 billion people and, if current trends continue, the
environmental impact would exceed the Earth’s capability for recovery, posing a grave threat to
society.
Ricoh has envisioned two alternative future scenarios, both of which involved environmental
impacts at a “tolerable level” for the Earth. In the first scenario, the world continued to place an
emphasis on economic growth,
eventually leading to a drop in
population and thus economic activity
starting in 2030, thereby reducing the
environmental impact to a tolerable
level. This was called the “distructive
scenario”. The second scenario, the
“soft-landing scenario,” involved
aggressive actions taken by the entire
society to reduce environmental
impact. Ricoh called this the “Year
2050 Long-Term Environmental
Vision”. The company committed to
reducing its own environmental impact according to this vision to one-eighth of 2000 levels by 2050
in terms of absolute values.
To realise this vision Ricoh has set clearly articulated targets in three key areas; energy conservation
and global warming prevention, resource conservation and recycling, and pollution prevention, using
2020 and 2050 as the standard years. As the major targets, we have chosen "CO2 emissions
reduction throughout the product lifecycle", "reduction of new input of resources with prospects of
resource depletion" and "management and reduction of chemical substances to minimize
environmental risks." Every three years we fine-tune our environmental action plans to achieve the
goals. Ricoh plans to reduce the total lifecycle CO2 emissions by the Ricoh Group (including emissions
of the “five gasses” converted into CO2) by 30%* by 2020 and by 87.5% by 2050 from the fiscal 2000
level.
EFQM Case Studies
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In fact, Ricoh has committed itself to long-term targets at the time when there was still discussion on
whether growing CO2 in the atmosphere led to global warming. So there was an opinion that Ricoh
would regret making investments in environmental initiatives if it turned out that there was no
connection between the two. However, Ricoh analysis made it clear that environment initiatives
were economically viable and led to improvement of profitability and sustainability of the company.
Therefore Ricoh would not regret investing in environmental initiatives.
Ricoh Targets 2020 2050
Energy Conservation 30% Reduction 87.5% Reduction
Resource Conservation 25% Reduction 87.5% Reduction
Pollution Prevention 30% Reduction 87.5% Reduction
Ricoh’s environmental management philosophy is that the company should pursue not only
environmental conservation but also economic efficiency. In order sustain environmental activity at
a high level, it should not be merely voluntary activity, but should also generate profit. AT the time
of development, this approach was unique as many companies tended to consider environmental
issues as more of a voluntary activity or an obligation that corporations had to address, regardless of
profitability. The premise of Ricoh’s philosophy was that firstly, the environmental burden caused
by all social and economic activities should be kept at a level within the allowable capacity of the
Earth’s environment. Secondly, social systems, life style, and corporate activities should be
structured so that environment and economy were compatible.
The global information and communications technology (ICT) industry accounts for approximately
2% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, a figure equivalent to aviation, according to a recent
estimate by Gartner.
Gartner recommends IT
organisations develop a strategy to
address the current negative
effects of using ICT. The growth in
power requirements and levels of
waste that it produces renders the
current state unsustainable.
Although the contribution of
printers and copiers in this study
appears small, this is based on
energy consumption in use. When paper production, consumption and recycling are factored in, the
contribution is more significant.
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To reduce the environmental impact throughout the entire product lifecycle, Ricoh had to identify
the degree of impact at each stage, from business process to transportation, by all involved parties;
the Ricoh Group, suppliers, customers and recycling companies. Using their Sustainable
Environmental Management Information System, which covers all of these stages, they identified
the environmental impact of a product to further enhance environmental technology and maximise
reuse and recycling of their products.
Through this analysis, it became
apparent that there was significant
burden in the upstream where
product parts were produced by
Ricoh’s supplier vendors, and in the
downstream where Ricoh’s
customers were using products. This
accounts for 27% of the total
environmental impact. However, the
largest contribution, 62% of the total
impact, comes in the “In-Use” phase.
Ricoh’s resource recirculation philosophy is based on the Comet Circle principle where each circle in
the diagram indicates partners such as material suppliers, sales companies, manufacturers,
maintenance companies, and recycling companies. One route represented the arteries of the
system, where resources taken from the natural environment were processed into products that
were delivered to customers; the other route represented veins of the system, where the end-of-life
products were collected and reused or partly recycled and the remaining waste was disposed of in
landfills. When first presented to the Board, the executives were so impressed by the concept that
the Comet Circle was registered as a trademark : “The Comet CircleTM”.
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The Comet Circle principle puts priority on inner loop recycling (reuse/recycle activities at a stage
closer to the end-user), promotes a multi-tiered recycling system and establishes economically
rational recycling, through partnerships at every stage and information sharing.
In 1998, the company initiated efforts to collaborate with it suppliers to realise Green Procurement,
purchasing raw materials, parts and products that were manufactured in environmentally
responsible factories or certified with international environmental labels. Ricoh has also introduced
its own paper procurement standards and rules regarding the composition ratio of recycled pulp.
Recyclable design is an essential approach to promoting resource conservation and product
recycling. Ricoh’s first recyclable design policy, based on the Comet Circle, has built up knowledge in
various areas, such as grading of material, strength design considering future reuse as well as the
reduction of packaging materials, reuse of high value-added parts, recycling of high-quality
materials, and improvement in the ease of disassembling and sorting.
After designing copiers and printers, designers carry out recyclable design self-assessments to make
necessary improvements, and in this way, the consideration of designers to recycling has already
become a part of their core design process. As part of this “Design to Recycle” process, Ricoh
developed labels which do not compromise the quality and purity of recycled plastics, even when
parts are dissolved and reused with the labels still on.
The recycling information system has been established. Each unit collected is bar-coded to trace its
status throughout the recycling process. The condition of copiers used by customers are also
recorded in the monitoring database within the system. This system allows efficient production and
quality improvement of recycled products due to its ability to manage on an individual unit basis.
Currently, more than 200,000 units are collected each year, and fully recycled or reused. The
recycling rate of copiers is more than 99.5%.
As part of its efforts to develop alternative materials, Ricoh is working on the development of
components and toners for copiers using biomass resins. Biomass resins have been receiving
increasing attention recently as they are recyclable and contribute less to global warming than their
petroleum-based counterparts. They also reduce the demand for non-renewable petroleum
resources. Ricoh introduced the industry’s first multifunctional digital copier equipped with biomass
components in 2005.
About 80% of conventional toner is petroleum-based resin. Ricoh have developed a new toner with
25% biomass content. One of the additional benefits is that removing biomass toner requires less
energy during the paper recycling process, further reducing CO2 emissions.
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Since the release of its first recycled copier in 1997, Ricoh has expanded its range more actively than
any other company in the industry and now offers a wide variety of recycled machines. In
September 2009, Ricoh released the company’s first recycled digital full-color copier. The average
rate of used parts in the production of the series stands at 80% in weight, and CO2 emissions during
manufacturing have reduced by roughly 93% from the producing a new, original model. The CO2
emissions reduction over the total lifecycle is estimated to be roughly 27% respectively.
Ricoh Europe is responsible for the “In-Use” Phase of the product lifecycle. They have 21 sales
companies throughout the EMEA region, with over 15,000 employees.
Ricoh Europe use the EFQM Excellence Model as a holistic framework to help coordinate the
implementation of their key strategies, measure the impact and drive improvement. These are
deployed through the 3 year Mid-Term Plan (MTP), annual planning process and objectives cascade,
ensuring alignment throughout the group.
The key components of their CSR Strategy and their relationship to the EFQM Excellence Model are
shown below:
The CSR Strategy focuses on using the skills, expertise and knowledge of Ricoh’s people; the
development of the Sustainability Optimisation Programme is one example of this in action.
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In Ricoh’s environmental philosophy, they share the responsibility of reducing the environmental
impact during the “In-use” phase with their customers. Their market research indicates that
sustainability is firmly on the customers’ agenda. Businesses are stepping up in their efforts to make
their operations greener and to make their office locations more energy efficient.
Ricoh Europe developed the Sustainability Optimisation Programme to meet this demand.
Ricoh’s Sustainability Optimisation Programme supports customers in meeting both their
environmental and financial objectives. It is a continuous improvement cycle that enables medium
to large organizations to achieve more sustainable printing in a 5-step approach:
1. Analyse: through an audit Ricoh analyses a customer’s existing document workflows and fleet,
to understand the baseline carbon emissions and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). This is the “as-
is” situation.
2. Design: an optimisation plan is designed to reduce carbon emissions and TCO, by technology
optimisation and user behaviour change. Clear targets are set on energy and paper reduction
and related carbon emissions (the “to be” situation).
3. Implement: the plan is implemented; in all devices the most energy efficient settings are
activated, and end-users are trained on sustainable usage of the devices, and conscious usage of
paper, including maximizing double-sided printing and avoiding waste.
4. Govern: after implementation, actual CO2 emissions are continuously being tracked versus set
targets, by remote monitoring tools. Any variances are analysed and acted upon to drive further
reductions in carbon emissions.
5. Neutralise: after all possible measures have been taken to reduce CO2 emissions, a customer can
offset the remaining and unavoidable carbon emissions of his document output through carbon
credits generated by certified clean energy projects in which Ricoh has invested.
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The programme evolved from one customer facing approach, office consulting, which focused on
reducing costs, and one internal approach; the environmental management system. A multi-
disciplinary team, from Marketing, Sales and the Environmental Management Office, developed the
concept. By adding the internal expertise Ricoh had developed in reducing the environmental
impact of their own activities to the existing office consulting service, they created the Sustainability
Optimisation Programme.
“The launch of the Sustainability Optimisation programme is timely, given the increasing pressure on
businesses to lower not only costs, but their environmental impact. The workplace is changing, driven
by powerful trends – new technologies, changing demographics, globalisation and other economic
developments – and Ricoh is committed to helping its customers manage these challenges.
Sustainability Optimisation is just one way we’re helping our customers be more efficient and
sustainable.”
Yuji Koyanagi, Vice President Group Marketing, Ricoh Europe
The Sales Teams were already familiar with the TCO approach; by adding sustainability components,
focusing on reducing energy & paper consumption, Ricoh were able to enhance this offering.
Training for the Sales Team was developed and delivered by the Ricoh Academy in 2009, using the
knowledge and expertise from the Environmental Management Office.
To support the enhanced Sales approach, Ricoh developed a remote monitoring tool that enables
tracking data relating to actual paper consumption and energy use per device, and resulting CO2
emissions. The customer has a real-time access to the information on device fleet performance and
users printing behaviour, enabling them to effectively manage the performance. End-user training
helps further reduce carbon emissions and ensure the targeted benefits are achieved.
In 2010, British Standards Institution (BSI) accredited the Sustainability Optimisation approach,
ensuring the robustness, repeatability and accuracy of the process.
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One of the common misconceptions is that being “environmentally friendly” costs more money.
With the Sustainability Optimisation Programme, Ricoh proves to their customers that by improving
their efficiency, they can reduce costs AND reduce their environmental impact.
Ricoh have developed a number of web-based
tools to help promote awareness of
sustainability issues within the office
environment. The “Green Office” is an
interactive site that shows the typical savings
that can be achieved by improving efficiency in
the office. It explains the issues in simple terms
and offers practical solutions to address them,
such as improving the technology used and by
training people on how to use them more
effectively.
A simple web-based assessment tool is available
for customers to do a quick assessment of their
current office and get an idea of the potential
savings they could make, both in terms of costs
and environmental impact.
How can you advertise in a sustainable way?
Ricoh has commissioned an number of “Zero-
emission” billboards, designed to run
completely on the renewable energy that they
generate. One example of this is featured on
the cover of this case study; the solar powered
billboard in New York’s Times Square. If the
billboard has not generated sufficient energy
through the solar panels and wind turbines, it
turns off.
The approach is seen as key to Ricoh’s overall strategy of moving from the market leader in office
printing devices to a trusted solutions provider. The programme which was developed and piloted in
Europe is now being implemented globally.
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The programme has proved to be very popular with their customers. In the first 2 years of the
programme, almost 3,000 green audits have been completed by Ricoh sales staff. The average cost
reduction achieved for customers was 25%. The average CO2 reduction achieved was 35%.
In addition to the savings generated for customers, the Sustainability Optimisation Programme has
generated around €100 million revenue for Ricoh in the same period. The programme has helped
embed a culture of sustainability throughout Ricoh, something that is reflected both in their
Employee Engagement results and the feedback from their customers. Progress against the overall
sustainability objectives is reported annually in the Sustainability Report, which is available to
download from the website and proactively communicated with key customers.
Ricoh’s Sustainability Optimisiation Programme demonstrates that, with a little creativity and
innovation, you can put sustainability at the heart of your business model.
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EFQM would like to thank the team at Ricoh Europe for their willingness to share their Good
Practice, knowledge and experience.
We would specifically like to thank:
Zhanna Serdyukova, Environmental Sustainability Consultant
Oscar Mellegers, Senior Environmental Sustainability Consultant
Linda Van Der Graaf, Senior Environmental Sustainability Consultant
Olivier Vriesendorp, Marketing Director
Website: www.ricoh-europe.com/reduce2grow
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.efqm.org
Email: [email protected]
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EFQM is a membership organisation. We rely on input, ideas and suggestions from you to create a
vibrant community. Without the contributions of our members, the network would not work. These
are some of the ways you can contribute:
We created The EFQM Network for Sustainable Excellence to facilitate a dialogue between our
peers and the wider community. The group is open to anyone with an interest in this area. Over
1800 individuals have already joined our group and shared their experiences. If you’ve got a
question, it’s a great place to start.
Organisations can join the EFQM member community and enjoy some exclusive benefits such as
access to free assessment and improvement tools, participation to events, themed webinars and
good practice visits. To learn more about our member community, feel free to contact us or to join
one of the free introduction meetings at our offices in Brussels.
As a member of EFQM, you will enjoy the following exclusive benefits:
Expert advice and support for your organisation’s journey towards excellence.
Access to the EFQM Knowledge Base is a database containing a number of free to download
assessment, management and improvement tools; as well as Good Practices identified from
the last 3 years of the EFQM Excellence Awards.
Members receive a discount of 20% on EFQM Products & Services, including Training,
Publications and Recognition.
There are themed events and webinars throughout the year, with Good Practices and new
tools being shared and explained by EFQM and member organisations.
For more information, please e-mail [email protected]
EFQM Case Studies
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Avenue des Olympiades 2 5th Floor B-1140 Brussels – Belgium Tel : +32 2 775 3511 Fax : +32 2 775 3535 Email : [email protected] http://www.efqm.org
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