Lean Value Stream Manufacturing for Sustainability

Abstract

Most people are familiar with the old axiom “what gets evaluated and measured gets done”; the primary responsible people who measure in any organization are the finance and accounting department, which makes them have a powerful influence on organization strategy and decisions. Traditionally these fields have only tried to measure the one leg of the three legged sustainability stool (where economy, environment, and society are the three legs of the sustainability stool). In this paper, authors would like to introduce the concept of Lean Value Stream Manufacturing (LVSM) approach where the concept of lean manufacturing and value adding process is integrated. The value stream approach would be used to quickly identify and eliminate wastes that may well include water consumption, energy consumption, landfill avoidance, chemical consumption and much more.