Abstract
To achieve sustainable development goals, it is essential to include the industrial system. There are sufficient numbers of tools and methods for measuring, assessing and improving the quality, productivity and efficiency of production, but the number of tools and methods for environmental initiatives on the shop floor is rather low. Incorporating environmental considerations into production and performance management systems still generally involves a top-down approach aggregated for an entire manufacturing plant. Green lean studies have been attempting to fill this gap to some extent, but the lack of detailed methodologies and practical tools for environmental manufacturing improvement on the shop floor is still evident. This paper reports on the application of four environmental assessment tools commonly used among Swedish manufacturing companies—Green Performance Map (GPM), Environmental Value Stream Mapping (EVSM), Waste Flow Mapping (WFM), and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)—to help practitioners and scholars to understand the different features of each tool, so in turn the right tool(s) can be selected according to particular questions and the industrial settings. Because there are some overlap and differences between the tools and a given tool may be more appropriate to a situation depending on the question posed, a combination of tools is suggested to embrace different types of data collection and analysis to include different environmental impacts for better prioritization and decision-making.
Highlights
Examining different sustainability definitions associated with industrial systems, such as sustainable manufacturing [1], sustainable production [2] or corporate sustainability [3], the importance of the manufacturing in sustainable development is perceived
Green lean studies have attempted to fill this gap with some tools for environmental initiatives on an operational level [6,7], but a lack of detailed methodologies and selection of practical tools when improving the environmental operations and sustainability performance of manufacturing remains
This paper reports on the application of four environmental assessment tools: Green Performance Map (GPM), Environmental Value Stream Map (EVSM), Waste Flow Mapping (WFM) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which are commonly used among Swedish manufacturing companies
Summary
Examining different sustainability definitions associated with industrial systems, such as sustainable manufacturing [1], sustainable production [2] or corporate sustainability [3], the importance of the manufacturing in sustainable development is perceived. These tools were applied at the same manufacturing process at the same company to solve a particular environmental (and operational) issue related to material efficiency and metal scrap generation of the vehicle frame production process. The objective of this paper is to help practitioners and scholars to understand the different features of each tool, so in turn (a) right tool(s) can be selected according to particular questions and the industrial settings i.e., variables such as the industrial activity, data accessibility, and staff engagement level and competence In this paper, these tools are compared to investigate their application and to enable a more precise understanding of the issues involved; the intention is not to select a superior tool. To fulfill the research objective, two main research questions were posed: (1) what features enables environmental improvements in manufacturing and how those fit into the selected tools? (2) how can these tools be applied in practice?
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