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 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 22 Mar 2019 |
Bibliographical note
© 2019, The Author(s).Funding Information:
Nishikant Mishra is a Professor in Operations and Supply Chain Management at Hull University Business School, University of Hull. Prior to that he was Senior Lecturer in Operations & Supply Chain Management and Director of Post Graduate Research at Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, Norwich. He worked as a Senior Lecturer and Director of Research at School of Management & Business, Aberystwyth University. He has worked on numerous consultancy projects funded by British Council, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), British Academy (BA), Innovate U.K., Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Higher Education Academy (HEA) and Meat Promotion Wales (HCC). His research articles have been published in various renowned journals of Operations Research and Operations & Supply chain Management.
Funding Information:
Sonal Choudhary is a Lecturer in Sustainable Management at the management school, University of Sheffield. She holds a PhD in Environmental Sustainability from the University of Sheffield and has double masters: MSc. in GIS & Environmental Modelling from University of Hull and MSc. in Environmental Biology with Gold medal from University of Delhi. She is a certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt. Her main research interests are in the areas of resource efficiency, socio-environmental risks and impact, inefficiency/wastes identification and sustainability performance measurement. She has worked on numerous projects funded by European Commission (FP7), Marie Curie (ITN), British Academy, Newton Fund, Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Keywords
- Carbon footprint
- green manufacturing
- green waste
- Lean manufacturing
- lean waste
- sustainability performance