Abstract
Competitive landscape, informed consumers and stringent regulations have forced many manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to focus on operational efficiency along with sustainability issues in recent years. While many manufacturing organisations have been taking lean initiatives for the past few years for operational excellence, an impulsive rush to adopt lean without a strategic deployment vision has led to scattered implementation of lean tools and projects without desired success. Many researchers and practitioners prescribe value stream mapping as a foundation for lean transformation initiatives; however, little empirical work is available on the symbiosis of lean and green paradigms to reap maximum benefits. This research, through a systematic methodology and a novel tool called Green Integrated Value Stream Mapping (GIVSM), integrates both paradigms in a case study on a U.K. packaging-manufacturing SME. Applying the GIVSM demonstrates that simultaneous deployment of lean and green paradigms have synergistic effect for improving both operational efficiency and environmental performance. In addition, continuous improvement framework with sustainable procurement is proposed to overcome the lean-green misalignments. This study also provides a guiding reference for practitioners to undertake similar improvement projects and identifies opportunities to expand this academic research on integrated lean-green approach into other industry sectors.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 353-368 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | Production Planning and Control |
Volume | 30 |
Issue number | 5-6 |
Early online date | 22 Mar 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 26 Apr 2019 |
Keywords
- Carbon footprint
- Lean manufacturing
- green manufacturing
- green waste
- lean waste
- sustainability performance
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computer Science Applications
- Strategy and Management
- Management Science and Operations Research
- Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering