Value creation – sustainable all the way
In order to market furnishing solutions in a way that is not only profitable but also environmentally friendly and socially responsible, the right decisions – based on a sound sustainability strategy – must be made across the entire value chain. To this end, ASSMANN always takes account of new findings and adapts its processes accordingly.
Sustainable thinking shapes the office furniture manufacturer's product management, right from the earliest stages of development. Important aspects such as product service life and the recyclability and disposal of the individual components are taken into account in our initial ideas and concepts. These considerations have a significant impact on the raw materials we use, which can be categorised by weight into four categories: wood (63.9 per cent), steel (25.8 per cent), plastic (2.6 per cent) and other (7.7 per cent) such as electric motors and glass. While wood and chipboard make up by far the largest proportion of the finished product, steel is processed in smaller quantities. Plastic and other materials have a much smaller, but not insignificant, share. At our in- house production facility in Melle-Westerhausen, Germany, the materials and prefabricated furniture components are turned into desks and carcass furniture, all of which fulfils the requirements for Level 3 certification from the European Office Furniture Federation (FEMB).
Uniform standards
“As a full-range supplier, our portfolio includes products from various production sites. In addition to the core products manufactured in-house in Melle and our room-in-room systems from our UK subsidiary SPACEMANN Ltd, we also utilise external solution partners for products such as our range of upholstered furniture. We aim to define uniform standards for all our production processes with regard to sustainability criteria,” says Dirk Aßmann, Managing Director of ASSMANN, confirming the company’s consistent approach. “This impacts how we procure our raw materials, select our suppliers and run our production facilities,” he adds. When selecting new suppliers, ASSMANN focuses on environmentally and socially conscious corporate management, reliability, an acceptable price level and careful quality management. The exact requirements are formulated in our Supplier Code of Conduct, which lists ASSMANN’s prerequisites for suppliers and is subject to continuous review by means of supplier questionnaires and on-site audits of our 20 most important suppliers. The company also values regional partnerships and short transport routes. For example, 61 per cent of our suppliers come from within a 250-kilometre radius of our Melle headquarters. ASSMANN sources the remaining components from partners in the European Union, the United Kingdom, Turkey and China. Nevertheless, ASSMANN remains committed to keeping its operational distances short – around 95 per cent of the products we manufacture each year are sold in Germany, and the extensive range of services we offer under the title ASSMANN 4ROOMS are mainly provided to domestic customers as well. Our customer base consists primarily of specialist retail partners, but also includes end customers such as companies and public authorities, as well as private customers who come to us via ASSMANN Digital GmbH.
Partial reutilisation in the recycling loop
When an item of ASSMANN furniture finally reaches the end of its long service life, it is dismantled into its individual components by specialist companies. A large proportion of these components are then reprocessed and fed into the recycling cycle. ASSMANN is also currently working on expanding its activities in this area. As part of the "Circular.Office" research project, we want future office furniture to be specifically designed for recycling.