Lean manufacturing is about companies embracing change to reduce waste in producing a product or service. It engages and empowers employees to come up with and implement ideas requiring continuous improvement. Making this change in culture, while necessary for any company to survive the next 50 years is incredibly difficult. Companies who adopt “Lean and Green Manufacturing” are embracing the environment at the same time embracing change itself, and starting down a path towards more efficient processes, less waste of all kinds, empowered employees, continual innovation, etc. Going Green can be a tremendous motivator for change. Going Lean can become much easier if you connect it to going Green too. Many large, multinational companies are aware of impending overseas environmental regulations and growing consumer demand for a new generation of environmentally friendly products. The Europeans have implemented take-back laws for autos, electronics and appliances. "Take-back" laws or “Producer Responsibility" require companies who make or import items to be involved in the "end-of-life" phase of their products’ life cycles. In almost all cases, there is a requirement to meet minimal recycling or re-use rates. Some companies have embraced the notion that GREEN products and production techniques are a competitive weapon, and will become one of industry’s greatest strategic challenges, not only from an engineering perspective, but from a business and marketing perspective as well. Other companies continue to complain about environmental regulations and their inability to meet the more stringent requirements.
Most U.S. automobile companies are complaining about meeting new clean air emissions limits, yet Honda and Toyota, have developed and produce new engines to exceed requirements. For these companies, it is part of their business strategy.
The world’s population is projected to increase by a factor of two over the next 50 years. Looking at it from a global perspective with the population growth, total emissions, and rate of rainforest depletion, U.S. manufacturers must drop their skepticism of the green movement and begin to address the deleterious impact their products and manufacturing processes have on the environment. No other sector of the economy comes close to the manufacturing in generating vast volumes of waste.
Environmental waste is just as bad as any other waste in manufacturing. Lean manufacturing activities are renowned for being focused on increasing production efficiency, but environmental wastes, such as excess energy and water use, and the costs involved with them need to become a big component of lean. If cost-reduction opportunities from environmental wastes become overlooked then the true costs of production is not correctly accounted, and that is not Lean.
Companies such as GE and Toyota are at the forefront with green manufacturing. GE will invest more than $1 billion on cleaner technology research and development for 2007, and plans to invest $1.5 billion annually on “ECOMAGINATION” R&D by 2010. Toyota plans to increase the sustainability and environment friendly production operations. This initiative will emphasize the role of nature in creating production sites. These “sustainable plant” activities implemented at the Toyota Tsutsumi Plant, makes the Prius hybrid vehicle factory well positioned as a “model sustainable plant.” LEAN and GREEN seems to be the new motto!!
Leanovations, a Connecticut based Lean Consulting Company with extensive international experience, emerged as a new innovative consultant company that goes beyond the traditional lean operational approach. Focusing on innovative Lean and Green Manufacturing approaches differentiates Leanovations from other lean consultant groups. To Learn more about Leanovations LLC, and Lean and Green Manufacturing please go to www.leanovations.com !
