This research had the goal of identifying the environmental requirements incorporated in furniture clusters and the internal and external factors for the use of those requirements in the product development process. Eighteen micro and small companies from the furniture hub of Itatiba (a city in the Brazilian state of São Paulo) were analyzed according to their adopting environmental requirements in the products life cycle as well as in the PDP (product development process) of custom orders. The data were collected through partly open interviews and on site visitations, by analyzing each activity in the PDP and the environmental requirements linked to them, identifying the people responsible for each activity and, in the end, identifying the factors that motivated the adoption of those requirements. The results show that economic factors still rule the way in which the companies respond to environmental issues, neither by adaption to the laws and regulations or by reducing the production costs. Moreover, the lack of capable professionals in the area of developing sustainable products contributes for making it more difficult to structure the sector.
life cycle; productive process; furniture industry
