1 Introduction

One of the most promising management tools available for wooden furniture to address environmental concerns is the ISO 14001, environmental management system (Kitazawa and Sarkis 2000). The standard enables companies to be proactive towards environmental management and has significant influences on the manufacturing and management practices (Gonzales-Benito and Gonzales-Benito 2005). Although, Malaysia is a large producer and exporter of wooden furniture, the number of ISO 14001 certified wooden furniture manufacturers remain small (Ratnasingam 2006, Ratnasingam et al. 2008). Therefore, a study was undertaken to evaluate the deterrents to the adoption of the ISO 14001 environmental management system, and also analyze the transformation in production processes that had taken place among the certified companies in the Malaysian wooden furniture industry. The findings of this study will be useful, as they provide information to what extent the use of ISO 14001 will bring out real environmental transformation of the furniture manufacturing enterprises.

2 Methods

A questionnaire-based survey of 60 medium-sized (i. e., with an average workforce of 100) wooden furniture manufacturers in Malaysia were carried out in 2008. The samples including 30 ISO 14001 certified-companies were interviewed using a structured questionnaire, which had four parts. Part I determined the factors that deterred the adoption of the ISO 14001 system among non-certified companies. Part II evaluated the degree of agreement with the implementation of ten environmental-friendly operational practices among certified-companies, based on a six-point Likert scale rating. Principal component analysis of the ten operational practices was performed and two factors, namely the cultural manufacturing factor and technical manufacturing factor, with eigen-values higher than 1.0 which explained 60.3% of the variance were identified. Part III evaluated the degree of implementation of ten environmental practices among the certified companies, using a six-point Likert scale rating. These environmental practices were selected from previous studies by Handfield et al. (1997) and Bovea and Vidal (2004), and also from consultations with industrial experts. Principal component analysis of these practices were done and three factors, namely product design, logistic/support processes and environmental-friendly production processes, with eigen-values higher than 1.0, which explained 67.5% of the variance, were obtained. Part IV determined the average values of processing wastage, rejection/rework rate, downtime loss and other operational inefficiencies related to the furniture manufacturing processes among certified and non-certified companies.

3 Results

The results of the study are presented in three parts.

1. Factors deterring wooden furniture manufacturers from adopting ISO 14001

The factors that deterred the implementation of the ISO 14001 among wooden furniture manufacturers in Malaysia were: (i) high cost involved, (ii) lack of customer demand, (iii) no government regulation, (iv) lack of government incentives and lack of trained personnel to implement and maintain the system.

2. Adoption of Advanced Manufacturing Practices among ISO 14001 Certified Wooden Furniture Manufacturers

Certified wooden furniture manufacturers showed high “cultural manufacturing factor” and “technical manufacturing factor” (Table 1), suggesting that these companies paid greater attention to employee training and were focused on continuous improvement of manufacturing practices, as reported previously by Morrow and Rondinelli (2002).

Table 1 Tabelle 1 Principal component analysis of advanced manufacturing practices among ISO 14001 certified wooden furniture manufacturersHauptkomponentenanalyse der fortschrittlichen Fertigungspraktiken unter den ISO 14001 zertifizierten Holzmöbelherstellern
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3. Adoption of Environmental Management Practices among ISO 14001 Certified Wooden Furniture Manufacturers

Certified wooden furniture manufacturers were proactive towards undertaking environmental management practices in terms of: (i) product design which focused on producing “green/environmental-friendly products”, (ii) logistics/support processes which emphasized on reducing, reusing, and recycling concepts, and (iii) production processes which employed high-technology processes to reduce waste (Table 2). As a result, certified wooden furniture manufacturers were more cost-effective compared to their non-certified counterparts due to higher processing yield and lower waste, rejections as well as quality problems.

Table 2 Tabelle 2 Principal component analysis of environmental management practices among ISO 14001 certified wooden furniture manufacturersHauptkomponentenanalyse der Umweltmanagementpraktiken unter den ISO 14001 zertifizierten Holzmöbelherstellern
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4 Industrial Implications

The high cost related to the implementation of the ISO 14001 environment management system is the main reason that deters companies from adopting the standard. Nevertheless, certified-companies have reported positive cultural and technical manufacturing practices within their companies, which contributed towards cost-effective manufacturing of furniture. Contrary to common belief (Ratnasingam et al. 2008), adopting the environment management system paves the way for cost-effective wooden furniture manufacturing.