Green is the New Lean?
Marketing message experts, driven by global warming fever, are more often linking green with lean. The Association for Operations Management’s annual conference brochure (no link but check out www.apics.org) indicates that “green is the new lean”. It can be if you use lean approaches, concepts and culture change.
Value stream mapping, a lean analysis approach, is used to link wasteful production practices to reduced energy use. Consulting firms and companies have put together excellent lean programs focused on reducing waste which includes energy. But to say that all of “green” is the new lean is to attempt to piggyback an ill-defined concept onto a tried and true approach. It’s probably more accurate to say that lean concepts can be tenuously linked to some green efforts.
How do you view lean? Is green the new lean? In what way?
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4 opinions for Green is the New Lean?
gina
Jun 12, 2008 at 8:44 am
I absolutely think that green is the new lean. It’s funny that you mention this because my employer has called on all 6000 employees to submit one idea on how they can save money and the only things that I can think of seem to be related to green initiatives.
If you work in an organization that has been running (or trying to) lean for a while then chances are you’ve reached a lean plateau. To squeeze out any more lean-ness (is that a word?) we’ve got to look outside the lean norm to things like green iniatives. Great post, Bob!
Bob Turek
Jun 12, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Hi Gina- thanks for commenting. Lean is an interesting concept- to me it is setting up an environment and culture that fosters continual improvement. There is no end and there are always “breakthroughs” that can make a big difference. True, you tend to “run out” but then a breakthrough occurs. Toyota is the best example of that- they’ve got it right. Very few US companies have made the complete culture change, although many claim to be lean experts. I’m currently researching “lean” culture in the food industry- it’s a fascinating area. I’m really interested in your lean experience- do you have an example or two of “hitting the wall” in an area? Also, any examples of breakthroughs?
Thanks.
gina
Jun 12, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Hi Bob - I don’t have any examples that would fit into the comment section of a blog but I could bore you with an abstract I wrote on the subject ;)
Sure it’s more about setting up an environement anc culture. I guess I’m referring more to lean, the verb. In my organization we’ve picked apart almost every single process and through process improvement I believe we are running about as lean as we can until our external environment changes.
Lean in the food industry - that sounds awesome!
Bob Turek
Jun 12, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Gina- it is awesome- my experience with lean is in manufacturing companies - food is definitely different in terms of more reliance on equipment, batches of stuff and high variability throughout the process. A lot of office processes are very predictable in comparison- the idea there is standardizing and eliminating wasteful action and motion. Fun stuff!
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