Greenhouse gas Emissions Deployment (GED): A novel Lean method for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions in industrial environment

Abstract

This paper presents a novel methodology specifically developed for measuring and reducing Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in production systems and logistics, named Greenhouse gas Emissions Deployment (GED). Thanks to its step-by-step procedure, it enables industries to systematically identify GHG emissions caused by organizational losses, ineffective usage losses, and design losses that need to be tracked and removed in order to operate in the most efficient and environmentally sustainable way. By customizing the Manufacturing Cost Deployment structured use of matrices, GED can detect losses, evaluate cause-effect relations, and support improvement prioritization. First, the losses affecting emissions are identified and their relationship is analysed to identify the underlying causes. Each causal loss is then evaluated according to the total amount of emissions it generates, which are also converted into appropriate economic terms. Finally, to select the correct improvement actions, a cost/benefit analysis is performed based on technical and economic factors that include both cash flows and the marketing impact on the end customer due to the commitment to sustainability. The proposed approach was applied to a major company operating in the plywood production sector in order to demonstrate its validity and effectiveness in production systems.