Sustainability – A View from the C-Suite
By Kelly Scanlon, IPC lead sustainability strategist
Key Summary
• Sustainability has become a top priority for executives across electronics and manufacturing sectors.
• Leaders at Northrop Grumman and TTM Technologies highlight the challenge of not what to do, but how to execute sustainability goals.
• Key focus areas include energy use, water metrics, chemical reporting, workforce readiness, and regulatory compliance.
• Supplier expectations and customer demands are driving companies to track and disclose more sustainability data.
• Executive insights offer a roadmap for engineers and manufacturing teams to adopt practical sustainability strategies.
Many company executives, whether in the electronics industry or other manufacturing industry sectors, have sustainability at the top of their minds and agendas. Defining what it means for their company to be sustainable and setting out and achieving goals related to sustainability has become a critical part of CEO leadership actions.
Recently, John Mitchell, IPC’s President and CEO, asked executives Greg Maxwell, Northrop Grumman Corporation, and Tom Edman, TTM Technologies, about how they prioritize sustainability in their companies. In a series of videos, we learn about their challenges—and solutions—for issues such as reporting and disclosure of energy, water, and chemical data, workforce development and retention, regulatory obligations, supplier demands, and customer needs. It’s not a quest for what to do but how to do it.
These include evaluating the energy needs of their facilities, ensuring workers are keeping up with regulatory obligations, and meeting their customers’ needs while also meeting their own needs.
Hearing from executive decision makers about their successes, their challenges, their ambitions, and their worries provides all of us – including engineers and manufacturing line workers – with a path forward and a set of best practices that we can learn from so that we can all build electronics better.
VIDEO LINKS:
- Electronics Industry Leaders Exchange Strategies for Integrating Sustainability into Business Plans
- What Challenges Does Sustainability Bring to Your Company/Industry? (Panel Discussion)
- What Challenges Does Sustainability Bring to your Company/Industry -- Part 2 (Panel Discussion)
- How Can Customers & Suppliers Work Together to Address Sustainability Challenges? (Panel Discussion)
- What Keeps Our Industry from Moving Faster on Sustainability Goals/Objectives? (Panel Discussion)
- How is IPC Working with Industry to Make Sustainability Initiatives Successful?
IPC wants to help you broadcast your best practices and tell your stories about how you got to where you are today. Please let us know what you think about the videos in the comment section.
Because companies face growing expectations from regulators, customers, and suppliers to measure and improve environmental and operational performance.
They point to reporting energy, water, and chemical data, managing workforce readiness, and meeting rising regulatory obligations.
By improving data collection, increasing transparency, and aligning internal practices with customer expectations for responsible manufacturing.
It provides real examples of what works, what is difficult, and how teams across the company can support sustainability goals.
They offer best practices that can guide day to day decisions, helping teams contribute to long term sustainability performance.