The company is the world's best known brand in its sector, but it wanted to improve its environmental performance and demonstrate its credentials as its markets become increasingly sensitive to sustainability issues. Oxford Brookes University was therefore delighted to be able to work with Stannah on a Knowledge Transfer Partnership to improve its care for the environment, with a project that also made sound commercial sense.
Stannah's engineering director Steve Leathley initially sought out Oxford Brookes for its expertise in sustainable vehicles, figuring that the same techniques could be applied in Stannah’s own design and manufacture. Two years on, with a successful KTP behind him, Steve's reasoning is fully vindicated, and the company has reduced costs while developing a demonstrably more eco-friendly product.
Dr Pat Winfield of the university’s Department of Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mathematical Sciences led the academic input. She said later ‘I found the experience of the KTP very rewarding … The partnership was about a three-way increase in knowledge and team work’.
Key to the project was a Life Cycle Analysis of a typical Stannah product, in which the materials and processes involved in making a stairlift, from major components down to fittings and fastenings, were rigorously scrutinised. The lifetime running costs were then factored in, as were the opportunities for dismantling and recycling at the end of its useful life.
The results showed where significant energy savings could be made and where waste could be reduced, and led to new eco-design guidelines for the company's engineers. New products will be environmentally aware and can be benchmarked against old ones. Marketing literature will benefit from 'carbon labelling', and the work also highlighted the possibility of new business models based on remanufacture and recycling of components. Overall, the project enabled Stannah to set the industry standard in sustainability.
KTP Associate Charlie Symonds at Stannah Stairlifts
Charlie Symonds was a young engineering graduate with a passion for sustainability who was recruited to lead the project as KTP Associate. Through a combination of patient analysis and skilful communication, he was able not only to reduce the company’s carbon footprint, but also to change mindsets within the company and along their supply chain.
Employed and supervised by Oxford Brookes, Charlie was permanently taken on by Stannah when the KTP completed, with the role of Business Sustainability Manager. He began a PhD based on the project work, which the company is now continuing to fund.
During the project he was announced as runner-up for Graduate of the Year by the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment, for ‘single-handedly providing his company with a framework for its sustainability strategy for the next five years’.