One of the most compelling modern issues in business is sustainability. While most executives voice support for making their company’s operations greener, they may struggle to put a plan in place that realizes their sustainability goals. Green Lean Six Sigma has emerged as a solution to this challenge.
Much like Lean Six Sigma principles apply to solving challenges in everything from insurance to healthcare, it also can address how to make any organization’s operations more environmentally friendly.
That’s a huge plus in a world where sustainable operations have become a major part of every corporation’s strategic vision, spurred by the frequency of climate change-related events. They include a drought in the western United States that is the worst in 1,200 years, burning rainforests in the Amazon, flooding in cities around the world, rising global temperatures and a reduction in crop yields.
An Eco-Friendly Approach
As companies search for ways to make consistent contributions to an improved global environment, Green Lean Six Sigma offers possible paths to follow. With its focus on eliminating waste and a culture of continuous improvement, Lean Six Sigma provides a sound foundation to build a successful sustainability strategy.
Much of the research in this area has happened in just the past few years. In a paper on Green Lean Six Sigma, professors at the School of Mechanical Engineering at Lovely Professional University in India name Green Lean Six Sigma as “an eco-friendly approach that mitigates carbon footprints and produces high specifications products.” Those specifications make products more Earth-friendly.
The strategies, techniques and tools of both Lean and Six Sigma focus on waste reduction and more effective use of resources, making them appropriate for use to meet environmental challenges. Certainly, officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency think so. They’ve devoted an entire section of the agency’s site to the use of Lean Six Sigma for sustainability at 3M.
What Can Green Lean Six Sigma Accomplish
A paper by researchers from Massey University in New Zealand and Bogazici University in Turkey found that application of Green Lean Six Sigma accomplishes a wide variety of environment goals, including waste minimization, emission reduction, and resource conservation. They wrote that these applications could work in many different industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, education and the service industry.
For any business, a green approach involves first measuring and evaluating environmental wastes produced by operational processes or company products, and then putting controls in place to reduce or eliminate those wastes.
By adopting the Lean Six Sigma approach, organizations already reap benefits related to environmental issues. Lean focuses on elimination of waste in any type of process, with a focus on stopping any non-value-added processes, improving process flows and creating value for customers. Six Sigma focuses on eliminating process variation that can lead to process errors and defective products.
Ola Chowning, a partner with global technology research and advisory firm ISG, told Information Week that the growing interest in Green Lean Six Sigma is the result of the methodology’s approach. “With its focus on measurement and outcomes,” she said, “it seems a fine fit for sustainability and green initiatives.”
A Framework For Green Lean Six Sigma
Because the idea of a Green Lean Six Sigma approach is relatively new, frameworks are under development. The study led by New Zealand and Turkish researchers suggested that a key to success is adding any process step that harms the environment to the list of non-value-added activities designated for elimination (non-valued added processes are one of the Eight Wastes of Lean).
This could include activities such as unnecessary movement of raw materials, power consumption, gaseous emissions, and misuse of resources. Another recent paper in the International Journal of Sustainable Engineering from researchers in India and the United Kingdom, outlines five steps to create a framework for Green Lean Six Sigma.
- Selection of suitable sustainability-centered project
- Mapping the current state of the system
- Use Lean Six Sigma tools to determine the root causes of the environmental challenges (such as emissions, overuse of resources)
- Select and implement the best solution
- Sustain the solution and make it mistake-proof
They wrote that the framework provides an opportunity for manufacturers “to set up the best practices for defect minimization and mitigation of environmental impacts.”
