"Lean Manufacturing and the Environment"
Target (available at www.ame.org)
Sixth Issue 2006, pp. 13-18
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has become very interested in the practices of lean manufacturing. In fact, "environmental waste" has now been added as the 8th Deadly Waste for manufacturers.
Lean manufacturing caught the eye of the EPA when case studies started to demonstrate that Lean Activities intended to increase production efficiency were also attaining very significant reductions in environmental waste. In 2003, the EPA won a Shingo Prize for a report documenting these case studies. The report can be downloaded at www.epa.gov/lean/leanreport.pdf (524KB PDF).
Members of the EPA began participating in actual AME-sponsored kaizen events held by manufacturers. The EPA has promoted the concept of "pollution prevention" for a number of years. Most pollution prevention strategies save money over dealing with environmental waste at the end of production. The EPA is now actively encouraging manufacturers to include Environmental Health & Safety (EHS) personnel in Lean activities. The perspectives of these individuals provide added insights into environmental cost savings that might not have been considered otherwise.
The EPA has also created a publication called "The Lean and Environment Toolkit". Much of the information provided involves traditional lean tools, but there are also additional aspects that more fully incorporate the environmental perspective. This toolkit can be downloaded at www.epa.gov/lean/toolkit/lean_environment_toolkit2.pdf (1.08MB PDF).
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