It can be said that lean is green. The obvious benefits of green and lean are energy savings, productivity savings, and savings from improved utilization of materials. They can also lead to innovations that involve creation of new products out of waste materials.
The keys to unlocking value through implementing sustainability initiatives require positioning through: identifying marketplace trends that reward innovation toward sustainability; optimizing the linkage between sustainability, environmental and business objectives; creating a systematic process and internal champions that can drive the system from the inside out; establishing a manageable performance measurement system that demonstrates ‘triple bottom line’ results; and building assurance systems for compliance and credible and transparent public disclosure.
There is an increasing emphasis of supply chain management in creating the proper ingredients of a successful business strategy. The concept of a Green Supply Chain is gaining interest among operations practitioners as a sustainable and profitable undertaking. A Green Supply Chain can be thought of as a supply chain that has integrated environmental thinking into core operations from material sourcing through product design, manufacturing, distribution, delivery, and end-of-life recycling.
An excerpt of the latest book by one of the author’s of Green to Gold, Andrew Wilson, is available for free download. The excerpt, titled “Green Cost Cutting: Five Ways to Get Lean Now”, includes the introduction of the book and the core chapter on getting lean. It offers an insightful preview of the full book, “Green Recovery: Get Lean, Get Smart, and Emerge from the Downturn on Top”, which lays out ways to get lean quickly, which can help companies survive today and preserve capital to invest in people and innovation and presents a plan that can prepare companies to emerge from the downturn in a much better competitive position.
