guilford, inc.
Case A
This case will explore another aspect of life cycle design: recycling.
Guilford is redesigning their manufacturing processes to accommodate McDonough's design protocols. Their goal is to shift from a material-centered philosophy to a service-cenetered philosophy. Instead of selling carpet material to end-users, who throw the carpet in a landfill several years later, Guilford hopes to lease the carpeting to them. In this way, the end-user receives the service of having carpeting without the material burden of owning it and disposing of it. At the end of its useful life, Guilford would reclaim the carpet, break its components down and resue them in new carpeting.
This case will take students into the details of setting up a system to handle such a long term program. Here, moral imagination requires them to decide how to make the system flexible enough to respond to short-term business demands, such as changing preferences in product perofrmance and aesthetics and market fluctuations and innovations, while remaining committed to a long-term, service-oriented, chemical recycling vision.