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Lean and Environment Toolkit
Chapter 1: Introduction: Getting Started with Lean & Environment
CHAPTER CONTENTS
Purpose of This Toolkit
This Lean and Environment Toolkit offers practical strategies and techniques to Lean
implementers about how to improve Lean results—waste elimination,
quality enhancement, and delivery of value to customers—while achieving
environmental performance goals. The toolkit also provides tools to help
your organization get better environmental performance from Lean efforts
on the shop floor.
| Benefits of Coordinating Lean & Environment |
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The “Lean” methods
discussed in this Toolkit are organizational improvement methods
pioneered in the Toyota Production System. 
Lean production
and Lean manufacturing refer to a customer-focused business model and collection of methods that
focuses on the elimination of waste (non-value added activity) while delivering
quality products on time and at a low cost. The toolkit assumes that you
are familiar with Lean methods and their implementation. For those who want
to learn more about Lean methods discussed in the toolkit, see Appendix
A.
Key Questions Addressed by the Toolkit
Lean works well when it focuses on identifying and eliminating non-value added activity. Environmental improvement efforts that have potential to distract Lean efforts from this prime focus will likely not get much traction. By contrast, this toolkit contains strategies and techniques that can seamlessly enable Lean practitioners to easily identify environmental wastes and improvement opportunities alongside the myriad other wastes and improvement opportunities uncovered by Lean. To accomplish this, the toolkit aims to answer the following questions:
What is environmental waste? Environmental waste is an unnecessary
or excess use of resources or a substance released to the air,
water, or land that could harm human health or the environment. Environmental
wastes can occur when companies use resources to provide products or services
to customers, and/or when customers use and dispose of products. Chapter
2 defines and provides examples of environmental waste.
Why should I identify environmental waste in my processes? Environmental wastes do not add value to the customer. Environmental wastes can also directly affect production flow, time, quality, and cost—making them ripe targets for Lean initiatives. In many cases, the costs associated with pollution and wasted energy, water, and raw materials can be significant. This chapter (Chapter 1) discusses the business case for eliminating environmental waste.
How will I know when I see environmental waste? Some environmental wastes are easy to see. Containers of solid and hazardous waste are visual indications of environmental waste. Health and environmental risks posed by certain chemicals or materials can be more difficult to see, although they can represent costly non-value added aspects of a process or product. Chapter 2 provides examples of environmental wastes and describes organizational strategies that will make it easier to know when you see them.
Where should I look for environmental wastes? Environmental wastes can be found in almost any process. Processes requiring environmental permits—such as painting, metal finishing, and hazardous waste management processes—are often a good place to look for environmental improvement opportunities. If your organization has an environmental management system (EMS), your EHS personnel may have already identified key environmental impacts associated with each of the organization’s processes. Chapter 3 discusses how value stream mapping (VSM) tools and techniques can be used to help Lean practitioners see environmental wastes in processes. Chapter 4 discusses how to identify and address environmental wastes during kaizen rapid improvement events.
How do I measure the environmental impacts of a process? Measurement of key environmental wastes associated with a process can pinpoint those wastes that are most important to track over time. For example, chemical use and hazardous waste generation may be important to measure for one process, while water use may be most important to measure for another process. Chapter 3 discusses techniques for integrating environmental metrics into value stream maps. Appendix B includes information on environmental metrics that are often used by companies and facilities.
Where can I find environmentally preferable alternatives to my current process? EHS professionals in your organization may have ideas and information regarding environmentally preferable processes, equipment, and materials. In addition, numerous organizations, including EPA, have developed technical assistance resources and programs to assist organizations to improve the environmental and operational performance of processes. Chapter 4 discusses several useful resources and technical assistance networks. There are also Pollution Prevention Resources in Appendix D.
Why Use This Toolkit
Explicit
consideration of environmental goals and opportunities during
Lean implementation can create significant value for an organization—helping
to deliver quality products and services that customers want,
when they want them. Research sponsored by EPA and others shows that environmental performance
benefits typically ride the coattails of Lean efforts, yet these efforts
may overlook other opportunities to reduce wastes and non-value added activity.
Adding environmental considerations to Lean efforts can increase value, accelerate
Lean implementation, decrease material costs, and reduce liability
and the risk of compliance violations.
| Business Case for Integrating Lean & Environment |
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Below are three key reasons why business leaders, Lean practitioners, and environmental, health, and safety (EHS) managers have pursued efforts to coordinate Lean and environmental management activities.
1. Learn to See Hidden Environmental Waste and Hazards
Learning to see and eliminate waste is a cornerstone of Lean initiatives. There is one type of waste, however, that often goes unaddressed (or under addressed) by Lean initiatives—environmental waste. When grouped together, environmental wastes can result in huge costs to business. These costs include raw material and disposal costs, as well as costs for compliance management activities and pollution control equipment.
Lean’s focus on eliminating non-value added activity is excellent at driving down the volume of material, water, energy, chemical usage, and wastes, producing important competitiveness and environmental benefits. The environmental risk and full lifecycle impacts that materials and chemicals pose to human health and the environment, however, are rarely considered during Lean implementation. Learning to see environmental wastes during Lean efforts can open significant business improvement opportunities, further strengthen Lean results, and improve environmental performance.
Environmental wastes are
often a sign of inefficient production, and they frequently indicate
opportunities for saving cost and time. The chemicals and hazardous materials
used in a process often demand costly support activities, such as regulatory
compliance management and reporting activities, use of personal protective
equipment, and the investment, operation, and maintenance of pollution control
equipment. These activities do not add value to the customer, and they can
create unnecessary risks to worker health and safety.
Chemical substitution, process changes, and other strategies can reduce the need for such non-value added activities. For these reasons, learning to see and eliminate environmental wastes can greatly improve the time, quality, and cost results of Lean initiatives.
2. Enhance the Effectiveness of Lean Implementation
Explicit coordination of Lean and environmental initiatives can lead to compelling organizational andenvironmental improvement results. For example, Lean thinking can be applied to various environmental management processes, such as chemical and waste management. Companies have found that as much as 40 percent of their chemical supplies weregoing unused and directly becoming hazardous waste as they expired on the shelf or became obsolete. Using Lean principles to improve chemical and waste management processes can have big pay-offs for environmental performance and bottom-line results.
CASE STUDY: LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION Lockheed Martin Corporation, the world’s largest defense contractor, has been implementing Lean techniques corporate-wide since the late 1990s. Lockheed Martin’s Manassas plant conducted improvement events to apply Lean thinking to its chemical and waste management activities because a significant amount of warehoused chemicals were going directly to the hazardous waste stream without ever being used, expired on-shelf, or were no longer used for research or production. Lockheed Martin sought to move toward a just-in-time chemical management system, with chemicals delivered three times a week in “right-sized” containers to meet real-time demand. The Lean events reduced chemical inventories, freed capital tied up in inventory, increased chemical inventory turns and chemical utilization rates, and eliminated the chemical warehouse and chemicals expiring on the shelf. |
Proactive Lean and environment coordination can also
anticipate and ease environmental constraints to leaning “monument” processes,
thereby enabling large performance gains. Monuments are production processes or process steps that have large equipment and/or other
physical or environmental regulatory constraints that make them very difficult
or costly to move, which can complicate Lean efforts. Typical monuments include
painting and metal finishing processes.
Making changes to monument processes can require approval or permits from environmental regulatory agencies, as well as special work practices or control measures, all of which can be difficult to accomplish within rapid timeframes. EHS personnel can help to identify environmentally friendly process alternatives, and ensure that process changes can be made as quickly as possible.
CASE STUDY: APOLLO HARDWOODS Apollo Hardwoods used Lean methods to manufacture custom “cut-to-size” cherry plywood for cabinetry. The company’s founders and investors discovered that a “right-sized” veneering process would require less expensive equipment, use a wider variety of logs, and produce less wood scrap, without compromising product quality. The company sought to find a veneering process that would also address product quality, flow time, and cost. Since such a process did not exist, Apollo Hardwoods recruited a team to develop a Lean veneer slicing and drying process and associated equipment using the pre-production planning (3P) method. The Lean veneer manufacturing process incorporated one-piece flow cells that eliminated the piling of inventory in between steps. The “right-sized” equipment requires less capital than conventional machinery (or “monuments”), uses less energy, fits into small production cells, and allows Apollo Hardwoods to fabricate the same amount of finished product using fewer logs and generating less wood scrap. |
3. Deliver What Customers and Employees Want
Explicit consideration of environmental waste in Lean initiatives can also improve the work environment for employees. Similar to ergonomic concerns, eliminating environmental hazards can reduce potential worker exposure to toxic substances and create a clean, safe workplace.
| To Consider |
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In addition, employees want to do the right thing. When employees take pride in their work because they believe it has broader benefits to their community and the world, there can be a substantial positive effect on organizational morale. This can empower employees and further enhance productivity.
How to Use This Toolkit
This section describes the structure and organization of the Lean and Environment Toolkit, as well as icons that are used to help you navigate the information easily. The toolkit is designed so that you can work through the full content in an organized way or skip to specific methods that are of most interest.
Toolkit Structure and Chapters
The toolkit is structured in chapters, each focusing on strategies, tools, and techniques to enhance the success of Lean initiatives while improving environmental performance. Chapters 2–5 focus on core Lean methods and how-to strategies for leveraging environmental considerations to enhance Lean results. The diagram below illustrates how these chapters focus on coordinating Lean and environmental activities on different organizational levels—the value stream level, the process level, and the work area level. Chapter 6 provides summary points and guidance to assist you in putting the strategies and techniques discussed in the toolkit to work in your organization.
Figure 1: Diagram of Toolkit Components
Toolkit Format and Icons
As you may have noticed, the toolkit uses icons in the page margins to help you find and follow important information in each chapter.
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Each chapter also includes one or more “To Consider” text boxes that contain questions to help you consider how the information relates to your organization.
Conclusion
Summary
This toolkit provides practical strategies, tools, and techniques for incorporating environmental considerations into already existing Lean initiatives in an effort to improve Lean results and add value to your organization.
There are three key reasons why business leaders, Lean practitioners, and EHS managers pursue efforts to coordinate Lean and environmental management activities.
- Learning to see and eliminate hidden environmental wastes during Lean implementation can lead to more efficient production by improving the time, quality, and cost results of Lean initiatives. Chemical substitution, process changes, and other strategies can reduce the need for non-value added activities—such as regulatory compliance management and investment in pollution control equipment—that might otherwise be overlooked by Lean alone.
- Coordination of Lean and environmental management can facilitate more process improvement and make it easier to apply Lean to processes with environmental regulatory constraints. EHS personnel can assist Lean implementation by anticipating and addressing environmental constraints such as the need to obtain permits, and by identifying environmentally friendly process alternatives.
- A significant competitive advantage can be attained by providing customers with products and services with less environmental impacts, and by improving the work environment for employees.