Shapeways achieved an interesting certification last week: ISO 14001.
Certifications are critically important for service bureaus because many potential customers are in regulated industries. These might include healthcare, military, or others.
If an organization in a regulated industry requires a certain part made, they, by law, must have it made in a certified facility. This means that the instant a service bureau acquires a certification, they suddenly have a whole bunch more potential customers. Certifications equal more business.
Many service bureaus therefore acquire the necessary certifications, typically for medical device work or operational efficiency through ISO 9000. But that’s not what ISO 14001 is all about.
Instead, ISO 14001 is all about environmental management. According to Wikipedia, the ISO 14000 family of standards is:
“The goal of these standards is to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations (processes, etc.) negatively affect the environment (i.e. cause adverse changes to air, water, or land); (b) comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other environmentally oriented requirements; and (c) continually improve in the above. The standards were designed to fit into an integrated management system.”
ISO 14001 in particular is all about having the organization define an effective “Environmental Management System”, a set of processes that the organization uses to keep things on track.
So how would this help Shapeways? Would it get them more medical customers, like a healthcare-related certification might?
I suspect Shapeways is betting on the future. There has been increasing interest in sustainability aspects for several years now, and that will only increase in the future. Recent events in the Middle East underline the criticality of energy, implying the need for efficient, sustainable methods of using energy.
All of those lines up nicely with ISO 14001. By implementing it, Shapeways will be able not only to attract customers interested in keeping their environmental footprint low, but they may also be saving some cash by doing so, since energy-efficient approaches would consume less energy.
And traditional energy is going to get more expensive in the future, at least the way things are going at the moment.
So far, there are only some companies that state the need for sustainability in their part requests, but that is likely to increase over time. Shapeways is positioning itself to capitalize on the growing future need for sustainability.
Via Shapeways
