Lean Engineering For Global Development

Anabela Carvalho Alves ·
Franz-Josef Kahlen · Shannon Flumerfelt ·

Anna Bella Siriban-Manalang Editors
Lean
Engineering
for Global
Development
Lean Engineering for Global Development
Anabela Carvalho Alves•
Franz-Josef Kahlen Shannon Flumerfelt

• •
Anna Bella Siriban-Manalang

Editors
Lean Engineering for Global

Development
123
Editors
Anabela Carvalho Alves Franz-Josef Kahlen
ALGORITMI R&D Center, Department of Kahlen Global Professional Solutions
Production and Systems Gronau, Germany
University of Minho, Campus of Azurém
Guimaraes, Portugal Anna Bella Siriban-Manalang
Resources, Environment and Economics
Shannon Flumerfelt Center for Studies
Oakland University Makati City, Philippines
Rochester, MI, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-13514-0 ISBN 978-3-030-13515-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13515-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019931823
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

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Preface
Lean Thinking for Sustainable Development
Currently, it is a fact that Lean Production (LP) is a popularized term. A Google

search by this term returned 183,000,000 results (0.45 s). Nevertheless, for the
scientific community what matters are the publications in the most famous and
indexed databases. Therefore, a simple search by the same term in all fields in the
Scopus database returned 11,860 documents and 2853 results as a topic from all
databases in the Web of Science. This could exponentially increase if other similar
designations such as Lean Manufacturing and/or Lean Management, were used.
Nevertheless, the authors point here is to show that Lean production comes to stay
and it is not a “fashion word” or “common sense” as some academy teachers seems
to continue in believing and refuse to credit Lean Production as a scientific subject.
Thus, the practitioner and academic community had been contributing for the
growth and spread of Lean over the past 25 years as Samuel et al. (2015) published.
Other literature reviews reported the same (Bhamu and Sangwan 2014; Jasti and
Kodali 2015; Negrão et al. 2016; Panizzolo et al. 2012; Silva et al. 2010; Stone
2012; Wong et al. 2009). Even in Journals that are not expected to contain Lean
Production related papers, they appear, such as in International Journal of Pure and
Applied Mathematics (Touhidul Islam et al. 2018).
A long way has been journeyed since Toyota Production System (TPS) man-
agers (Monden 1998; Ohno 1988; Shingo 1981) so much so that due to the eco-
nomic and structural conditions at that time, thought leaders were forced to think
differently from the Ford System they saw in the US. Their JIT and Jidoka pillars
were created to pull from the client just what the client is willing to pay without any
wastes, i.e., assurance that the products were waste free. For this, employees need to
have a different attitude, they had to “pull de cord” when needed, i.e., stop to fix the
problems. So, their hands as well as their heads (minds) should be focused on the
activities they were doing, they must be involved and aligned all the time.
At the same time, overproduction, one of seven identified wastes by Ohno
(1988) is prohibited because it consumes more than needed, polluting more than
v
vi Preface
needed, implying more activities than needed, being the cause of all other wastes
(more transports, more motion, more stocks, overprocessing). Furthermore, more
employees stress push them to unwanted muri and mura, overburden and vari-
ability. Consequently, main key idea in TPS is “doing more with less” (Krafcik
1988; Womack et al. 1990).
Aligned with this idea, is the “creating more value with less impact” of
eco-efficient systems. This concept was first published by Stephan Schmidheiny
from Business Council of Sustainable Development (BCSD) in 1992 (Brundtland
1987). It was defined as “delivery of competitively priced goods and services that
satisfy human needs and bring quality of life, while progressively reducing eco-
logical impacts and resource intensity throughout the life cycle, to a level at least in
line with the earths estimated carrying capacity” (WBCSD 1996, p. 4). When
effectively achieved, an eco-efficient system will allow to attain the business goal of
sustainable development (Brundtland 1987, p. 51), a concept that in the 60s has
been used in a more or less interchangeable way with sustainability (Alves and
Colombo 2017).
Sustainability is the word of the moment and a Google search allow to
obtain 705,000,000 results in just 0.52 s. Sustainability integrates the Economic,
Environmental, and Social Responsibility dimensions that must be balanced in
order to have the sustainable development. The need to balance economy, ecology,
and equity, also called “Triple Bottom Line” (TBL), or “3P” (Profit, Planet, and
People) is fundamental to obtain sustainable development and reach the final goal
of sustainability.
To provide a common and global agenda to achieve sustainable development,
the United Nations Development Programme set 17 global goals: (1) No Poverty;
(2) Zero Hunger; (3) Good Health and Well-being; (4) Quality Education;
(5) Gender Equality; (6) Clean Water and Sanitation; (7) Affordable and Clean
Energy; (8) Decent Work and Economic Growth; (9) Industry, Innovation, and
Infrastructure; (10) Reduced Inequality; (11) Sustainable Cities and Communities;
(12) Responsible Consumption and Production; (13) Climate Action; (14) Life
Below Water; (15) Life on Land; (16) Peace and Justice Strong Institutions and
(17) Partnerships to Achieve the Goal (United Nations Development Programme
2015).
Successive Industrial Revolutions have been providing society with all they
need, achieving some of the sustainable goals, at least, to a part of the world, by
reducing poverty and hunger. Nevertheless, these same Industrial Revolutions
retrieve more from the planet than it has, and its resources are exhausted and
polluted. Life becomes unsustainable in too many parts of the world, due to climate
changes, environmental degradation, and due to human hand (e.g., wars, conflicts,
and overconsumption). Inequalities, of all kinds, were never so present and visible.
People from the developed world is accustomed to have more than they need and to
think sources are not exhaustible. To achieve SDG, first of all this way of thinking
must change in producers and consumers minds.
The editors of this volume believe that Lean Thinking principles applied in
companies, organizations (profit or nonprofit), schools, public administration will
Preface vii
furnish a different culture. By educating future professionals in these principles,

they will develop system-thinking, ethics, and sustainability competencies (Alves
et al. 2017; Flumerfelt et al. 2015). Attending to this, the editors invited some
recognized authors to contribute for this volume by delivering chapters that provide
a theoretical or empirical application of Lean Thinking and rationale as to how it
contributes to improved sustainability. All chapters should describe how the
application of Lean principles and strategies either creates and/or ensures sustain-
able development of a practice or theory for better results in a given sector.
This volume is the result of these chapters. The volume is constituted by 9–13
Chapters that include case studies, literature reviews, and models. The editors
organized the volume starting by presenting a literature review about Lean case
studies and surveys that prove the globalization of Lean Thinking principles
(Amaro et al.). After this, two models (Messaoudene and Sawhney et al.) about
learning Lean, one in a Higher Education Institution and other in professional
environment are presented. They have in common the need to consider learning
problem-solving skills. This directly impact quality education goal by providing
people relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment,
decent jobs, and entrepreneurship and all learners acquire the knowledge and skills
needed to promote sustainable development.
The fourth chapter is also about people, mainly, people work conditions (Brito
et al.). This is first focused in providing decent work and economic growth by
promoting safe and secure working environments for all workers and achieving full
and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for
young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value.
In spite of some controversial ideas of some authors (Arezes et al. 2015), when
Lean is well-implemented, it brings enormous benefits to the employees’ ergonomic
work conditions. The literature review of this chapter presents also how Industry
4.0 (Kagermann et al. 2013) could help on this. Industry 4.0 effects to Lean
facilitation and Lean as facilitator of Industry 4.0 implementation is the theme of
chapter from Bittencourt et al. that provides a systematic literature review of this
relationship.
The three following chapters are case studies (Tenera et al.; Manalang et al.;
Dieste and Panizzolo) about how some companies increase sustainability outcomes
of their systems by implementing Lean Thinking principles and tools. These case
studies show how Lean Production directly impacts responsible consumption and
production and help to build resilient infrastructure, promoting sustainable indus-
trialization. Also, this LP implementation will substantially reduce waste generation
through prevention, making industries sustainable, with increased resource-use
efficiency and greater adoption of clean and environmentally sound technologies
and industrial processes.
Chapters from Abreu et al. and Carvalho et al. are two chapters that present
Lean-Green indexes that intend to measure the Lean-Green practices in companies.
This is important to evaluate and compare green practices. This implies to measure
and monitor some relevant indicators related with sustainability (key environmental
performance indicators—KEPI) that, many times, are unknown. In the context of
viii Preface
responsible consumption and production, Goal 12, companies are encouraged to

adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their
reporting cycle. To achieve this goal, Maia et al. described some projects developed
and in development in the Portuguese Textile and Clothing Industry.
Industry supplies cities and communities that should also be responsible and
have their share of sustainability responsibility and Goal 11 is about Sustainable
Cities and Communities. Chapter by Week presents a model of a sustainable city by
applying Lean Thinking principles. The volume is concluded with a Lean
Leadership chapter by Flumerfelt and Wenson (2018) that highlight the importance
of Lean Leadership to fulfill the companies’ sustainability responsibilities.
The editors conclude this preface by referring to the additional dimensions of
sustainability discussed by some authors (Alves and Colombo 2017; Pappas 2012;
Pappas et al. 2015). They are Technical or Technological, Individual; Relational or
Convivial, Territorial or Geographical, and Epistemological. Though they seem
similar to the ones already presented (Economic, Environmental, and Social), these
reinforce the need to better frame others’ contexts when teaching sustainability.
Namely, the Epistemological dimension builds on the notion that results and net-
works of production, application, and dissemination of knowledge can be essential
means for social development, inclusion, and innovation, generating new possi-
bilities and challenges. This dimension is focused on the need to promote, deepen,
and nurture the relations between the different producers, disseminators, and/or
users of knowledge. It should be noted that, although generally assumed as pro-
ducers and holders of knowledge are those who belong to academia and other actors
in the scientific community, within the scope proposed here, it is understood that
knowledge is also generated in other contexts and actors outside this community
(Colombo et al. 2017). The editors felt that it is their obligation to bring companies’
experience (case studies) and to spread the importance of thinking Lean and how
this lead society to the Sustainable Development because Lean Thinking is a dif-
ferent mind-set, one that could provide the solutions to solve the sustainability
paradox (Rotmans 2006).
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Ohno, T. (1988). Toyota production system: Beyond large-scale production. Portland:
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Panizzolo, R., Garengo, P., Sharma, M. K., & Gore, A. (2012). Lean manufacturing in developing
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Operations, 23(10–11), 769–788.
Pappas, E. (2012). A new system approach to sustainability: University responsibility for teaching
sustainability in contexts. Journal of Sustainability Education, 3.
Pappas, E., Pappas, J., & Sweeney, D. (2015). Walking the walk: Conceptual foundations of the
sustainable personality. Journal of Cleaner Production, 86. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.
2014.08.077.
Rotmans, J. (2006). Tools for integrated sustainability assessment: A two-track approach. The
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18518367.pdf.
Samuel, D., Found, P., & Williams, J. S. (2015). How did the publication of the book The Machine
That Changed The World change management thinking? Exploring 25 years of lean literature.
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Contents
Lean Thinking: A Transversal and Global Management

Philosophy to Achieve Sustainability Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Paulo Amaro, Anabela Carvalho Alves and Rui M. Sousa
Lean Thinking as a Learning Strategy at the Service
of Global Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Zahir Messaoudene
Teaching Sustainable Lean: The Next Step Towards
Inculcating a Critical Problem-Solving Mindset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Rupy Sawhney, Ninad Pradhan, Nelson Matias, Enrique Macias De Anda,
Esdras Araujo, Samuel Trevino and Carla Arbogast
Ergonomic Analysis in Lean Manufacturing and Industry
4.0—A Systematic Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Marlene Ferreira Brito, Ana Luísa Ramos, Paula Carneiro
and Maria Antónia Gonçalves
Contributions of Lean Thinking Principles to Foster Industry
4.0 and Sustainable Development Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Victor Bittencourt, Felipe Saldanha, Anabela Carvalho Alves
and Celina Pinto Leão
Lean Tools Contribution to Sustainability Outcomes:
Insights from a Set of Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Alexandra Maria Baptista Ramos Tenera, Carina Maria Oliveira Pimentel,
Rui Manuel Ferreira Dias and João Carlos de Oliveira Matias
Clean & Lean Production in Fish Canning Industry—A
Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Anna Bella Siriban-Manalang, Jamica B. Brillante,
Frances Isabel V. Cabahug and Rozanne P. Flores
xi
xii Contents
The Effect of Lean Practices on Environmental Performance:

An Empirical Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Marcos Dieste and Roberto Panizzolo
The Lean-Green BOPSE Indicator to Assess Efficiency
and Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
M. Florentina Abreu, Anabela Carvalho Alves and Francisco Moreira
Using Lean and Green Indexes to Measure Companies’
Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
Helena Carvalho, Virgínia Helena Machado, Ana Paula Barroso,
Diana de Almeida and Virgílio Cruz-Machado
Implementing Lean Production to Promote Textile
and Clothing Industry Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
Laura Costa Maia, Anabela Carvalho Alves and Celina Pinto Leão
The Lean City: Citizen as Producer, Consumer, Product . . . . . . . . . . . 345
David Week
Accelerating Sustainability with Lean Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
Shannon Flumerfelt and Jeni Wenson
Lean Thinking: A Transversal
and Global Management Philosophy
to Achieve Sustainability Benefits
Paulo Amaro, Anabela Carvalho Alves and Rui M. Sousa
Abstract The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relevance of Lean Thinking
principles implementation around the world, both in industry and services, based on
the growing number of published case studies and surveys. A comprehensive review
has been conducted on case studies and surveys published between 1990 and 2018
describing Lean Production/Thinking implementations on different countries, classi-
fied by year of publication, country and type of company (discrete-industry/process-
industry/services) and intervention scope (product/sector). The main findings of this
study show that Lean Thinking is a real global (worldwide) and transversal approach
to improve organizations’ performance (all types of industries and services). How-
ever, several organizations are not yet fully aware of the Lean principles as they
do not apply the approach to an entire value stream (i.e. to products or families of
products) but only to parts of value streams (i.e. to sectors or areas of the company).
The review includes the identification of benefits related to environmental issues that
contribute to the sustainability of the organizations.
1 Introduction
Increasingly, organizations are confronted with challenges such as globalization of

markets, climate changes and social issues, among others, which require a type of
organization different from the traditional ones. This traditional approach, inherited
from the Taylorism principles (Taylor 1911), relies on the centralization concept and
has been adopted by most organizations of goods and services. However, it appears to
be outdated considering the current social, cultural and economic context. In fact, the
P. Amaro (B) · A. C. Alves · R. M. Sousa

ALGORITMI R&D Center, Department of Production and Systems, School of Engineering,
University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal
e-mail: pamaro@efacec.pt
A. C. Alves
e-mail: anabela@dps.uminho.pt
R. M. Sousa
e-mail: rms@dps.uminho.pt
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1
A. C. Alves et al. (eds.), Lean Engineering for Global Development,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13515-7_1
2 P. Amaro et al.
school, internet and social networks have brought people the prospect of a better life
(both professionally and socially) and also the perception of the need for involvement
with society (as well as in terms of work environment).
In fact, the bureaucratic centralization inherent to the application of Taylorism
principles to production and services (e.g. hospitals, banking, insurance and large
shopping centers) is no longer appropriate and may even be considered obsolete.
This centralization involves a clear separation between responsibilities and task
execution, which are respectively assigned to management (e.g. decision makers
and controllers) and production (executors). This approach persists in the design and
structure of todays’ organizations, and is characterized by Graça (2002): (i) hierarchi-
cal chain of control (e.g. management, central control services, and controllers); (ii)
one-way communication (top to bottom); (iii) socio-spatial differentiation (graphi-
cally represented). Furthermore, the typical adoption of functional services assigned
to the organization of work (e.g. planning, organization of staff and methods, techni-
cal service and quality control), commonly designated as functional silos (or islands),
hinders the communication between departments thus compromising the exploitation
of possible synergies thereby undermining the performance of the organization.
Trying to overcome the aforementioned limitations, the Lean Thinking paradigm
Womack and Jones (1996) promotes a new management style, strongly based on
teams, involving cross-organizational levels that eliminate the functional silos. Lean
Thinking is regarded as a philosophy (Bhasin and Burcher 2006) that began at the
Toyota Company as Toyota Production System (TPS) (Monden 1998; Ohno 1988),
after World War II. The goal of TPS is to reduce costs and increase productivity
through waste elimination/reduction. Waste are all activities that do not create value
from the customer point of view. The TPS was named by John Krafcik (1988), a
co-worker of NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.) and researcher from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Holweg 2007), as Lean Production because
in TPS all products were produced with less raw-materials, stocks, resources, human
effort, etc. than in mass production systems.
This system has become better known in 1990 due to the publication of the best-
seller The Machine that Changed the World (Womack et al. 1990) by the MIT
researchers, Womack, Jones and Roos. This book compared the American and
Japanese automotive industries and the results clearly showed that the latter had
much better performance than the first (e.g. in terms of productivity and quality).
The Japanese Toyota Motor Company achieved higher productivity with fewer
resources (less space, less inventory, less human effort, less product development
time, etc.). Thus, TPS was dubbed Lean Production as the key idea was “doing
more with less.” Moreover, the involvement of people, the practice of “doing it right
first time,” the use of human potential and the respect for people and their skills,
which is quite different than Taylor’s organizational culture, are fundamental to this
philosophy (Sugimori et al. 1977).
Much has been said about Lean Production, many times questioning its advan-
tages, but Lean is recognized as the management practice responsible for the
“returning of manufacturing” to the US organizations (Donofrio and Whitefoot
2015). Organizations like General Electric appliances, used Lean practices to reduce
Lean Thinking: A Transversal and Global Management Philosophy… 3
the time to assemble refrigerators from the US average of 9–10 h/unit to roughly
2 h/unit (Cowger 2016). According to this author, the implementation of Lean
practices was a key factor to achieve this inshore process.
The success of Lean implementations has been not limited to manufacturing
processes. The evolution of Lean implementations beyond the manufacturing
processes has shown that Lean can be applied to all the internal areas of the
organizations (regardless of the business area) (Alves et al. 2014b). Additionally, the
influence and spread of Lean through the academic and practitioner community over
the last 25 years is remarkable, as Samuel et al. (2015) demonstrated in their paper.
In spite of the many advantages of Lean reported by innumerous studies, there
are many inhibitors that hinder the implementation of Lean Thinking principles. The
motivation for this paper is to discover, in the literature, international and cross-
sectional case studies and surveys that show successful and/or unsuccessful Lean
implementations. The objective of the paper is to analyze these case studies and
surveys, to demonstrate that Lean could be applied anywhere in the world and in any
business sector. Also, these implementations bring many benefits to organizations
that ultimately conduce to a better practices for the environment.
This paper is organized in six sections. This first section introduces the paper’s
motivation and objectives. Section 2 presents a brief literature review and the Sect. 3
describes the research methodology. The findings are presented on Sect. 4 and the
corresponding analysis and discussion are included in the Sect. 5. Finally, on Sect. 6,
the conclusions are outlined.
2 Literature Review
According to, Womack and Jones (1996) the Lean Thinking principles emerged as a
need requested by organizations who have read the book The Machine that Changed
the World. These authors defined five principles to guide the organizations through
a Lean implementation journey: (1) Identify Value; (2) Map the Value Stream; (3)
Create Flow; (4) Establish Pull Production; and (5) Seek Perfection.
Womack and Jones (1996) defined value stream as “the set of all the specific
actions required to bring a specific product (whether a good, a service, or, increas-
ingly, a combination of the two) through the three critical management tasks of any
business: the problem-solving task running from concept through detailed design and
engineering to production launch, the information management task running from
order-taking through detailed scheduling to delivery, and the physical transforma-
tion task proceeding from raw materials to a finished product in the hands of the
customer”.
By following the above mentioned principles, organizations can achieve a Lean
Thinking state. Womack and Jones (1996) stated that Lean Thinking promotes a
culture of continuous improvement, engaging everyone in the process.
Many authors have argued about Lean definitions. For instance, in the UK Lean
Aerospace Initiative survey of 2002, Lean Thinking was defined as a dynamic,
4 P. Amaro et al.
knowledge-driven and customer-focused process where everyone is continuously

searching for improvements by eliminating non-value added activities (Harrison
et al. 2002). According to Henderson and Larco (2010), Lean is a concept and a
commitment process that can significantly contribute for the organizations’ health,
wealth and competitiveness.
The emphasis on adding value to the processes along with the best use of resources
is a key strength of Lean Thinking. According to Altekar (2012), the establishment
and mastering of the Lean Thinking system would allow organizations to increase the
customer service level while reducing: waste (by 80%); production cost (by 50%);
manufacturing cycle time (by 50%); labor (by 50%); inventory (by 80%). Despite
these expectations, the lean thinking approach is criticized by many authors. For
instance, Keitany and Riwo-Abudho (2014), identified that key criticisms to Lean
Thinking include the lack of contingency and ability to deal with variability, lack
of consideration of human aspects and operational focus confined to the shop-floor.
Other authors include: objections coming from trade unions, increase of the workers’
responsibilities that can lead to pressure and anxiety (inexistent in the traditional
system), expansion of job requirements without a comparable increase in terms of
salary, inability to deal with turbulence and change, and the pursuit of perfection
that may eliminate the scope for flexibility. This type of criticism may jeopardize the
successful implementation of the Lean approach.
Some factors are critical to the success of Lean implementations, particularly
in the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as referred in the studies of
Achanga et al. (2006) and Bakås et al. (2011), respectively developed in UK, and,
Norway and Belgium. These factors are: leadership and management, finance, skills
and expertise, and culture of the recipient organization. At the same time, SMEs have
also faced difficulties in implementing Lean due to a lack of understanding of what
is Lean (Cowger 2016). According to this author, there are too many definitions of
Lean, too much information and lack of human resources, time and money to adopt
Lean initiatives.
Leadership is so important in the Lean implementation success, that many authors
advocate a Lean Leadership style (Dombrowski and Mielke 2013, 2014), defined
as a “…methodical system for the sustainable implementation and continuous
improvement of LPS. It describes the cooperation of employees and leaders in their
mutual striving for perfection. This includes the customer focus of all processes as
well as the long-term development of employees and leaders” (Dombrowski and
Mielke 2013, p. 570). Other authors also refer the importance of behaviors and
the common errors made by business leaders as inhibitors of any implementation
(Emiliani 1998, 2008). Lean implementation needs a different mindset (Yamamoto
and Bellgran 2010) so organizational leaders are recognizing and demanding from
Lean graduates (Flumerfelt et al. 2016; Alves et al. 2017).
Some literature reviews about Lean have been conducted to explore the different
dimensions of Lean implementations, namely the ones from Stone (2012), Bhamu
and Sangwan (2014), Jasti and Kodali (2015) and Samuel et al. (2015). The work of
Stone (2012) is a systematic literature review of almost 200 papers and called atten-
tion to: (1) the lack of theoretical connections between the planned organizational
changes and the process improvement interventions; (2) the focus centered on the
“how-to-do” lean principles, and, critiques instead of dialog; and (3) the disregarding
of the ‘human’ factor.
Bhamu and Sangwan (2014) analyzed 209 research papers and identified
various Lean definitions with different objectives and scopes. From each paper,
these authors gathered data on: research contribution, research methodology adopted,
tools/techniques/methodologies applied, industry type, authors’ profile, country of
research and year of publication. One of their main findings was the lack of a standard
process/framework for Lean Management (LM) implementation.
The extensive literature review from Jasti and Kodali (2015) encompassed a total
of 546 papers and refers aspects such as implementation status and performance
measurement of various existing frameworks/models. Additionally, these authors
discussed the trends in Lean research, pointing out the need to: (1) apply the lean
principles in the product development area and also at the enterprise level areas; (2)
more interregional research collaborations; (3) lean elements as a group instead of
individual elements (an integrated system); (4) avoid all the seven lean wastes in an
integrated way; and (5) test and validate the proposed frameworks/models. The seven
wastes as classified by Ohno (1988) are: (1) transports; (2) inventory; (3) motion;
(4) waiting; (5) overproduction; (6) over processing; (7) defects.
Samuel et al. (2015) focused their literature review in the papers published around
the book The Machine that Changed the World to demonstrate how Lean research,
application and thinking has evolved over 25 years, from its origins in the Japanese
auto-manufacturing industry to a holistic value system that is applicable to all busi-
ness sectors, both private and public.
Other literature reviews were more focused in exploring Lean relationships and
synergies with other important topics/disciplines such as Supply Chain and Sustain-
ability (Martínez-Jurado and Moyano-Fuentes 2014); Lean and Ergonomics (Arezes
et al. 2015), among others. This showed the multidisciplinary of Lean that empha-
sis its role as an important paradigm and an holistic approach being transversal to
different disciplines, as Alves et al. (2014b) and Alves et al. (2017) presented and
discussed. Additionally, this was also evident in the literature reviews focused in the
Lean Thinking applied in areas such as: Services (Leite and Vieira 2015); Construc-
tion (Alves et al. 2012); Healthcare (Mazzocato et al. 2010); Education (Fliedner
and Mathieson 2009; Alves et al. 2017; Flumerfelt et al. 2016), among others.
Particularly important, is the link between Lean Production and sustainable devel-
opment, which has been called Lean-Green (Rothenberg et al. 2001; Moreira et al.
2010; Abreu et al. 2016; Alves et al. 2016; Abreu et al. 2017). Such authors advo-
cate that the reduction of the seven wastes referred above will conduce organiza-
tions to reduce the environmental wastes defined in 2007 by the US Environmental
Protection Agency (U.S.-EPA 2007) as the consumption of materials, water, energy
and emissions of pollutants (for water, soil and air). The reduction of the seven wastes
will lead, directly or indirectly, to better environmental practices, where material and
resource requirements are reduced, taking less out of the planet that belongs to every-
one (Moreira et al. 2010).
6 P. Amaro et al.
3 Research Methodology
This research uses a qualitative methodology based on a literature review of Lean

implementations case studies and surveys. The sources include peer reviewed jour-
nal papers from bibliographic databases such as ISI Web of Knowledge, Scopus,
Science Direct (Elsevier), Wiley Online Library (Wiley), Taylor & Francis, Springer
and Emerald Insight, and some conference papers from the manufacturing and
management areas. Books, dissertations, unpublished working papers, newsletters,
reports or other documents were excluded. The search included the keywords “Lean”;
“case study”; “survey”.
A spreadsheet was used to compile all the papers found and retrieve their relevant
elements. The search resulted in 129 papers presenting case studies and surveys. The
main research questions that guide the research were:
• When was developed the case study/survey?
• Where was developed the case study/survey?
• In what type of industry/service the case study was developed?
• Was the case study developed for a product (single value stream) or for a particular
sector/area of the company?
• What were the benefits achieved?
Based on these questions, the authors want to know when more Lean implemen-
tations occurred, if Lean implementation is global (i.e., is a phenomenon spreading
all over the world), if Lean implementation is transversal (i.e. if it is implemented in
all kinds of industry/services) and, finally, if it was focused in a product (single value
stream) or for an sector/area of the company where several products are produced.
Each collected paper was analysed, codified and interpreted to select the informa-
tion needed: the reference, if it is a case study or a survey, the country (geographical
coverage), the industry/service (transversality), the product/sector (the scope) and
the benefits with main focus in the ones related with environmental wastes.
4 Results Presentation and Analysis
This section presents the results of the literature review of the selected case studies
and surveys. The analysis was developed to achieve this paper’s objectives being
thus aligned with the research questions previously referred.
4.1 Case Studies and Surveys Characterization
Table 1 presents the results of the literature review, organized by chronological order
of the references.
Table 1 Characterization of Lean implementation case studies and surveys

References Country Industry/service Product/sector Case
study/survey
Sohal (1996) Australia Automotive Windscreen Case study
parts wiper systems
Panizzolo (1998) Italy Various Various Multiple case
studies
Bamber and Dale UK Aerospace All Case study
(2000)
Harrison et al. (2002) UK Aerospace All Survey
Cutcher-Gershenfeld USA Aerospace Various Survey
(2003)
Motwani (2003) USA Medium-size N/A Case study
automotive
manufacturing
Swank (2003) USA Life insurance New business Case study
and annuities unit
Emiliani (2004) USA Business Leadership Case study
school courses course
Melton (2005) UK Process Multi-product Case study
industries manufacturing
(chemicals & process
pharmaceuti-
cals)
Doolen and Hacker USA Electronics Various Survey
(2005) manufacturers
Bonavia et al. (2006) Spain Ceramic tile Various Survey
industry
Lee-Mortimer (2006) UK Electronic Various Survey
products—-
manufacturing
operation
Abdulmalek and Kuwait Process sector Steel Case study
Rajgopal (2007) (large
integrated steel
mill)
Álvarez et al. (2008) Spain Automobile Combustible Case study
injection valve
Taj (2008) China Various Various Survey
Farhana and Amir Bangladesh Garment Various Case study
(2009)
Pattanaik and Sharma USA Armory Fuse DA5A Case study
(2009)
Wong et al. (2009) Malaysia Electrical and Various Survey
electronics
(continued)
8 P. Amaro et al.
Table 1 (continued)
study/survey
Nordin et al. (2010) Malaysian Automotive Various Survey
industry
Waldhausen et al. USA Healthcare Ambulatory Case study
(2010) pediatric
surgery
Yamamoto and Sweden Precision Various Multiple case
Bellgran (2010) casting goods studies
Electrical
products
Carvalho et al. (2011) Portugal Metal Frames Case study
structures
Hodge et al. (2011) USA Textile Various Multiple case
studies
Pool et al. (2011) Netherlands Semi-process Coffee Case study
Romero and Martín Spain Aeronautics A key Case study
(2011) component of
the final
product
Staats and Upton India IT Services Custom Case study
(2011) software
Staats et al. (2011) India Software Various Case study
services
Veža et al. (2011) Croatia Beverage Bottler Case study
Vinodh et al. (2011) India Automotive Valve Case study
valves assembly unit
Bortolotti and Romano Italy Banking Bank counters, Case study
(2012) services back office and
private credit
offices
Bryde and Germany Construction Refurbishment Case study
Schulmeister (2012) projects
Chowdary and George Trinidad and Pharmaceutical Creams and Case study
(2012) Tobago ointments P1
line
Jiménez et al. (2012) Spain Winery Various Case study
Aguado et al. (2013) Spain Forming tube Environmental Case study
company innovation
Faulkner (2013) USA Healthcare Postpartum Case study
hemorrhage
Lešková (2013) Romania Production Modular Case study
assembly
systems
(continued)
Table 1 (continued)
study/survey
Lyons et al. (2013) UK Process Various Multi-methods
industry including a
survey
Moori et al. (2013) Brazil Various N/A Survey
Netland (2013) Norway & Various Various Multiple case
USA studies
Overboom et al. (2013) UK Logistics Refurbishment Case study
operations of a municipal
building
Rahman and Karim Australia Tile Manufacturing Case study
(2013) manufacturing process
Ribeiro et al. (2013) Portugal Wood furniture Paint line Case study
Sobral et al. (2013) Brazil Automotive Automotive Case study
vehicles
Stadnicka and Antosz Poland Various Various Multiple case
(2013) studies
Sterling and Boxall New Zealand Fast-moving Employee Case study
(2013) consumer learning and
goods job quality
manufacturing
Tanco et al. (2013) Uruguay Seasonal food Nougat Case study
production
process
Warner et al. (2013) USA Healthcare Vascular Case study
surgery
operating
Yu et al. (2013) USA Construction Modular and Case study
manufactured
buildings
Aqlan and Mustafa Ali USA Chemical Manufacturing Case study
(2014) industry
Barbosa et al. (2014) Brazil Aerospace Manufacturing Case study
industry processes
Castillo et al. (2014) Chile Underground Various Case study
mining
Costa et al. (2014) Portugal Metal- Final assembly Case study
mechanic of the elevators
doors
Keitany and Kenya Flour industry Various Case study
Riwo-Abudho (2014)
Kumar and Kumar India Automotive Truck body Case study
(2014) industry assembly line
(continued)
10 P. Amaro et al.
Table 1 (continued)
study/survey
Powell et al. (2014) Norway, USA ETO Various Case study
& Italy manufacturers:
Construction
technology &
high-tech
products
Resende et al. (2014) Portugal Plastic Various Case study
Sundar et al. (2014) India Various Various Survey
Alves et al. (2015) Portugal Various Various Multiple case
studies
Benfield et al. (2015) USA Healthcare Renal Case study
replacement
therapy
Bevilacqua et al. Italy Automotive Information Case study
(2015) industry management
system
Chlebus et al. (2015) Poland Mining Area machines Case study
industry
Dora and Gellynck Belgium Medium-sized Ginger bread Case study
(2015) confectionary
Hicks et al. (2015) UK Healthcare Healthcare Case study
facilities
Lacerda et al. (2015) Portugal Original Thermoplastic Case study
equipment injection,
manufacturer assembly of
for the components
automotive and fabric
industry bonding
Lamm et al. (2015) USA Healthcare Chemotherapy Case study
Lu and Yang (2015) Taiwan Solar cell and Photovoltaic Case study
module module
manufacturing process
company
Pineda Dávila and Spain Healthcare Rehabilitation Case study
Tinoco González service
(2015)
Sutari (2015) India Wind turbine Manufacturing Case study
manufacturer area
Yang et al. (2015) Taiwan Fishing Fishing net Case study
manufacturing
system
Andrade et al. (2016) Brazil Automotive Automotive Case study
industry
(continued)
Table 1 (continued)
study/survey
Badgujar et al. (2016) Indian Manufacturing Pump Case study
Ben Fredj-Ben Alaya Tunisian Autmotive Auto parts Case study
(2016) industry
Boscari et al. (2016) Italian Various Various Case study
Garza-Reyes et al. Mexico Logistics Road transport Case study
(2016) operations
Gutierrez-Gutierrez Spain Logistics Electronics Case study
et al. (2016) services company
Haddad et al. (2016) EUA Healthcare Medical care Case study
Kovvuri et al. (2016) Indian Construction Construction Case study
Kowang et al. (2016) Singapore Manufacturing Automotive Case study
Kumar and Kumar Indian Various Various Survey
(2016)
Lameijer et al. (2016) Netherlands Services Financial Case study
services
industry
Mahendran et al. Indian Industry Automobile Case study
(2016) valve
manufacturing
Manfredsson (2016) Sweden Textile Textile Case study
industry
Matos et al. (2016) Portugal Healthcare Hospital Case study
Nallusamy and Manufacturing Automotive Case study
Saravanan (2016) component
Netland (2016) Norway Global Various Survey
chemicals and
vehicle
manufacturer
Nowotarski et al. Poland Construction Office building Case study
(2016)
Pereira et al. (2016) Portugal Manufacturing Operations Case study
Salam and Khan Thailand Service Healthcare Case study
(2016)
Salgin et al. (2016) EUA Healthcare Construction Case study
and demolition
van Eeghen et al. EUA Healthcare Primary care Case study
(2016) practice
Vendramini et al. Brazil Service Public Case study
(2016)
(continued)
12 P. Amaro et al.
Table 1 (continued)
study/survey
Zahraee (2016) Iran Automotive Various Survey
manufacturing
Zhang et al. (2016) Singapore Logistics Various Survey
industry
Ahmad et al. (2017) Malaysia Service Automotive Survey
service centres
Ainul Azyan et al. Malaysia Industry Printing Case study
(2017)
Albliwi et al. (2017) Saudi Arabian Various Various Survey
Ben Ruben et al. Indian Industry Automotive Case study
(2017a, b) component
manufacturing
Bhutta et al. (2017) Pakistan Industry Various Survey
de Freitas and Costa Brasil Various Various Survey
(2017)
Dondofema et al. South African Various Various Survey
(2017)
Guerrero et al. (2017) EUA Industry Wood Case study
Furniture
Hama Kareem et al. Iraq Industry Iron and steel Case study
(2017)
Helleno et al. (2017) Brasil Industry Various Case study
Lal et al. (2017) Indian Healthcare Hospital Case study
Madsen et al. (2017) Norway Public sector Various Survey
Majava and Ojanperä Finland Manufacturing Paint and Case study
(2017) surface finish
products
Nallusamy and Adil Indian Manufacturing Automotive Case study
Ahamed (2017)
Ramakrishnan and Indian Industry Foundry Case study
Nallusamy (2017)
Ben Ruben et al. Indian Manufacturing Automotive Case study
(2017a, b) component
Seth et al. (2017) Indian Industry Power Case study
transformer
Silva Reyes and Salas Peru Industry Plastic films Case study
Castro (2017) for flexible
packaging
Singh et al. (2017) Indian Industry Scaffold Case study
making
industry
(continued)
Table 1 (continued)
study/survey
Supriyanto and Indonesia Industry Gas stove Case study
Maftuhah (2017)
Villarreal et al. (2017) Mexico Rewery Road transport Case study
organisation operations
Antony et al. (2018a) UK Education Various Case study
Antony et al. (2018b) Scotland Public sector Policing Case study
services
Baptista et al. (2018) Portugal Industry Machine tool Case study
Belhadi et al. (2018) Morocco Industry Pumps Case study
Dhiravidamani et al. Indian Industry Foundry Case study
(2018) division of an
auto parts
manufacturing
Gijo et al. (2018) Indian Industry Auto ancillary Case study
conglomerate
Jassim (2018) Iraq Public sector Hussein Case study
Educational
Hospital
Kurdve (2018) Sweden Industry Modular Case study
buildings
Lorente Leyva et al. Equador Industry Metalworking Case study
(2018) company
(rolling doors)
Narayanamurthy et al. Various Healthcare Various Case study
(2018)
Oey and Nofrimurti Indonesia Consumer Warehouse Case study
(2018) goods
Saravanan et al. (2018) Africa Industry Pre-assembly Case study
line of gearbox
manufacturing
Shortell et al. (2018) United States Service Healthcare Survey
Vairagde and Hans Indian Industry Improve Case study
(2018) manpower
utilization
14 P. Amaro et al.
The research was based only on case studies and surveys found in indexed journals
and conferences. As can be seen, the number of publications is much larger for case
studies than for surveys (Fig. 1). Case studies highlight detailed contextual analysis
of a limited number of events or circumstances and their associations.
Clearly, the researchers were much more interested on case studies (more than 3/4
of the analysed papers) than in surveys. Surveys are most popular to use in collecting
a large amount of data from a sizeable population in a highly economical manner.
The number of case studies and surveys about Lean implementations has increased
over the last 25 years. This is an expected result as the Lean paradigm has attracted
much attention after the publication of the book The Machine that Changed the
World, corroborating thus the findings of Samuel et al. (2015). Figure 2 shows the
evolution of the number of papers, revealing 2016 and 2017 as the years with more
publications.
Fig. 1 Distribution of the papers by used research methodology
Fig. 2 Distribution of the papers by year of publication

Fig. 3 Lean
implementations by type of
company (industry/services)
4.2 Transversality of Lean Implementations
In a first broad approach to assess the transversality of Lean implementations, the

papers were analysed in order to collect the information exposed in columns “Indus-
try/service” and “Product/sector” of Table 1. Then each paper was carefully classified
according to the type of production/manufacturing: (i) discrete manufacturing, (ii)
process manufacturing or (iii) services. As 28 out of the 129 papers are surveys or
multiple case studies referring several organizations, a detailed analysis was neces-
sary in order to categorize all these organizations according to the aforementioned
classification. For the sake of clarity, it should be noted that some organizations were
classified as process industries (process manufacturing) even if their final products
are discrete units (e.g. beverage and cement organizations) (Fig. 3). The category
“various” include papers that were related mainly with the surveys, referring orga-
nizations of various types.
Clearly, most of the reported Lean implementations occur in industry (66%) while
interventions in the services area represent only 25% of the cases.
4.3 Geographical Coverage of Lean Implementations
The distribution of the 129 papers reviewed and analysed encompasses 41 countries
(Fig. 4), with 21 papers from USA and India. These are followed by Portugal and
UK with 9 and 8 papers, respectively. Fourteen countries are responsible for about
75% of the lean implementations. In more than 50% of these countries, only one
published paper was found.
The extensive literature reviews of Bhamu and Sangwan (2014) and Jasti and
Kodali (2015) involve quite different sample sizes (209 and 546 papers, respectively)
but reveal a similar number of countries with publications about lean implementations
16 P. Amaro et al.
Fig. 4 Distribution of the papers by country
(27 and 30, respectively). Despite the small sized sample inherent to this work (129
papers), the number of countries (41) where lean was implemented is more dispersed.
In the two aforementioned literature reviews, the countries with more published
papers in this area were always the USA and the UK.
4.4 Scope of Lean Implementations
For the analysis related with the scope, the authors only selected the papers classified
as “case studies”. The surveys and the others were not considered because, typically,
the necessary information was not available (due to the large number of involved
scenarios). For each one of the selected papers, it was identified if Lean was applied
to products or product families (i.e. to the whole value stream, as previously defined
in Sect. 2) or just to areas/sectors of the company (i.e. normally considered fraction of
different value streams). In the cases where it was not possible to identify the scope,
the papers were classified as “Non-identifiable”. The results of this classification are
represented in Fig. 5.
Figure 5 shows that more than 50% of the case studies (52%) addressed multiple
value streams, i.e. approaching an area or sector. This is not aligned with the prin-
ciples of Lean Thinking, because first it is necessary to identify the value for the
customer and then the entire value stream. Nevertheless, in 43% of the case studies,
the scope was the analysis/intervention in a value stream. This reveals that many Lean
implementations were like islands in the organizations, i.e. only local improvements
were implemented without looking to the entire value stream.
Fig. 5 Scope of the lean

implementations
4.5 Benefits
All the papers were analysed to identify the benefits reported by case studies. After
collecting the benefits by reference, the words were included in a word cloud software.
The Fig. 6 presents the word cloud generated.
Fig. 6 Word cloud of the benefits collected from the papers analysed
18 P. Amaro et al.
The most frequent word is “reduction” (appeared 138 times) followed by “time”
(58 times) because these two words appeared many times combined with a lot of oth-
ers words like production/manufacturing time, set-up time, manufacturing through-
put time, average time, lead time, cycle time, idle time, development time, project
time, manufacturing costs, labour costs, defects, inventories, WIP, consumption,
space, variability, transport/travelled, distance, inefficiencies, amount of materials,
waste among others.
The words “increase” (53 times) and “improvement” (38 times) were also very
frequent as many papers presented the benefits related with increase or improvement
on efficiency, production rate, client satisfaction, employee morale, communication,
organization, financial, useful life of buildings, project delivery, products time deliv-
ery, profit margins, quality, productivity, environmental impact and others.
Nevertheless, in the 129 analysed papers, just a small percentage (4%) considered
the impact that these benefits have in the environmental wastes as considered by
U.S.-EPA (2007). Such examples are the ones from Sobral et al. (2013), Aguado
et al. (2013), Garza-Reyes et al. (2016), Salgin et al. (2016) and Belhadi et al. (2018).
In the case of Sobral et al. (2013), the authors considered that the synergy between
lean and green was not well understood by managers and, consequently, lean man-
ufacturing was not fully integrated with environmental management in the facil-
ity’s day-to-day activities. Nevertheless, the authors presented some examples such
as: how the training of production-line employees makes them more involved and
proactive in seeking to protect the environment.
Aguado et al. (2013) presented a lean production system that the authors con-
sidered a model of efficient and sustainable improvements. These were achieved
through processes of environmental innovation that allowed the identification and
quantification of the improvements made using Eco-indicator 99 (EI99) (Goedkoop
and Spriensma 2000). According to the authors, a firm using this model will acquire
a competitive advantage due to the reduction of costs by decreasing the consumption
of materials and energy per unit of output. Reduction in the emissions and waste
(the model increases the number of recyclable materials used) and diminution in
the work with respect to the process and final stocks also can be afforded by the
model. Additionally, the authors also considered that this model conduces to better
social responsibility and environmental sustainability as a consequence of reduced
consumption of the raw materials and a decrease in the environmental impact. There-
fore, the added value of the product increases.
The paper from Garza-Reyes et al. (2016) refers a transport and logistics orga-
nization. The authors applied a systematic methodology and a novel tool called
Sustainable Transportation Value Stream Map (STVSM) to concurrently deploy the
green and lean paradigms. They considered this as an effective approach to improve
both operational efficiency and environmental performance of road transport oper-
ations. The authors achieved better operational efficiency and better environmental
performance, particularly, in relation to the reduction of gas emissions.
Salgin et al. (2016) showed how lean design methods reduce construction and
demolition (C&D) waste and contribute to environmental sustainability. The authors
used three cases to demonstrate that C&D waste reduction (e.g., recycling construc-
more equipments, more packaging materials special needs for

workers and space consumption dangerous materials
extraction of more risk of damaged/ more energy
raw materials obsolete products consumption
Over- more pollution more space Transportation potential damages on

Inventory for storage products
production more energy and motion
consumption
more water
consumption
Over- extra consumption of

Defects rework Waiting occupied space
processing materials
wasted energy during

wasted resources wasted energy
downtime
unrecoverable products risk of damaged more pollution
recycling materials
Fig. 7 Effects of the production wastes (updated from Moreira et al. 2010)
tion waste, reducing material use, and enhancing recovery after use) can be indi-
rectly achieved by economic waste reduction. The authors were capable to reduce
the amount of required materials as well as the amount of wasted materials; increase
the useful life of buildings and select materials to reduce their negative impact on
the environment.
The most recent paper from Belhadi et al. (2018) shows, using a case study, the
benefits of adopting lean production on green performance of SMEs. The authors used
several practices such as 5S, training, green VSM, SMED, Kanban, AM and quality
control integrated in a framework to create a corporate lean and green culture which
allowed to achieve significant improvements in both operational and environmen-
tal side. The improvements were assessed using quantitative metrics: value-added
time; rate of quality defect; inventory and availability rate. These improvements
in operational metrics have resulted in several green benefits: reduction in specific
consumption of water, energy and raw materials.
These papers results clearly demonstrate the applicability of lean and green syn-
ergy, showing that the reduction of the seven wastes as described by Ohno (1988)
has a direct impact on the environmental wastes. Moreira et al. (2010) discussed and
represented this in Fig. 7.
Considering the low percentage of papers from the analysis developed and being
a significant percentage from 2018 (11%), it seems that this synergy is not well
recognised by the organizations.
5 Discussion
The reported results show that the growth of Lean implementations in non-industrial
areas is a reality, going far beyond the initial interventions restricted to the automotive
industry and even of the initial focus centred only on the shop-floor improvement
(Hines et al. 2004). This literature review also confirms the global reach (geographical
coverage) of the Lean implementations. In fact, even in small countries one can
find case studies or surveys about the implementation of Lean Thinking. The main
20 P. Amaro et al.
Fig. 8 Lean engineering education provides sustainability competence Alves et al. (2014a)
reason, in the authors’ opinion, is that a correct implementation of Lean Thinking will
conduct to positive results for organizations. Nevertheless, the environmental positive
results that lean could bring are not recognised by the organizations. The Lean-
Green synergy could be conceptually showed by the relations established (Fig. 8) by
Alves et al. (2014a) that advocated Lean Engineering Education (Flumerfelt et al.
2015) as the education approach for students to develop a sustainable development
conscience. Training professionals on this will increase the knowledge of this link
in organizations.
Nevertheless, it is important to properly quantify the environmental wastes and
for this it is necessary to use relevant indicators as the referred EI99 and also suit-
able mechanisms to measure production factors, e.g. raw materials, water, energy
consumption and emissions released in every workstation, sector or area, produc-
tive or non-productive (Fig. 9). New technologies such as smart manufacturing from
industry 4.0 could help on this (Radziwon et al. 2014).
Additionally, it is important to notice that, many times, organizations have too
many certifications systems (e.g. ISO9001, ISO14001, OHSAS18001, ISO50001)
that act independently of each other. So, a link between them is missing and this link
could be the lean paradigm.
The case studies and surveys reviewed have the common goal of identify the ben-
efits/advantages of applying the Lean methodology in all areas of the organizations,
regardless their area. Several authors, based on their research work, define conceptual
models and propose frameworks aiming to help other researchers, practitioners and
students to have a kind of roadmap to more quick attain the advantages of applying
the Lean methodology. However, despite all the studies, research and surveys, no one
yet defined the “ideal” model that can be applied to all kind of organizations, prob-
ably because there are many factors acting as enablers or inhibitors in the different
organizations to get all the benefits of the Lean Organizations. According to several
Fig. 9 Improving the process to obtain eco-efficiency and less risks for humans and environmental
authors, namely, Taleghani (2010) not all implementations were successful, even
when the organizations felt that what they learn from books, articles, seminars and
visits to other organizations was enough to be successful on Lean implementations.
6 Conclusions
This paper comprised a comprehensive literature review of the last decades regard-
ing five aspects of the growing of case studies and surveys about Lean Produc-
tion/Thinking principles application throughout the world. The goal of this literature
review was to explore the following areas: (i) when it was implemented; (ii) where it
was developed; (iii) in what type of industries and (iv) what was the initial scope of
the implementation and (v) benefits of these implementations. The following con-
clusions can be drawn from this review: (1) the growing number of case studies
and surveys on Lean Production/Thinking implementation around the world, both
in industry and services, is led by the case studies (78%, Fig. 1); (2) the number of
case studies and surveys published has grown dramatically only after 2010; (3) this
growing of case studies and surveys published allowed more people to have access to
information; (4) this availability of information allowed more efficient Lean imple-
mentations in all kind of organizations and (5) the environmental benefits with lean
implementations are not recognized.
From this literature review, the authors conclude recognizing that Lean Thinking
is global and is being applied in all kinds of organizations all over the world. Nev-
ertheless, it is important to discover what are the enablers and inhibitors of these
implementations. The authors of the analyzed case studies and surveys have exper-
imented/utilized, or even developed, different methodologies to implement Lean in
different processes or areas, in different types of organizations, aiming to identify
22 P. Amaro et al.
the real causes and consequences of each methodology in each process. Also, it is
important to know why the synergy lean-green is not being recognized and how to
help organizations to quantify the impact of this. This will be the future work.
Acknowledgements This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-

007043 and FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope:
UID/CEC/00319/2013.
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Lean Thinking as a Learning Strategy
at the Service of Global Development
Zahir Messaoudene
Abstract In recent years, global development has become a strategic issue for orga-
nizations. Its measurement criteria are economic, social and environmental. It is
interested in contributing to the expectations of all stakeholders. How does the
measurement of several criteria generate contradictions within the sustainability
of global development? One of the answers to this question is associated with a set
of organizational paradoxes. Indeed, paradoxes within organizations create tensions
at the level of operational teams. However, human capital is a key to global devel-
opment. Lean Thinking as a model of organizational learning is an answer to this
problem. The sustainability of global development must integrate the fundamental
values that underlie Lean Thinking, such as people development, building of a con-
tinuous improvement culture, management for problem-solving learning by work
teams. This chapter will focus on the “learning by problem solving” dimension of
Lean Thinking. This dimension will describe how a learning strategy enables sus-
tainable development. This contribution will deal with an application around the
principles of autonomy and responsibility of operational teams. Examples of French
companies, that have implemented the concept of subsidiarity by problem solving,
illustrate these principles. A new reference model, named “Problem Solving Pull for
Learning Organization” incorporates this concept.
1 Introduction
Companies use the concept of global performance in the managerial literature to eval-
uate the implementation of sustainable development. It refers to a holistic concep-
tion of performance. Considering social dimensions is now a crucial concern within
companies. Attached to the current fields of creating partnership value or manag-
ing relationships with all stakeholders, social dimensions raise operational issues.
However, theoretical knowledge integrating social aspects is still largely insufficient.
This does not facilitate the implementation and monitoring of the means needed to
Z. Messaoudene (B)
Industrial Management Department, ECAM Lyon, 69321 Lyon Cedex 05, France
e-mail: zahir.messaoudene@ecam.fr

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13515-7_2
34 Z. Messaoudene
improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency. More and more, these difficul-
ties are related to the existence of paradoxes in the company and its management. The
perception of paradoxes can be paralyzing. It can engender fears, generate inaction
or inappropriate actions and create learning limits at the individual level, teams and
organization. Individuals are impacted (stress, burnout), the company’s performance
is affected, poorly deployed or aborted strategies. Paradox perception can also be a
source of organizational learning, creativity and positive change. Different studies
show that it is not the existence of the paradoxical tensions that generate the difficul-
ties, but the way in which these obstacles are perceived and managed (Guilmot and
Vas 2015). While paradoxes management has become an integral part of organiza-
tions life. All the organizational members have to face the complexity of the exercise
of combining antinomic poles.
This chapter focuses on middle managers for several reasons. First, Balogun and
Johnson (2004) suggest that the role of these people is becoming increasingly impor-
tant given the growing complexity of contemporary businesses. One can no longer
manage organizations but require the establishment of interactive global leadership
where middle managers act as mediators between different levels or units. As a result,
there is increasing decentralization of decisions at the most local level.
Secondly, the decision to focus our analysis on this type of professional profile
is based on the ambiguity surrounding their roles. While the middle manager is
expected to leave his position as an ordinary operational manager (Mahieu 2006), it
is not uncommon for these managers not to know exactly what is expected of them,
especially in terms of problem solving learning from their teams (Piderit 2000).
Finally, because of their central position within the organization, middle managers
constantly face incompatible demands. To meet these conflicting requirements, they
are required to interpret directives from their management to adapt them to the opera-
tional constraints of their employees, while taking into account requests from external
stakeholders. The role of middle managers is evolving in a complex organizational
context where the management of paradoxes is an integral part of their daily work.
In this perspective, the objective of this chapter is to determine how the context
of sustainable performance increases the number of dualities that middle managers
face, particularly in the development of problem-solving learning through team’s
autonomy (Messaoudene 2015). To answer this problem, we believe that the systemic
and strategic approach supported by Lean thinking (Womack and Jones 1996) can
provide a framework to act and understand these phenomena and thus make it possible
to propose an innovative alternative for the effective management of paradoxes. As
a first step, we propose an analysis of the literature around paradoxes and their links
with the management of organizations. We will focus on tensions arising from the
paradox between autonomy and control in the context of problem solving. The second
part is dedicated a study of Lean Thinking as a vector for organizational learning. For
this purpose, we will use some principles of Lean Thinking around the individual and
collective learning. We will validate how these principles create favorable conditions
to the sustainability of global development. We focus on problem-solving learning
that is a device in the development of autonomy and responsibility of work teams. This
part will focus on proposing a new organizational framework using Lean Thinking.
Lean Thinking as a Learning Strategy … 35
For this, we will develop this model called “problem solving pull for organization
learning (PSP)”. This concept is the driving force behind the autonomy and control
of problem solving learning. We will emphasize how this model contributes to the
elimination of the organizational tensions set out in the second part. Finally, a case
study will be exposed in the form of experimentation with this model in examples
French companies.
2 Organization Management and Paradoxes
2.1 Representations of the Paradox Influencing

the Modalities of Its Regulation
Before dealing with the issue of paradox management, it is important to qualify what
we mean by paradox. The most commonly accepted definition considers the paradox
as the simultaneous and persistent presence of elements that have their own logic but
whose association appears contradictory (Quinn and Cameron 1988; Lewis 2000;
Smith and Lewis 2013).
The literature on paradox covers two major schools of thought (Clegg 2002;
Johnston and Selsky 2006). In the first, the paradox described as logical or semantic
(Perret and Josserand 2003), is understood as an element inherent to organizational
dynamics that reflect “simultaneous existence of two inconsistent states… [a] dual-
ity of coexisting tensions” (Eisenhardt 2000, p. 703). The pragmatic approach is the
second stream of thought. It positions the paradox no longer within what is said, writ-
ten, formalized … but in the effect, it produces. Coming from a social construction
(Lewis 2000, p. 76), paradoxes are understood from this perspective as “cognitively
or socially constructed polarities that mask the simultaneity of conflicting truths”.
Thus, it is through the way in which the organizational actors construct their
representation of a phenomenon or situation, and the contradictions that reveal these
representations (or their confrontation), that the paradoxes emerge.
For Ford and Backoff (1988) the paradoxes in this tradition have three character-
istics:
• They relate to the phenomenon or situation observed and are based on a subjective
view of the organizational actors involved with this situation;
• They have an interactional dimension by being socially constructed in contexts of
interaction;
• They induce the search for solutions either to remove them or to manage them.
Our contribution retains this approach of the paradox envisaged as “an agreement
among local interpreting observers that a certain duality of actual behaviours is
inconsistent” (Johnston and Selsky 2006, p. 187). In this conception, the perception
of the duality between two concepts is thus a social, intersubjective construction,
intimately linked to the context, especially to the organizational culture.
36 Z. Messaoudene
Two implications follow from this: the analysis of paradoxes can not be dissociated
from the context in which they unfold. It is important to be attentive to validating
our interpretation of the paradoxes with the members of the company.
In the managerial literature, the paradox has long been considered a dysfunction
that must be eradicated. For Clegg (2002), this negative representation of the paradox
has generated a variety of research aimed at showing how to remove the paradox by
assuming that the paradox is inherently insoluble. The first option is to eliminate the
paradox by choosing one of the two opposite poles. The second, with reference to
the theory of contingency, assumes that it is possible to find a happy medium or a
point of equilibrium between the poles in tension by ensuring the internal coherence
of the constituent elements of the organization and the alignment of this one with its
environment. Finally, the last, based on a dialectical approach, invites managers to
develop a synthesis via the use of a third-party concept or mediator to dissolve the
two opposite poles of tension. Thus, the situations mentioned above do not strictly
fall under the paradox.
The paradox has other properties that make it possible to distinguish it from
concepts to which it is often assimilated such as the dilemma, the conflict or the
dialectic (Perret and Josserand 2003). The dilemma involves the choice between one
of the two opposing elements, the process engaging the comparative analysis of the
benefits/costs of each option (which implies that they are clearly identifiable). The
conflict leads actors to seek a compromise between the two extremes. The dialectic,
meanwhile, tries to combine the elements specific to each pole of tension, in an
original synthesis that can be a source of innovation. For example, improvisation
can be presented as a synthesis between action and planning, the introduction of this
third concept to ‘let live’ the paradox. If, like the other concepts, the paradox arises
from the contradiction, it creates situations in which the choice is forbidden (unlike
the dilemma). In the same way, its full expression appears not very compatible with
the quest for balance (as in the case of conflict) or synthesis (as for dialectics).
Smith and Lewis (2011) qualify this perspective by showing that the dilemma can
become a paradox when the choice does not make it possible to resolve in a lasting
manner the tension that reappears repeatedly over a period. For example, the choice
to develop the delegation, without it being framed at least by previously negotiated
rules of play, can be anxiety provoking for the employees concerned and eventually
require the concomitant introduction of control methods. Similarly, the dialectic is
likely to be transformed into a paradox when the synthesis leads to the appearance
of a new tension.
The traditionally negative representation of paradox is opposed by a more positive
or satisfying representation (Clegg 2002; Lewis 2000). According to this representa-
tion, the paradox is a principle of intelligent action management to manage contradic-
tions and promoting learning or change. Many researchers have highlighted the value
of such an approach to paradox as March (1991), calling to think simultaneously the
exploration and exploitation of knowledge.
For Clegg (2002), this representation of the paradox is legitimate in management
in particular because each practice contains the seeds of its own destruction, in the
image of autonomy that is accompanied by more control.
Moreover, for these authors, wanting to eradicate contradictions is a vain and

above all potentially dangerous step. Today, many researchers like Eisenhardt (2000,
p. 703), consider that the management of tensions assumes “hinges on exploring the
tension in a creative way that captures both extremes, thereby capitalizing on the
inherent pluralism within the duality”.
Our research works in this perspective considering that the management of para-
doxes can promote a continuous change and a dynamic of learning when one goes
beyond the simple opposition of two elements by including them in a wider system
(Lewis 2000).
2.2 Qualify Organizational Paradoxes
Any attempt to manage organizational paradoxes requires an ability to identify them,

to explore their deep nature as well as the potential effects on organizational dynam-
ics. We owe in particular to Smith and Lewis (2011) a work of categorization of
the organizational paradoxes that distinguishes four generic forms: the paradox of
the organizer, the paradox of the learning, the paradox of identity, the paradox of
the practice. These paradoxes refer to structuring elements of the organization and
the dynamics that cross it; its goals, identity, interpersonal relationships, processes,
knowledge. Table 1 details and attempts to identify the main symptoms:
Table 1 The different types of organizational paradoxes (from Smith and Lewis 2011)
Paradox Elements of definition Symptoms Authors of reference
types
Paradox It reflects the recurring Difficulties to support • Lawrence and Lorsch
of the tension between growth (1967)
organiz- organizational Intra and • Smith and Tushman
ing differentiation and the inter-organizational (2005)
need for integration, the conflicts • Lewis (2000)
desire to preserve the Competition between
overall coherence of the systems of rules and
structure. This tension procedures
itself includes other
paradoxes:
• Between need of
autonomy and need of
control;
• Between stability and
change (…/…)
(continued)
38 Z. Messaoudene
Table 1 (continued)
Paradox Elements of definition Symptoms Authors of reference
types
Paradox It expresses the Multiplication of • Smith and Lewis (2013)
of per- coexistence in the paradoxical injunctions • Crozier and Friedberg
forming organization of confronting managers. (1977)
contradictory/antagonistic Increase in conflictuality • Donaldson and Preston
representations of the Organ paralysis (1995)
goals of the organization. • Freeman (1984)
This divergence of
interests and strategies is
itself a reflection of the
plurality of internal and
external stakeholders and,
where appropriate, may
include temporal conflicts
Paradox It expresses the tension Identity destabilization • Lüscher and Lewis
of between the values, the and loss of meaning at (2008)
belong- belief system, the work • Sainsaulieu (2007)
ing professional identity of Increase in conflictuality
the individual and his
immediate group of
reference and the beliefs,
values, identities of other
professional groups or
disseminated on a global
scale organization
Paradox It reflects the sometimes Competition between • March (1991)
of conflictual articulation in systems of rules and • Argyris and Schön
learning the structure between procedures (2002)
different modes of Excessive domination of • Senge (1990)
learning: between one mode of learning on • Tushman and
exploitation and the other Romanelli (1985)
exploration, between
single-loop learning and
double-loop learning,
incremental change and
radical change, etc.
2.3 Manage the Paradoxes
If a certain consensus seems to emerge in the academic literature as to the nature of

organizational paradoxes, rarer are the works to have examined the modes of man-
agement of these paradoxes. These works have in common to argue for a conception
of paradox as an inherent element of organizational dynamics, so that it is futile to
seek to deny or dissolve them (Poole and van de Ven 1989; Lewis 2000). Thus, Clegg
(2002, p. 489) suggest “that paradox should be sustained rather than resolved and
that the relation between its poles is a matter for serious consideration. We look at
this relation as a fertile ground for syntheses that improve the practice and under-
standing of management without replacing or attenuating the tensions that ground
them”. The relations between the poles can then be unidirectional or bi-directional:
“The two opposite poles of management paradoxes are related because they are both
enacted simultaneously and can be unidirectional or bi-directional. When they are
unidirectional one of the poles is dominant and feeds on the other without giving
much back, and thus the tension between them tends to be obscured. When we are
in the presence of a bi-directional relationship it is usually one of simultaneous and
mutual feedback” (Clegg 2002, p. 494).
Jarzabkowski and Spee (2009) observe in this context that the management of
paradoxes usually mobilizes defensive responses (Table 2). Middle managers them-
selves, when confronted with paradoxes, tend to activate defensive routines (Argyris
1982), for the sake of appearing rational, in order to reduce the cognitive dissonance
they experience, or well again because of the anxiety they face in this type of situ-
ation. In fact, the modes of response to paradoxes, if they are distinguished by the
degree of conflictuality they incorporate, reflect an avoidance strategy that does not
allow actors to renew their experience of paradox in the long term. Table 2 presents
defensive modes of response to organizational paradoxes (after Jarzabkowski and
Spee 2009).
Figure 1 summarizes all the research work around organizational paradoxes as
well as the associated tensions.
Table 2 Defensive modes of response to organizational paradoxes

Defensive mode Structuring principles Limiting factors
Partitioning Each constituent pole of the Total partitioning is rarely possible
tension is isolated from each other Partitioning reflects a form of
and is the subject of an ad hoc paradox avoidance
treatment. This partitioning can be
structural (more prominent
inscription of each pole in certain
organizational units or at certain
levels of the structure) or proceed
from a temporal sequencing (each
dominant pole at different time
intervals)
Dilemma The resolution of the paradox The exclusive focus on a pole leads
engages exclusive focus on one to an organizational imbalance
pole of tension to the detriment of The paradox is only solved in
the other. The arbitration is based appearance; it always exists in the
on the evaluation of the latent state
costs/benefits of each option Risk of negative spiral
(favoring one or another pole)
Domination Stakeholders supporting each pole Risk of exacerbation of tension
of tension actively engage in a and escalation of conflict
confrontation in order to make Stakeholder cooperation more
their point of view prevail difficult to achieve in the long term
40 Z. Messaoudene
Fig. 1 Categorization of organizational tensions (from Smith and Lewis 2013)
While this work has undeniably contributed to improving our understanding of

organizational paradoxes, they underestimate the fact that paradoxes exist at different
levels of the organization and are interlinked by systemic or recursive relationships
(Lüscher and Lewis 2008).
It is in line with these latest works that our scientific contribution is part. Thus,
we will try to understand how Lean thinking as a strategic model of organizational
learning and as an appropriate mechanism for middle managers would make it pos-
sible to manage the paradox {autonomy/control} in the context of the development
of learning by problem solving of their collaborators.
2.4 The New Role of Middle Managers in Managing

Paradoxes and Positioning Research Around Problem
Solving Learning
The contradiction between expectations of control and autonomy for problem solving
is obvious. Indeed, the control injunction assumes a prior existence (the expected
behavior) with which the production agent would agree. This is totally contrary to the
concept of initiative. In addition, the autonomy order is paradoxical. The production
agent is never autonomous when responding to an injunction. The existence of a
simultaneous expectation of control and autonomy in the resolution of problems
may seem like a situation of double constraint.
There are two parts: the individual and the organization whose voice is mediated
by the intermediate managers. The first order (control of problem solving) can be
formulated as follows: “I am trained to use these tools to develop my problem solving

skills, but I do not use them because it is too administrative and complicated to
complete. I fill them a posteriori or I forget to fill them because I do not have time”.
The second injunction (autonomy) can be formulated as well: “I solve my problems
not to penalize production but I do not develop my skills or I do not know if the
solutions are effectives”.
To better manage organizational tension (control/autonomy) within problem solv-
ing processes, the middle managers must put in place managerial routines to support
and challenge their employees in the development of problem solving performance.
A leader’s job is to clearly communicate the organizational vision in a way that peo-
ple can see as intuitively as they can interpret scenery. If people are going to feel
useful then they should have a clear vision of their company’s goals. Don’t just tell
people what they need to achieve, show them the gaps between the current state and
the intended state of your vision. Only when they see this gap and share the orga-
nizational vision as their personal goal will they be taken out of their comfort zone
and fueled to make practical changes. This makes the goal a concrete problem to
solve rather than an empty ideal. Since managers often lament a lack of motivation
in the workforce, it is easy to assume that the default nature of humanity is idleness,
but this simple notion doesn’t reveal the full picture. People perform better and work
harder when they have a passion for what they are doing. The key is to respect these
natural traits that nearly everyone shares:
• People are creative.
• People want to make things easier.
• People want to succeed.
• People want to change for the better.
• People don’t like to be told what to do.
• People tend to deny other people’s input.
The leader’s job is to create an environment where improvement is structured
around these traits in a way that benefits the whole organization. The first thing is
provide information so people can make their own decisions. In the lean approach,
the role of the hierarchy is to define in the management team the right topics (and
to constantly question this point while trying to change as little as possible), then
to push employees to improve their processes on these topics, improvement after
improvement, working as a team.
Some authors like Alves et al. (2012) consider that Lean thinking helps to pro-
mote thinkers, especially middle managers. According to our research, the strong
contribution of Lean Thinking is mainly to develop problem solvers autonomously
(for production agents) but also to enrich the skills of middle managers in order to
transform them into Leader. For that, in order to better manage the organizational
tension (control/autonomy), this research proposes to use:
• The concept of subsidiarity—the responsibility for an action, when it is necessary,
lies with the competent entity closest to those directly affected by the action—The
principle of subsidiarity makes sure not to disconnect decision of those who will
have to respect it.
42 Z. Messaoudene
• The concept of substitution—when situations exceed the competence of a given

entity responsible for the action, this competence is transmitted to the entity of a
higher hierarchical level and so on.
3 The Lean Thinking as a Strategy for Organizational

Learning
The scientific approach in support of our research methodology is developed using the
Theory of Inventive Problem Solving or TRIZ (Altshuller 1999). Our methodology
is shown schematically in Fig. 2.
Paradox is gaining more and more pervasiveness in and around organizations,
thus increasing the need for an approach to management that allows both researchers
and practitioners to address these paradoxes. This is why the theory of paradoxes is
used to propose an operational innovation in terms of continuous improvement of
the problem solving process.
The first part of our methodology is intended to identify the specific problem of the
poor performance of problem solving in companies. The second part describes the
model of our research problem in the form of identification of generic paradoxes asso-
ciated with organizational tensions. The third part is dedicated to the integration of
Fig. 2 Research methodology

some principles of Lean Thinking as the continuous improvement of problem solving

processes. Finally, our methodology has helped to build a new model for measuring
the maturity of learning by solving problems for leaders and their employees.
3.1 Formulation of Specific Problem to Learning Problem

Solving
Companies around the world (Imai 1992) use the Continuous Improvement
approaches. A survey on the performance of Continuous Improvement Initiative
(CII) was conducted (Messaoudene 2015). We collected responses from 37 compa-
nies. 20% of companies have fewer than 50 employees, 44% of these companies have
fewer than 100 employees and 36% have fewer than 200 employees. The companies
surveyed are divided into several sectors of activity: the manufacture of equipment
for the automotive sector, the manufacture of industrial equipment, and outsourcing
of the aerospace and mechanical sector. The survey was conducted from September
2015 to February 2017. The selection of the sample was based on SMEs having
started a continuous improvement process for at least three years. The sample of
interviewees is 370 people, 40% of whom are agents of production and 60% of
managers.
3.1.1 The Empirical Contradictions Within Continuous Improvement

Initiatives
This study confirms the problem of sustainability of problem-solving approaches

within the CII. It identified four generic difficulties that explain the barriers within
companies to “learn by solving problems”. These difficulties have been translated
into the following empirical contradictions (C 1 → 4 ):
• C 1 : Continuous improvement generates problems and affects their resolution (75%
of the people interviewed);
• C 2 : Continuous improvement is not used as a source of acquisition of new skills
for problem solving (64% of the people interviewed);
• C 3 : The visual management spaces is not exploited as an axis of progress for the
problem solving organization (77% of the people interviewed);
• C 4 : Organizational strategy is unfavorable for learning of problem solving (78%
of people interviewed).
The results of this analysis are justified by the fact that 90% of companies use
traditional learning approaches. These models develop a diffusion of continuous
improvement approaches in a mechanistic way. This strategy prevents the individual
and collective learning of problem solving. Indeed, traditional approaches to learning
continuous improvement approaches go through two phases of diagnosis (Fig. 3).
44 Z. Messaoudene
Fig. 3 Classical model of learning of problem solving
The first diagnosis concerns the organization of problem solving (A). The second
diagnosis is dedicated to problem-solving skills (B).
However, in this strategic model of implementation of the CII, individuals are
confined to a vision of improvement that does not allow them to step back and make
frequent feedback. That is to say that individuals have had difficulty understanding
the meaning of their actions vis-à-vis the acquisition of new skills (ambiguous effects
of improvement actions). Indeed, the actors are immersed in the day-to-day man-
agement of their activities (insufficient renewal of the action plans). Moreover, the
multiplication of learning situations in the absence of confrontation with other indi-
viduals limits exchanges (insufficient formalization of feedback experiences). As a
result, the learning of individuals remains compartmentalized and collective learning
becomes fragmentary due to lack of coordination and organization of relations (lack
of dissemination of knowledge). These difficulties tend to degrade the performance
of setting up a culture of continuous improvement.
3.1.2 The Impacts on Learning of Problem Solving
Argyris (1999) describe three loops of learning of problem solving. The simple loop
consists of adapting to changes in the environment. Individuals respond to results by
a simple feedback loop connecting the detected error to action strategies (Fig. 2). The
double-loop induces a change in the values of use strategies. The double loop refers
to the two feedback loops that link the observed effects of the action to values and
paradigms. Thus, individuals perform a double-loop learning when their investigation
generates changes in the values of the use theory (Fig. 2). Argyris (1999) have also
highlighted a third type of learning to emphasize the possibility of learning about
one’s own way of learning. It can lead to the formation of new learning strategies,
Fig. 4 The impact of contradictions on single-double-triple loop learning
learning itself becoming a learning object (Fig. 4). This figure also shows the location
of the impact of the empirical contradictions within the learning loops.
3.2 Formulation of the Problem Model
Perret (2003) proposes a framework of analysis in which two logics of contradictory

actions coexist by recognizing reciprocal interactions between the action and the
context. The first logic is the logic of demarcation. For this author, the intentional
change aims to act on an organizational context and seeks to transform it. For the
second logic, which the author calls logic of support, the intentional change can
only act according to a given organizational context to which he must conform and
adapt. For the logic of demarcation, the action of the leader is characterized by two
essential elements: distinctive nature and deliberate behavior. This logic confronts
leaders with resistance to change. For the logic of support, the action of the leader
is characterized by two essential elements: cohesive nature and emergent behavior.
This second logic constrains the leaders with the risks of losing the intentionality of
their actions. Table 3 shows the conflicts and tensions that arise from the coexistence
of these two logics.
The Fig. 5 illustrates the paradoxical paradigm of the antagonistic pair (demarca-
tion logic/support logic).
The contribution of this chapter focuses on the management of paradoxes {Auton-
omy/Authority through control} and {Revolution/Evolution} (Fig. 6). This choice
is confirmed by the fact that the performance of problem-solving processes is not
46 Z. Messaoudene
Table 3 Ambivalent behavior of the change according to Perret (2003)

Logic of demarcation Logic of support
The nature of the action of change Difference Identity
The dynamics of the action of change Revolution Evolution
The modalities of the change management Authority Autonomy
Fig. 5 Problem model of change management for learning of problem solving
Fig. 6 Choice of
organizational paradoxes
efficient. Traditional approaches to problem-solving training do not allow evaluation

and structuring of individual and collective learning acquisition through problem
solving.
3.3 The Lean Thinking: A Better Organic Strategy

for Learning (Pull Mode)
For the development of an overall sustainability of CII, it is fundamental to move

from a mechanistic approach to an organic approach.
It is about developing problem solving and continuous improvement projects as
a capitalization of experiential relationships between individuals. It is also neces-
sary to integrate individual problem-solving learning and collective learning through
continuous improvement in the organization’s organizational strategy.
This is about learning needs for problem solving. In fact, learning dimensions
must take into account individual, collective, managerial and organizational realities
(Fig. 7). That is to say that the diagnosis of individual and collective learning requires
an evaluation of lived experiences: the actual work of problem solving and the actual
contents of the sites of continuous improvement [A], the work of team between
individuals, site organization and managerial practices used by site leaders [B]. These
experiences are used later to guide the strategies of formation and accompaniment of
individuals and the collective [C] and finally to improve the organization of problem-
solving learning [D].
Fig. 7 Problem solving pull model (PSP)

48 Z. Messaoudene
3.3.1 The Development of Individual Quality of Problem Solving
The first recommendation to develop individual learning is to propose a questioning

(formal and informal) between middle manager and collaborator around:
• Personal development in problem solving.
• Individual learning of problem solving tools.
This questioning must be integrated into the company’s learning strategy in the
form of managerial routines (gemba visits and discussions, exchanges and construc-
tive feedback).
The exchanges must be conducive to evaluating the quality of problem solving,
the level of learning obtained by the operator and the performance achieved through
problem solving.
The goal of this managerial routine is to develop the maturity of the operators to
increase their problem-solving capacity.
The intermediary manager has a grid to assess the maturity of the operator and
to capitalize his own problem-solving experiences. This grid is completed formally
and informally to express the individual learning maturity of the operator in problem
solving.
The evaluation of individual learning is done according to three qualitative criteria
according to the model proposed by Argyris (1994):
The quality of problem solving (single-loop learning) by asking the following
questions:
a. What is the problem solved?
b. What are the root causes treated?
c. What actions have been put in place to eradicate the problem?
The quality of problem solving learning (double loop learning) by asking the
following questions:
a. How did you formalize the problem on the shop floor?
b. What was your approach to analyze the problem and to extract the potential
causes of the problem?
c. What experiences have you put in place to put in place the possible actions?
The quality of learning by problem solving (triple loop learning) by asking
the following questions:
a. What did you learn during the formalization and analysis of the problem?
b. What did you learn when setting up the proposed action?
c. What did you learn about improvement (at the product, workstation, industry and
colleague level)?
3.3.2 The Development of Collective Quality of Continuous

Improvement
The second recommendation to develop collective learning is to propose a question-

ing (formal and informal) between the intermediate manager and the team partici-
pating in an improvement project around:
• Collective development in continuous improvement.
• Collective learning of continuous improvement tools.
This questioning must be integrated into the company’s learning strategy in the
form of managerial routines (gemba visits and discussions, exchanges and construc-
tive feedback).
The exchanges must be conducive to the evaluation of the quality of the collective
works of continuous improvement, the level of collective learning achieved by the
team and the performance achieved through the site. The purpose of this managerial
routine is to develop the maturity of leaders, managers of proximities or supervisors
for example to increase their ability to lead teamwork and site management. For this
purpose, the intermediary manager has a grid to assess the maturity of the questioned
leader and thus make it possible to capitalize on his own experience, guaranteeing
teamwork and facilitating conditions favorable to collective developments. This grid
is completed formally and informally in order to express the collective learning
maturity of the members of the continuous improvement team.
The evaluation of the collective learning is carried out according to the four
qualitative criteria resulting from the modes of conversion of knowledge proposed
by Nonaka (1994):
The quality of socialization during the continuous improvement project:
a. How do the members of the construction team build the forms of shared experi-
ences related to the problem being addressed?
b. How are the exchanges and the interactions between the members realized at the
level of the formalization of the problem?
c. How are the exchanges and the interactions between the members carried out at
the level of the analysis of the problem?
The quality of outsourcing during the continuous improvement project:
a. How is collective thinking based to develop possible improvement actions?
b. How are team members’ knowledge articulated to develop relationships between
root causes and solutions?
The quality of the combination during the continuous improvement project:
a. How do team members coordinate and explain their own knowledge to build
common knowledge to address the problem?
b. How are data are used to find consensus on the improvement action to be imple-
mented?
50 Z. Messaoudene
Fig. 8 PSP model process
The quality of the interiorization during the continuous improvement

project:
a. How are team members coordinating to put actions in place?
b. How does the application of new knowledge related to the problem enrich the
knowledge base of team members?
The Fig. 8 shows the process from the PSP model.
The maturity grid contains two types of learning elements evaluated by the inter-
mediate manager (Fig. 9): the dimensions of the problem solving and the level of the
operational staff questioned.
The three dimensions in problem solving are:
• Perception of problems: development of the ability to observe, see, describe and
formalize problems;
• Idea Development: Development of the ability to design solutions;
• Implementation of actions: Development of the capacity to build the solution and
observe the effects.
The third recommendation that we propose is the development of a frequent
feedback of experiences and sources of tension in the spaces for discussion and
experimentation recorded from managerial routines (individual and collective learn-
ing). The result of frequent feedback of feedback is the setting up of discussions and
exchanges around the correlations between problem-solving/continuous improve-
ment practices and learning levels. Frequency can be monthly between intermediate
manager, local managers and operators of the sector. The purpose of these discus-
sions and exchanges is to identify individuals’ needs for training and coaching in
Fig. 9 Maturity grid for the quality of problem solving
the field to improve the learning of their problem-solving and continuous improve-
ment practices. Discussions and exchanges around the correlations between problem-
solving/continuous improvement practices and learning levels aim to feed into the
learning organization’s development strategy of continuous improvement.
The PSP model contributes to the development of individual and collective learn-
ing by:
• The capitalization of experiments and experiments between individuals when solv-
ing problem.
• Integration of organizational learning into business strategy.
Figure 10 shows the synopsis of learning organization development using the PSP
model.
3.3.3 Develop Problem Solving and Continuous Improvement Projects

as a Capitalization of Experiential Relationships Between
Individuals
For example, we have a production sector that has a problem of flexibility, that is,
times of reference changes that are too long to respond to the variability of customer
demand. This problem of flexibility is often dealt with using the SMED (Shingo
1985) approach (technique to make the machines more flexible and therefore to make
more and more series changes).
The conventional approach would focus on the continuous improvement
approach: for example, from 2 h of change to 1 h by optimizing the disassembly,
assembly and tooling adjustment times. Then support services such as methods or
52 Z. Messaoudene
Fig. 10 PSP model for the development of learning organization
maintenance will develop a new optimized procedure that will be put in place to meet
the new time.
The proposed approach is that the implementation must be seen not only to
improve the flexibility of the machine but also as a capitalization of knowledge and
skills between operators, adjusters and support services. Problem solving within the
improvement site has not only one purpose to better disassemble, mount the tools
and adjust the machine but must improve teamwork through formal and informal
exchanges for better capitalize on each other’s skills. The continuous improvement
project with the SMED technique must also be seen as a rise in technical (product
and process) and managerial (team cohesion and problem solving) skills.
3.3.4 Integrate Individual Problem-Solving and Collective Learning

Through Continuous Improvement into the Company’s Strategy
In the traditional approach, problem-solving training and continuous improvement

processes are often disconnected from the actual needs of the operational staff.
For example, top management wants to launch 5S projects throughout the plant.
Operators as well as middle managers see cleaning sites that must be conducted
to have “good points” during audits and make “pleasure” to customers. These are
projects that are not sustainable in time.
We launch training for operational staff without understanding that the 5S is a
continuous process of individual and collective problem solving to meet the needs
in terms of safety and quality of the working environment.
With the traditional approach, top management has the strategic objective of
deploying 5S on 100% of production workshops and launching successive waves
of training and deployment. With the proposed approach, 5S should be seen as a
means and not a goal to learn to see the problems, to better understand the reality
and to allow the field to exercise their problem-solving skills.
In the classical approach, the 5S is seen as a standardization tool. In the proposed
approach, the 5S is not a tool to deploy but a strategic way of building skills in
problem solving and therefore continuous improvement.
4 Experimentations of PSP Model (Problem Solving Pull)
We propose an illustration of the experimentation of the PSP Model on a concrete

example (SME subcontracting subsets for cranes) in the context of questions for
individual learning between an operator and his team leader.
4.1 Individual Problem Case of Components Replenishment
An operator posted in 1 × 8 has set up a visual alert system to improve the quality
of the management of the components it uses to weld. The operator has put in place
an effective action that allows him to alert his team leader of the stock status of
the components. The team leader was trained to ask some questions to assess the
individual learning of his operators.
The quality of problem solving (single loop learning) by asking the following
questions:
• Team Leader Question [TL]: What is the problem you have solved?
• Operator Response [O]: the problem is that I had at least 30% breakage of com-
ponents per week and at least 50% breakage in case of heavy load.
• [TL]: What root causes have you been able to deal with?
• [O]: I do not have fast and effective field visibility on the stock status day of
consumed components and this irritates me a lot.
• [TL]: What action have you put in place to eradicate the problem?
• [O]: I set up a visual system that allows me to quickly measure stock status at
a glance (no need for a computer system for that) and a color benchmark at
the storage level of my components. If I take a component and I see—with an
orange label—my stock, well I can know that it can become too low and I inform
you. However, if nothing happens, I will begin to consume other component and
thereafter see the red label and there attention because possibility of breaking
soon.
The quality of learning problem solving (double loop learning) by asking the
following questions:
• [TL]: How did you formalize the problem in the Gemba?
54 Z. Messaoudene
• [O]: I simply realized that I had no vision of my component consumption and no

vision at which time I could be replenished.
• [TL]: What was your approach to analyze the problem and to extract the potential
causes of the problem?
• [O]: it’s simple, we produce parts and we consume components without really
knowing how much I could have left (I do not have time to count each time), so
for me the problem is to make visibility possible for alert.
• [TL]: What experiences have you put in place to put in place the possible actions?
• [O]: I did not want a computer system because it is for me a waste of time; I simply
set up a simple and visual thing as in supermarkets.
The quality of learning by problem solving (triple loop learning) by asking
the following questions:
• [TL]: What did you learn during the formalization and analysis of the problem?
• [O]: I learned that the consumption of components can be random and that a
visualization aid is very useful to know the state of the stock.
• [TL]: What did you learn when setting up the proposed action?
• [O]: I learned that simple, visual things are very effective.
• [TL]: What did you learn about improvement (at the product, workstation, industry
and colleague level)?
• [O]: I learned to better manage the stock of components because the system that I
put in place and it will allow you to alert if necessary and better organize according
to the state of the stock available. I am thinking of using the same idea for other
low rotation components and talking to other operators who might have the same
problem.
We now propose a concrete example of a company (aerospace outsourcing SME)
in the context of the use of the PSP model for questions for collective learning. This
example is illustrated with a maintenance manager and his team leader during the
continuous improvement of the measurement device management process.
4.2 Collective Problem Case of Management of Measuring

Devices at a Subcontractor of Aeronautics
In this maintenance department, the team members use a large number of measuring
devices to carry out corrective and preventive actions in the various production work-
shops (there are about a hundred measuring devices available, in use or in repair).
The maintenance manager was trained to ask some questions to assess the collective
learning of his team leaders.
The quality of socialization during the continuous improvement project:
• Maintenance Manager Question [MM]: How do your team members build the
forms of shared experiences related to the problem being addressed?
• Response from the team leader who facilitated the continuous improvement project
[TL]: Well, we met 3 times for 30 min to discuss the vision of our common problem.
Everyone was able to give their opinion on the gravity and consequences of this
type of hazard in the way we work.
• [MM]: How are the exchanges and the interactions between the members realized
at the level of the formalization of the problem?
• [TL]: At the beginning, during the first meeting, it was quite tense, because every-
one was sending the ball back. Therefore, I decided to do the second field so that
everyone could describe the way he perceived the problem. In the field, it was
easier for me to animate because it is the gemba that validates if what says people
is true or not.
• [MM]: How are the exchanges and the interactions between the members carried
out at the level of the analysis of the problem?
• [TL]: Using the third exchange session, in the field, we have been able to better
understand the problem because everyone has agreed on why? In addition, not
who?—I asked that two groups meet and present their analyzes. I of course asked
to have factual elements (drawing, sketches and figures) to allow me to validate
the analysis phase. The exchanges were well conducted and everyone participated
without friction and accusation.
The quality of outsourcing during the continuous improvement project:
• [MM]: How is collective thinking founded in order to develop possible improve-
ment actions?
• [TL]: The two groups exchanged on the possible root causes by the demonstration
in the field. Without knowing it, they conducted a process with working hypotheses
(that is what I learned during a problem-solving training). It was interesting to
see that the action put in place is a combination of the ideas of both groups.
• [MM]: How are the team members’ knowledge articulated to develop root cause
relationships and solutions?
• [TL]: Everyone was able to put forward simple ideas, because that is what we
wanted, we did not want a computer system. Some have said that in some islands
of production they have seen visual management systems that help to find their
bearings. Others have said that we should put 5S in the management of measuring
devices. In fact, I think the whole team had the solution but did not talk to each
other and therefore did not share their knowledge.
The quality of the combination during the continuous improvement project:
• [MM]: How do team members coordinate and explain their own knowledge to
build common knowledge to address the problem?
• [TL]: Hey, well, as I was able to say the solution came from a set of ideas from
the teammates. We met in the field and the knowledge of each was able to better
understand the problem and the solution quickly came to our eyes.
• [MM]: How are field data used to find consensus on the improvement action to be
implemented?
56 Z. Messaoudene
• [TL]: It is thanks to the ground, the knowledge of each one that one quickly found
this solution of visual management of the management of measurement tools. We
did not spend time discussing futile things, only field evidence validated some
ideas.
The quality of the interiorization during the continuous improvement
project:
• [MM]: How are team members coordinating to put actions in place?
• [TL]: It took 2 h to set up the solution. We recovered some stuff that was no longer
useful, such as color labels, a planning board, And Scotch tape etc. In addition,
everyone got their hands on their paws. It was very rich.
• [MM]: How does the application of new knowledge related to the problem enrich
the knowledge base of team members?
• [TL]: Everyone has learned something. In particular the need to understand the
why of hazards and not to accuse individuals. Also that the visual management can
be simple to use if it is realized by ourselves because it answers a real need and
sense. Finally, I think this has helped strengthen the teamwork within measure.
5 Conclusions and Involvement of Sustainable

Development Goals
The human capital of an organization is the set of skills, talents, qualifications, expe-
riences accumulated by an individual and which partly determine his ability to work
or produce for himself or for others. Autier (2006) in the conference entitled: The
Place of Man in the Enterprise, 21st century management stated, “Because valuing
human capital has become a crucial issue, in a highly competitive environment, a
growing number of ‘companies place employee commitment at the center of their HR
policy”. Through the different forms of intelligence that it deploys, each employee
energizes and perpetuates the material assets placed at his disposal.
In the opposite case of lack of evaluation and investment, the waste of human
capital lurks when it is abused in favor of “short-termism” which sometimes seems
to be the master stallion of modern management. According to Autier (2006) “We
suffer a lot from the short-termism of the leaders. Economists and politicians extol
the system of collecting the maximum amount of money in the least amount of time.
However, these benefits are increasingly disconnected from work. Living together is
not immediately profitable, but it is fundamental to the sustainability of the system.
(…) We cannot constantly pump human capital and collective intelligence without
worrying about the consequences.”
Lean thinking as the driving force of learning organizations is a real contribution
to safeguarding and developing human capital. However, there is a series of possible
blockages for the development of organizational learning:
• The instability of the norm (due to too frequent changes), which prevents any
learning.
• The quality of feedback and the absence of feedback, which prevents the perception
of errors.
• The lack of decision-making autonomy, which prevents individuals from making
corrections to identified problems.
• The lack of experimentation, which has the effect of preventing the construction
of new strategies for action.
• The lack of dialogue among the members of the organization, which would make it
possible to evaluate the effectiveness of problem-solving and continuous improve-
ment practices.
These blockages generate tensions and organizational paradoxes in the context of
autonomy through problem solving. These tensions have a very strong impact on the
performance of problem-solving processes.
In order to deal with the blockages resulting from a lack of dialogue between the
members of the organization, the company must develop an organizational structure
dedicated to the development of organizational, collective and individual learning.
This structure will have to be piloted by the managerial routines of learning proposed
by the PSP model in order to carry out the returns of effective and constructive
experiences. The clear and shared vision of the company’s strategy should include
a focus on developing a learning culture along the line of management to create a
learning organization for continuous improvement. To make organizational learning
a collective activity extending to the whole organization, it is necessary to integrate
it into the strategy. The conditions for the development of a learning culture are as
follows:
• Learning by problem solving is a legitimate activity. In other words, learning is
seen as an integral part of a person’s professional responsibilities and not as an
activity in their spare time.
• Learning is encouraged and supported.
• Adequate resources are allocated to learning. It is recognized that learning takes
time.
• Learning is rewarded. The existence of mechanisms to reward value and recognize
organizational learning is an important part of encouraging employees to dedicate
time and resources to learning, both organizational and personal.
We have seen that the development of the learning organization must take into
account level 2 and level 3 learning loops in order to develop people in terms of prob-
lem solving. In addition, the organization must develop ways of converting knowl-
edge to develop both individuals and the collective in continuous improvement. The
modes of conversation (formal and informal) should be based on the individual and
collective learning managerial routines along the hierarchical line between strategic
management, middle management, local management and operational staff. Infor-
mation systems will be at the service of effective and constructive feedback.
58 Z. Messaoudene
During discussion and exchange spaces for the continuous improvement of indi-
vidual and collective learning, the human resources department will have to identify
the blockages concerning:
• Motivation, promotion of personal initiative.
• Time and environment suitable for problem solving.
• Reorienting skills for problem solving.
• Taking into account the resistance of individuals as an integral part of learning.
The human resources department and the top management will have to contribute
to put in place actions and means for the development of problem solving and con-
tinuous improvement learning. The result of discussion and exchange spaces is the
analysis of possible blockages to the development of organizational learning. The
frequency can be the following every quarter between Top managers, middle man-
agers and people of human resources The purpose of these discussions and exchanges
is to identify sources of bottlenecks and implement actions at the strategic level to
improve learning processes at the enterprise level. There is a culture of learning when
you feel a progression through new initiatives that enrich past initiatives and the man-
agement recognizes and prioritizes learning as an integral part of best practices. That
is why; the spiral of learning along the hierarchical line by dealing with the block-
ages mentioned earlier in the company will help develop a learning organization of
continuous improvement.
Our scientific approach inscribed in this chapter, using a set of companies’ exper-
imentation, is integrated in the 17 objectives of sustainable development (SDG).
Our contribution will ultimately allow us to propose managerial routines for middle
management (transition to be Leader). The purpose of the PSP model and associated
managerial routines will be to increase the professional capabilities of production
agents around problem-based learning. This medium-term research work will con-
tribute to Goal 4.c (Access to Quality Education—Adult Education and Continuous
Learning).
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Teaching Sustainable Lean: The Next
Step Towards Inculcating a Critical
Problem-Solving Mindset
Rupy Sawhney, Ninad Pradhan, Nelson Matias, Enrique Macias De Anda,

Esdras Araujo, Samuel Trevino and Carla Arbogast
Abstract The constant business pressure to increase operational efficiency pro-

motes Lean. However, studies indicate that Lean has under delivered as a sus-
tainable practice, with few companies developing a “culture of Lean”. This is
essentially because practitioners perceive Lean as a set of tools and techniques,
instead of adopting a systems approach to addressing issues. Existing approaches
to Lean teaching also contribute to the problem; they are not geared towards cre-
ating a critical problem-solving mindset which can create systems thinkers. Lean
sustainability failures are also exacerbated by Lean’s push for waste reduction, often
at the cost of employee well-being. The Sustainable Lean model, developed at the
University of Tennessee, balances the inherent struggle between perfect operational
and perfect people systems. The balance is created by following four principles: 1.
Reduce resource and effort level by strategic problem definition, 2. Align all efforts
with system growth and competitiveness, 3. Enhance throughput and capacity, and
4. Enhance employee quality of life. The model inculcates the elements of a critical
problem-solving mindset: defining the correct problem, effectively solving the prob-
lem, and integrating people requirements into the solution design. This model has
become the basis of the systematic development of undergraduate courses, graduate
courses, and special programs.
1 Critical Problem-Solving as an Educational Goal
The goal of education, be it at the undergraduate, graduate, or professional level, is to

be a transformative experience (Mezirow 1997). The efforts of educators are oriented
towards providing such an experience for those under their tutelage. The expectation
R. Sawhney (B) · N. Pradhan · E. M. De Anda · E. Araujo · S. Trevino · C. Arbogast

University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA
e-mail: rupysawhney@gmail.com; sawhney@utk.edu
N. Matias
Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Centro Universitário Teresa D’ Ávila (UNIFATEA), Lorena, São Paulo, Brazil

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13515-7_3
62 R. Sawhney et al.
would then be that participants in applied science and engineering courses emerge
fully equipped to deliver the requirements of their professional workplace. This
has been observed to not be true (Downey 2005). Employers are instead required to
spend time and effort training or retraining graduates to develop the skills and attitude
required for their successful assimilation (Suskie 2009). Inferentially, this suggests
a disconnect between the goals of higher education and the success of educators
towards realizing these goals.
The disconnect may partially be explained by company-specific work require-
ments, the culture of the company, and industry standards, which are typically outside
of the purview of academic instruction. However, these factors inadequately explain
the training needed for graduates to reliably being able to identify the effective route
to resolving issues (Felder and Brent 2003), whether technical or conceptual. In other
words, there is inconsistency in problem solving capability in student populations.
The inconsistency stems from the lack of pedagogical effort expended in standardiz-
ing the way of thinking about problem solving. Major educational standards, such as
ABET (Felder and Brent 2003), do not stipulate a critical problem-solving model.
Industrial engineering education, and industrial engineering practice in general,
espouse the Lean roadmap as a route to developing problem-solving skills. Lean has
been widely adopted in organizations worldwide. However, the adoption of Lean
overlooks a significant aspect of the approach—that there is no standard definition
of what comprises “Lean” (Bhamu and Sangwan 2014). The oversight is somewhat
intentional. The tradeoff is that, while Lean may be intangible in certain ways, it
does provide a roadmap—via Toyota Production System (TPS) (Ōno 1988)—and
context for planning and implementation of projects.
The core question is whether teaching TPS as the roadmap truly inculcates crit-
ical problem-solving skills. Practitioners have been known to focus on the “event-
centered” aspect of TPS—that is, to reduce the approach to a problem to a series
of Kaizen events. This engenders the risk that students may conversely interpret
problem-solving as being a process of resolving events, without a clear perspective
of the bigger picture. Two adverse consequences may result from this interpretation:
Lean may not be implemented completely, or it may fail to sustain.
Evidence from Lean case studies, academic literature, and industry literature sub-
stantiates both failure modes. The numbers are staggering: different studies report that
implementation efforts fail between 74 and 98% of the time (Pay 2008; Degirmenci
et al. 2013). These failures have been attributed to as executive, cultural, management,
implementation and technical issues (Mejabi 2003). Specifically, the Lean Enterprise
Institute (as cited by Bhasin 2012) attributed failure to people resistance to change
from different levels in the organizations, economic implications and constraints,
perception of Lean in general or as a result of prior failed projects, or simple lack of
implementation knowledge. From an operational perspective, the immediate effects
of Lean play an important role on the decision makers to refrain from sustaining
the journey: machines and people not working all the time, inventory accumulation
to level production schedule, increasing direct labor, and increased use of manual
Teaching Sustainable Lean: The Next Step Towards Inculcating … 63
processes over automation and information technologies (Liker 2004). Most assess-
ments of Lean focus on short-term results and lack of behavioral aspects (Narayana-
murthy and Gurumurthy 2016). Perhaps it is necessary that higher education insti-
tutions pay specific attention to address these issues in with a systemic approach,
centering the methodology on the effects and the role people have on its success.
There is a compelling case for the development of a Lean model which devi-
ates from the standard—TPS—in the following innovative directions: 1. The model
must be centered on critical problem solving, 2. The model must allow the practi-
tioner to define relevant problems within the larger scope of their assignment, 3. The
model must create a path for relevant problems to be solved reliably, 4. The model
must encode methods which allow the solution to sustain. The presented model—-
called Sustainable Lean or Sustainable Lean Systems—satisfies these requirements.
A thorough discussion of the model is provided in the Sect. 3.
The focus of this chapter is on the dissemination of Sustainable Lean to an audience
of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. There are several variables at
work in developing a pedagogical plan. The depth of content, theoretical level of
instruction, appropriate balance between textbook and practical learning, are all rel-
evant considerations. The Center for Advanced Systems Research and Education
(CASRE) and Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) at the Uni-
versity of Tennessee, Knoxville (UT) have developed programs and course syllabi
which address each consideration in the dissemination of the Sustainable Lean model.
Each method of delivery of the information is discussed in detail, accompanied by
summaries of student experiences and feedback, where appropriate.
2 Pedagogical Basis of Teaching Critical Problem-Solving
2.1 The Relationship Between Education, Career Building,

and an Individual’s Quality of Life
The aspiration to university education in contemporary US society has been high-

lighted in a report by the US Department of Commerce Economics and Statistics
Administration—US Census Bureau April 2018. This is further evidenced by the
significant rise in the number of university students over the past six decades—from
2.4 million (1955) to 19.1 million. (2015) (Schmidt 2018).
In addition to the statistical increase, it is important to highlight the recommenda-
tion made by UNESCO in the preamble of the document (Unesco 1998) The Higher
Education in the Twenty-First Century: Vision and Action. As stated in the document:
“[…] unprecedented demand for and a great diversification in higher education, as
well as an increased awareness of its vital importance for sociocultural and economic
development, and for building the future, for which the younger generations will need
to be equipped with new skills, knowledge and ideals.”
The rationale behind this assertion is that people are interested in overcoming the
challenges of earning a livelihood and have therefore turned to academic instruction
to achieve better career outcomes and, consequently, access to a higher quality of life.
The United Nations Development Program—Human Development Reports (2015)
(Fig. 1) affirms the perception that knowledge is linked to the growth of abilities which
eventually determine an individual’s quality of life. This clearly indicates a societal
need for formal education with the promise of being a transformative experience for
an individual.
Formal education can be traced back to several centuries in the past. China had
a formal education system in the eleventh century, in which the need for resources
such as classrooms, library, and other settings were foreseen to facilitate learning.
Academic success was challenging, even in the early history of formal education.
The curriculum was pedantic, concentrating on literary and philosophical works,
supported by official oversight (Gaspar 2007). This approach perhaps concerningly
resonates with that adopted by many present-day universities.
Today’s universities have a diverse population, and one that is increasingly diverse
in terms of their abilities, personality, and life history. An inflexible teaching style
is unlikely to work in such an environment. Students expect university education to
prepare them for the rigors of post-educational life. This expectation has not been
adequately fulfilled by existing educational approaches.
This is evidenced by several survey-based studies. Surveys conducted by After-
College between February and April 2014 (Badal 2016), show that: “[…] more than
80% of college seniors graduate without a job.” Another survey, the “Harris Poll”,
was conducted across 305 universities by the market research firm Harris Insights
and Analytics on behalf of CareerBuilder. This survey, which spanned the period
Fig. 1 The importance of knowledge to quality of life; adapted from http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/

what-human-development, 2016
August 11–September 5, 2014, concluded that: “[…] only 36% of graduates are
employed in full-time, permanent positions. One-third are in part-time or temporary
positions or doing internships; the rest (31%) are not working.” Some respondents
were college graduates who were working on activities that do not require college
education (Ricker 2014). Reinforcing, Badal to AfterCollege (2016) pointed out that
52% of the students believed they were getting the proper preparation for the working
world. However, this belief has diminished, as shown by the 69.4% of students who
answered the same survey carried out the previous year.
These numbers are symptomatic of at least two issues: 1. There is a gap between
the expectation and delivery of the educational experience in university courses
and programs, and 2. Graduates from several courses and programs emerge from
their education not entirely work-ready. The absence of certain niche skills, among
other personal factors may be part of this context. The adverse consequences of
this situation may be a reduction in the number of people, especially young adults,
interested in availing of educational programs. There are already indications of such
attrition, seen from the statistics of students who enter the university only to leave
after a few semesters (Long 2016). The challenge for universities is then to change
their approach to restore their relevance in elevating the quality of life of graduates.
2.2 Developing an Academic Culture Conducive to Achieving

Pedagogical Goals
The university system is, in contemporary society, the most appropriate mechanism
for training in skills and development of work-related talents. The adjustment to be
made for this mechanism to be successful is for the educational provider to understand
the importance of developing a culture which is conducive to achieving their goals.
The culture of imparting education should be responsive to the needs of all those
involved, be they employees, teachers, or students. It should involve the students and
stimulate their motivation to absorb the content. This stipulates, in the context of
the chapter, that Sustainable Lean courses, their presentation, and their constituent
activities should be geared towards creating a culture of student participation and
engagement.
Within this context, it is essential to understand the formal definitions of culture.
Culture can be defined as: “[…] the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions,
cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process
of socialization” (CARLA 2014). The Center for Advanced Research on Language
Acquisition completes the definition by saying that patterns identify members of a
cultural group as well as distinguishing them from other groups. In addition to this
definition, CARLA (2014) presents nine definitions of different areas, comprised
between 1995 and 1945. The following perspectives stand out (Table 1):
The definitions of culture have subtle variations; some consider the artifact as
culture and others the behaviors. In 2017, Sawhney & Macias define culture as
Table 1 Definitions of culture; adapted from CARLA (2014)

Lederach, J.P. (1995). Preparing for peace: “Culture is the shared knowledge and
Conflict transformation across cultures. schemes created by a set of people for
Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press perceiving, interpreting, expressing, and
responding to the social realities around
them” (p. 9)
Banks, J. A., Banks, & McGee, C. A. (1989). “[…] The essence of a culture is not its
Multicultural education. Needham Heights, MA: artifacts, tools, or other tangible cultural
Allyn & Bacon elements but how the members of the group
interpret, use, and perceive them”
Damen, L. (1987). Culture Learning: The Fifth “Culture is mankind’s primary adaptive
Dimension on the Language Classroom. mechanism” (p. 367)
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley
Hofstede, G. (1984). National cultures and “Culture is the collective programming of
corporate cultures. In L.A. Samovar & R.E. the mind which distinguishes the members
Porter (Eds.), Communication Between of one category of people from another”
Cultures. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth (p. 51)
Useem, J., & Useem, R. (1963). Human “[…] the learned and shared behavior of a
Organizations, 22(3) community of interacting human beings”
(p. 169)
Kroeber, A.L., & Kluckhohn, C. (1952). Culture: “[…] culture systems may, on the one hand,
A critical review of concepts and definitions. be considered as products of action, and on
Harvard University Peabody Museum of the other as conditioning elements of further
American Archeology and Ethnology Papers 47 action”
Parson, T. (1949). Essays in Sociological “Culture…consists in those patterns relative
Theory. Glencoe, IL to behavior and the products of human
action which may be inherited, that is,
passed on from generation to generation
independently of the biological genes” (p. 8)
Kluckhohn, C., & Kelly, W.H. (1945). The “By culture we mean all those historically
concept of culture. In R. Linton (Ed.). The created designs for living, explicit and
Science of Man in the World Culture. New York. implicit, rational, irrational, and nonrational,
(pp. 78-105) which exist at any given time as potential
guides for the behavior of men”
Linton, R. (1945). The Cultural Background of “[…] configuration of learned behaviors and
Personality. New York results of behavior whose component
elements are shared and transmitted by the
members of a particular society” (p. 32)
“[…] the ability of individuals to accomplish a constant behavior based on their values
(beliefs) aligned to accomplish defined goals. Therefore, it is first required to have a
clear definition of values in order to set a culture.” Therefore, an educational approach
must identify and precisely define its own values as an antecedent to developing a
culture conducive to critical problem-solving instruction.
2.3 Aligning Educator Objectives with Career Preparedness
Badal (2016) analyzes the outcomes of multiple polls, including those conducted by
the Gallup-Lumina Foundation, AfterCollege, Oxford Economics, and Deloitte. The
Gallup poll finds that the development of skills and career-related talents is perceived
by 78% of adults in the US as being essential to maintaining the preeminent economic
position enjoyed by the country in recent years. Neves and Hillman (2017, p. 34) have
shown that responding to this challenge by devising different approaches to teaching
have the potential to transform student learning. Their paper provides insights into
the style of studying adopted by students. Students were asked to divide their total
hours of study into six categories—lectures, seminars, tutorials, project supervision,
demonstration and supervised lab/workshop time. It was observed that technology
and engineering students spent much of their study time in lectures and supervised
lab/workshop hours. Moreover, the AfterCollege poll cited by Badal (2016) has
reported that “[…] faculty ranked 3rd, just behind parents and significant others,
as having the strongest influence on career-related decisions.” These studies further
highlight the responsibility handed to educators and the importance of careful con-
struction of course syllabus and development of a complementary teaching style.
The modification of pedagogical behavior can best prepare the graduate for facing
the job market and eventually improving their quality of life.
So, how must educators and universities approach the need to adopt the right
teaching techniques to meet their goals? Matching technical content to that valued
by companies is a step in the right direction. The analysis of the university-employer
gap by Badal (2016) reveals additional factors. Companies value a set of skills that
is different from those imparted by universities. This is highlighted in Table 2, based
on a Deloitte survey cited by Badal (2016). The recourse is to align what is taught
with what is expected.
The emphasis of this chapter on critical problem-solving is reinforced by an
Oxford Economics survey cited by Badal (2016). The survey listed the qualities
desirable to future employers. Interestingly, technical content such as statistical anal-
ysis was not at the top of the list. Companies were interested in people with critical
thinking, problem-solving, and team collaboration skills—that is, who could deal
with complexity and ambiguity, different points of view, understand the process of
co-creation, beyond cultural sensitivity. The Sawhney Lean Educational Maturity
Model at the University of Tennessee (Sawhney and Macias De Anda 2017) con-
nects these qualities to Lean education, where “There is no question that Lean success
Table 2 What students learn

Skills/University Skills/Companies
versus what companies seek
Time management Leadership
Academic knowledge Sales talent
Teamwork General business knowledge
Analytical skills Entrepreneurial
Table 3 Development of a
Goal: identify and build an entrepreneurial mindset among
mindset in students; adapted
college students
from Badal (2016)
STEP 1 STEP 2 STEP 3
Identifying their Measure and ranks Work on talents
entrepreneurial 10 talents most
talents prominent of
successful
entrepreneurs
is based on teamwork, however, understanding these cultural differences becomes

an important factor in the approaches and mechanisms utilized to develop the
necessary teams.” The compendium on Lean education (Alves et al. 2017) and related
articles on Lean thinking and education (Alves et al. 2017; Flumerfelt et al. 2016)
provides additional resources which highlight the dissemination of Lean thinking as
an educational paradigm.
A quality closely related to cultural awareness and critical thinking is the
entrepreneurial mindset, measured by a 40-year Gallup survey presented by Badal
(2016). The study highlights entrepreneurial qualities desirable to student success,
such as resourcefulness, teamwork, creativity, relationship building and resilience
(Table 3). The Gallup method found that students who underwent training in the
entrepreneurial way of thinking were able to evolve strongly with experience. These
individuals were also better equipped to acquire new skills at a professional level.
2.4 Teaching Methodologies
Distler (2016) presents the perspective that the construction of knowledge depends
on its recepient. Therefore, the same information received from an instructor may
lead to different interpretations, making it difficult to quantify its effectiveness. Dif-
ferent teaching theories have been developed to address this ambiguity, presented by
Pazmino (2019): Behaviorism proposed by J. B. Watson (Weibell 2011) and B. F.
Skinner (1904–1990) (Cherry 2018), Cognitivismo (Hebb 1904–1985; Wertheimer
1880–1943; Kõhler 1887–1967; Koffka 1886–1941; Tolman 1886–1959; Lewis,
Piaget, Bruner 1969–1976 and Ausubel 1918–2008).
The teaching of engineering in recent years has been explored as a pedagogical
topic (Brighenti et al. 2015). The main interest of the researchers has been to develop
strategies that allow the best learning, and the sustainability of what one learns. Some
of these methods and their definitions are presented (Fig. 2).
Figure 2 is adapted from Sawhney and Macias de Anda (2017) and the defini-
tions are from: Hackathorn et al. (2011), Yale (2018), Knoll (2014), Buck Institute
for Education (2018), Yadav et al. (2013), Johnson (1991), American Council on
Education (2005), Teed (2018), Davidovitch et al. (2006), and Kolb (2015).
Fig. 2 Teaching and learning methods
Felder and Silverman (1988) says that: “Students learn in many ways—by seeing
and hearing; reflecting and acting; reasoning logically and intuitively; memorizing
and visualizing and drawing analogies and building mathematical models […]”.
Systematic learning takes place as a collective effect of educators, the environment,
and classroom dynamics. Therefore, different methods are necessary to fulfil the
complete role and promise of teaching and learning objectives.
The key objectives for new and restructured academic endeavors, based on the
presented pedagogical analysis, are: 1. Critical thinking and problem-solving are
essential qualities directly linked with industry needs, 2. Universities and academic
programs impart technical skills, but graduates are typically expected to contribute to
industry in deeper ways for which they are not prepared, 3. The manner of imparting
technical and critical thinking skills should be carefully considered in the design of
a course or program. The next section presents the Sustainable Lean model, which is
explicitly designed to meet Objectives 1 and 3. The reason for the clarity in design is
that Sustainable Lean explicitly recognizes Objective 2 as a fundamental professional
problem.
3 The Sustainable Lean Model
3.1 Conceptual Basis—The Conflict Between a Perfect

Operational System and Perfect People System
The resolution of the conflict between the perception of a perfect operational system
and the perfect people system is central to the development of the Sustainable Lean
model.
The perfect operational system is defined to have perfect flow, no variation,
and no disruptions. For “perfect flow”, the system must have arrivals rates aligned
with a balanced one-piece flow (Monden 2011) process which meets customer
Takt time. The perfect operational system maximizes throughput by minimizing the
work in process (WIP) inventory and cycle time. An unbalanced line, by corollary,
increases the WIP and cycle time, and therefore reduces throughput. Lean concepts
commonly focus on improvement of throughput by line balancing, cycle time and
WIP reduction (Gurumurthy and Kodali 2009). Recent conceptual developments
have also highlighted the role of variation on the throughput in similar ways to flow
(Oleghe and Salonitis 2016).
The perfect operational system is defined in terms of the performance of the
system and by the subsequent design requirements that achieve optimal system per-
formance. There are three categories of performance associated with a system that
has suppliers, production, and customers. The first category comprises overall sys-
tem performance metrics. The second category specifically measures coordination
between suppliers/production and production/customers. The third category mea-
sures the effectiveness of production. All categories within the perfect operational
system are geared towards achieving 100% utilization of all resources, including
people working in the system. Lean approaches typically are geared toward the real-
ization of a perfect operational system (Hozak and Olsen 2015).
The perfect people system is defined relative to employees in an organization. It
recognizes that the basic need of employees is to deliver results with no arbitrary
sources of stress. Unfortunately, an injudicious use of Lean, in the pursuit of a perfect
operational system, has been found to introduce work related stressors. It has led to a
reported level of disenchantment of shop floor workers with Lean (Conti et al. 2006).
This understanding is key to appreciating the failure of Lean to sustain. Lean is a
people driven system which can only succeed with the full support of employees.
The Sustainable Lean model can deliver on its promise of “sustainability” when
factors essential to well-being, as identified in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Maslow
and Lewis 1987), and work satisfaction of employees are considered. These factors
are called “levels of employee work-related needs”, and shortlisted as follows:
• Level 1: An employee must receive fair compensation and have job security. In
its absence, employees lose confidence in the Lean implementation which in turn
affects their performance and participation. This leads to higher turnover rates. A
perfect people system must have zero turnover.
• Level 2: An employee must feel safe in the workplace. Safety has three compo-
nents: 1. Physical safety, 2. Professional safety, and 3. Social safety, which is indi-
cated by the extent of prevalent prejudice or bias. Lean implementations address
the first component sufficiently, by way of tools such as 5S, visual controls, and
mistake proofing. The second and third are not directly addressed with the context
of Lean. A perfect people system must have zero recorded safety events related to
any component.
• Level 3: An employee must experience a balance of work related stress and produc-
tivity. In its absence, employees feel stressed and unreasonable demands may be
imposed on their work. A perfect system must have zero levels of stress indicators
such as overtime hours, absenteeism, and work backlog.
• Level 4: An employee must be engaged; that is, have a sense of purpose and
belonging in the workplace. Engagement of employees in this sense is rarely a
component of Lean planning and implementation. A perfect people system must
have engaged employees who experience high levels of autonomy at work.
• Level 5: An employee must have opportunities to lead. The individuals who have
earned influence and respect within the organization must get the opportunity to
leverage this ability towards the success of the implementation. A perfect people
system must identify and promote leaders from within the organization.
The conceptual basis of the Sustainable Lean model is to reconcile the perfect oper-
ational system and the perfect people system. Specifically, Lean becomes Sustainable
Lean when there is a concerted attempt to understand the needs of the employees
and make their well-being an essential requirement of the model. In doing so, the
methods to achieve the perfect operational system become a part of organizational
culture and sustenance becomes natural, since employees are invested in the process.
Figure 3 shows the progression from Lean to Sustainable Lean.
Fig. 3 The Sustainable Lean model—concept

These principles of sustainability at the organizational level have broad implica-

tions to society, stated relative to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
(UN General Assembly 2015). SDGs are an outcome of the progression of ideas on
worldwide sustainability, originating from a plan for “sustainable development to
improve human lives” and culminating in the formation of the Division for Sustain-
able Development Goals (DSDG) within the UN. The Sustainable Lean model, with
its emphasis on benefits for people and sustainable growth in organizations, finds
itself in agreement with the following SDGs:
• SDG 9, “Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable indus-
trialization and foster innovation”, Target 9.2: “Promote inclusive and sustainable
industrialization …”, which highlights the need to focus on improving manufac-
turing value in an economy.
• SDG 12, “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns”, Target 12.8:
“… ensure that people everywhere have the relevant information and awareness
for sustainable development …”, which highlights the need to educate learners at
all levels about sustainability in various manifestations.
3.2 The Model
The Sustainable Lean model, shown in Fig. 4, provides a systematic approach of

how to solve a problem by using critical thinking techniques, aligned to Industrial
Engineering tools. The model comprises four modules, allocated into three phases,
with the following goals:
Fig. 4 The Sustainable Lean model—framework

• Goal 1: Reduce resource and effort level by strategically defining the problem.
• Goal 2: Align efforts with system growth and competitiveness.
• Goal 3: Enhance capacity via throughput.
• Goal 4: Enhance employee quality of life.
Phase 1, entitled “Systems Prognosis”, relates to Module 1, “Define a system-
based problem”, and Module 2, “Align continuous improvement with desired orga-
nizational outcomes”. Together, these modules find the critical path that constrains
the system and develop a strategy to resolve issues in the critical path, designing
metrics and indicators for projects in the critical path which link to throughput and
system capability.
Phase 2, “The Systems Diagnosis”, relates to Module 3, “Enhance system
throughput via disruption, variation, and flow”, in which solutions to the problems in
the critical path are developed, while stabilizing the process and improving its relia-
bility. Phase 3, “Sustain Systems Health” is where Module 4, “Sustain via employee
buy-in”, is inserted. It uses system dynamics engineering to anticipate and mitigate
the risk of employee resistance to the changes and solutions proposed in earlier steps.
These modules are briefly explained. Courses and programs described in the
next section impart elements of this critical problem-solving approach to students.
This includes instruction about modules, connected tools and skills, and exposure to
implementing them in practical settings.
Fig. 5 Sustainable Lean—Module 1

3.3 Module 1
The most relevant problem to be resolved is physically identified in this module

(Fig. 5). The DRIVES (Define, Recognize, Identify, Visualize, Execute, Sustain)
model (Sawhney and Macias de Anda 2014) anchors the work ascribed to Module
1. It is noteworthy that the Execute and Sustain phases in the DRIVES acronym are
outside the scope of this module. The system under consideration is visualized at the
level of its constituent networks, sub-systems, and processes. The bottleneck in the
system and the critical path which contains the bottleneck is identified. Characteristics
of the system related to flow, variation, and potential sources of disruption are noted.
A significant theoretical addition—relative to the DRIVES model—is to integrate
the categorization of processes into analysis and solution development. Processes
in the critical path are categorized as being deterministic, stochastic, or “Bayesian”.
Deterministic processes do not possess any randomness in the development of future
system states. Stochastic processes have repeatable process steps but exhibit variation
in process time and logical movements. Bayesian processes have process steps whose
probability is conditioned by the input to the process. This categorization propagates
through the structure of Sustainable Lean. It leads to the development of solutions
which are tailored to individual process characteristics.
3.4 Module 2
The performance metrics which analyze system output by means of leading and
lagging indicators are developed in this module. These metrics are specific to the
critical path and processes characterized in Module 1. They include an understanding
of the sources of disruption, which may originate from maintenance, setup, or quality.
Metrics are connected to throughput using Little’s law (Little 1961), which relates
the throughput to WIP and cycle time, both of which are influenced by flow, variation,
and disruption in the critical path. A graphical illustration of the connection between
leading indicators and throughput is provided in Fig. 6. Throughput, in turn, links to
lagging indicators such as capacity, cost, and service level.
3.5 Module 3
The solution to issues defined and analyzed in previous modules is developed in this
module. The key idea is to first stabilize the system and then deliver a reliable solution.
The stabilization must be done in such a way as to respect the process characteristic
found in Module 1 (Deterministic, Stochastic, and Bayesian), then should prioritize
the action to be performed considering Flow, Variation, and Disruption. Figure 7
shows the order of priority of each element in each type of process.
A “reliable solution” is required to possess four types of reliability in the Sus-

tainable Lean approach—People, Material, Equipment, and Schedule (PMES). The
imposition of this requirement guarantees a solution in which equipment is available,
a scheduling system is in place, material is provided to the right process at the right
time, and—in a significant departure from the Lean standard—workforce capabili-
ties and skills are factored into the definition of reliable systems. The last inclusion
is a significant step in the direction of making Sustainable Lean solutions focused on
the satisfaction and well-being of employees. Once the system has been stabilized
and made reliable, the flow can be redesigned to guarantee system outputs at their
desired levels (Fig. 7).
3.6 Module 4
The final step towards sustainability of Lean—anticipating and addressing employee

resistance and ensuring that their quality of life has improved—is asserted in this
module. The magnitude of this issue is represented in Fig. 8. The technical solu-
tion—which has been achieved using Modules 1–3, is a prerequisite to this module,
but is far from being sufficient. Employee resistance can be understood through the
lens of Lean culture, basic competence of the workforce, and regional and national
culture. Once all subfactors in each category have been understood, a “people-based
system design” can emerge from the technical solution. Such a design must be iter-
atively evaluated and improved until the perceived resistance to technical improve-
ments has been eliminated. Further, all other things being the same—such as the
organization, its structure, the nature of the issue—does not eliminate the necessity

of this module. Employee participation and appreciation of their cultural context is

essential to sustaining a solution.
4 Dissemination of the Sustainable Lean Model—Courses
The theory that supports the Sustainable Lean model consists of various branches
of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Within this context, the instruction of these
existing theories and topics align with the framework of this model in specific
courses, using a combination of the teaching-learning methodologies discussed in
the Sect. 2.4.
The courses, as part of the curriculum in the degrees mentioned above, are the
following:
• IE 427 Introduction to Lean Systems.

• IE 517 Reliability of Lean Systems.
• IE 527 Lean Production Systems.
• IE 531 Systems Thinking and Modeling.
• IE 532 Systems Based Requirements Engineering.
These courses have benefited a wide range of student participants, including:
• Undergraduate students at the University of Tennessee, mainly those studying
Industrial and Systems Engineering.
• Graduate students at the University of Tennessee.
• Professionals who enjoy the benefit of an onsite continuing education program
towards a Master’s in Industrial Engineering, with a Systems concentration.
The Sustainable Lean course matrix (Fig. 9) maps the ideas and techniques from
Sustainable Lean to a these set of courses which deliver the content to students.
Perhaps not all theories are applicable at all levels in the model and in all courses,
but it provides a structure that transitioned from the traditional methods of Lean
education, into the framework of this new theory. The courses included have been
added to the curriculum in different times as the need emerged (Sawhney and Macias
de Anda 2017), lacking an umbrella framework, which is now satisfied by this theory.
In the analysis of how this is implemented throughout the courses, different levels
of depth have been arbitrarily assigned, to better explain the approach:
• Level 1—Overview: The concepts are covered without any depth, with illustrative
or introductory purposes.
• Level 2—Depth: The concepts in the framework are covered with academic depth.
• Level 3—Assessment: Includes the level above, adding assessment of knowledge
through assignments or examinations.
• Level 4—Dominance: The above, including discussion for the understanding of
the concept and its connections and relevance with other areas.
• Level 5—Implementation: The above, including use of concepts in a project, either
in a case, simulated/gamified environment or a real project.
• Level 6—The above, including adding knowledge to the concept of individual
rationale.
4.1 IE 427 Introduction to Lean Systems
4.1.1 Aspects of Sustainable Lean Covered
The four various modules of Sustainable Lean are covered towards the end of the
semester. This is a Level 2 course in Sustainable Lean. It delivers enough information
to teach students how and where to use their knowledge about various Sustainable
78
Student
Content PresentaƟon OrganizaƟon PerspecƟve
ParƟcipaƟon
Phase ObjecƟve Relevant concepts Course Level Teaching Methodology Summary Concrete Abstract Visual Verbal Induc ve Deduc ve Ac ve Passive Sequen al Global
Iden fy the problems using Problem Failure Iden fica on of Problems and introducing the concepts of
Requirements Planning IE 532 5 Lec, Cas, PM, PBL x x x x x
Techniques. Problem failures Techniques on how to solve the problem.
Func on of organiza on constraining growth

Physically locate the constraint in the form of Key value stream of constraining func on IE-427 2 Lec, Cas, PM
a cri cal path. Cri cal path of key value stream IE-527 5
Bo leneck
Iden fica on and visualiza on of a project's problem. X X X X X X
Cri cal Path
Ability to define Categorize the cri cal path to iden fy key Determinis c: Disrup on, Varia on and Flow IE-427 2 Lec, Cas, PM
the problem issues. Stochas c: Varia on, Disrup on and Flow IE-527 5 DM
Bayesian: Flow, Varia on and Disrup on
Lagging Indicators
Link the approach at the project level with
throughput/capacity and organiza onal IE-427 2 Lec, Cas, PM, DM, Determine the path of the solu ons and performance
X X X X X
outcomes to ensure projects are aligned with IE-527 5 Coop, Tw, Gam, Sim evalua on with respect to the organiza onal goals.
organiza onal ini a ves.
Leading indicators
IE-427 2 Lec, Cas, PM, DM,

Solu on starts with stabilizing the process. Process stabiliza on X X X X X
IE-527 5 Tw, Gam
Paradigm shi from efficiency to reliability in IE-517 5 PBL, IDM, Sim,

Reliability of systems vs efficiency X X X X X
the design of processes and systems. IE-527 3 Lec
Ability to solve Analysis and design of systems from a performance

Decomposi on of a process and system in IE-517 5
the problem Reliability of processes and systems Lec, PBL, DM measurement perspec ve in: flow, varia on, disrup on and X X X X X
terms of reliability. IE-527 3
with precision reliability.
Design flow a er stabilizing the process IE-517 5

Modified TPS Cas, DM, Lec, Tw X X X X X
based on modified TPS. IE-527 5
10 Lean Subsystems. Pre-requisites for flow and JIT IE-427 2 Lec, Cas, PM X X X X X
Emulate behavioral effects within feedback loops caused by

Mi gate risk by applying systems engineering IE-527 1 the interrela onships of variables, parameters and
Systems Engineering Lec, PM, PBL, Sim X X X X X
to predict resistance. IE-591 5 response stocks represen ng a system to predict resistance
in business dynamics.
Ability to
sustain a Mi gate risk by designing process/system IE-427 2
Engagement Model Lec, Cas, DM X X X X X X
solu on based that engages individuals. IE-527 4
on cultural
development Mi gate risk by predic ng misalignment of Ensure that the quality of life is not compromised while
Skills requirements IE-527 4 Lec, DM X X X X X
skills. implemen ng a solu on.
Mi gate risk by honoring the culture of

Culturally Sensi ve Lean Systems Design Model IE-527 4 Lec, DM, Coop X X X X X
employees.
Fig. 9 The Sustainable Lean course matrix

R. Sawhney et al.
Lean, Lean, and statistical tools. Each lecture has a mix of active and passive partic-
ipation levels, with increasing participation resulting from an understanding of the
concept.
4.1.2 Course Description
Introduces an engineering-based framework to implement process and system

improvements within both the manufacturing and service enterprises. The students
are introduced to the basic concepts of Lean systems including facility design and
six-sigma. The focus of the course is to enable students to design complex processes
and systems based on the physical system and the associated information system.
Activities include case studies, industry-based projects, and the preparation of engi-
neering reports.
4.1.3 Course Objective
The students must develop the ability to strategize, develop and implement Lean sys-
tems in a manner that ensures value to the organization, customer and the employees.
Students must be prepared in a manner that will enable them to be leaders that have
Lean skills with the ability to impact society. Societal impact is measured both in
direct design of Lean systems and the ability to mentor others in creating Lean
systems. This includes the following:
• Student awareness of societal obligations,
• Student ability to design systemic change,
• Student ability to understand basic Lean and flow concepts and,
• Student ability to demonstrate critical problem-solving.
4.1.4 Methodologies
Lectures—Lectures for all course materials are prepared, recorded and uploaded
online for future reference.
Discussion—The students are asked to discuss their approach to Lean techniques
in class. This creates an interactive environment between the instructor and students.
Case Studies—Each lecture in the class either has its own case study, or a single
case study spans a series of lectures. Students are asked to maintain a case study
journal for each real-life case discussed in class, as well as for their own case study.
The final evaluation includes the instructor conducting a one on one assessment of
the journal with each student.
Teamwork—A team project is assigned to the students for them to apply the
knowledge gained in the class to a real-world situation. Teams may select parts of
the Sustainable Lean model as the basis for their project design.
Game Based Learning—The game used for learning is a process that follows four
steps progressively moving from a chaotic “non-Lean” factory setting to a completely
“Lean” process, with the aid of Lego pieces. This game is played throughout the
course of the semester, addressing different parts of the Sustainable Lean model,
especially the transition from ability to define the problem to solving it. This activity
serves to clarify the most essential concepts behind Sustainable Lean.
Simulation based Learning—Systems thinking and analysis based on simulation
modeling is taught.
4.1.5 Feedback
Students were found to correctly define the problem to be solved in the system.
Despite limited access to the site of the project, they demonstrated an ability to
recognize the critical path, bottlenecks and supporting statistics.
4.2 IE 517 Reliability of Lean Systems
Two phases are covered in this lecture: ability to define the problem and ability to
solve the problem with precision. The latter has a greater level of depth, since the
focus is on understanding the advantages of reliability over efficiency and including
it in the design of systems and processes.
Topics covered include: Introduction to Lean systems. Designing reliability into

Lean systems. Impact of reliability on Lean manufacturing, services, and processes.
Concepts of reliability engineering utilized to define failures of Lean systems. Focus
of coursework is to examine Lean production systems, equipment reliability, human
reliability, condition-based reliability, and reliability tools and concepts to improve
the reliability of a Lean production systems model.
This course provides understanding of the performance in manufacturing, service
processes and systems. Emphasis placed on efficiency and reliability analysis. Rela-
tionship between efficiency and reliability, will be addressed in a unified framework.
Analysis and implementation tools as well as future trends and directions will be
explored.
The course provides an in-depth understanding of the basic Lean principles and
reliability concepts as they apply to both the manufacturing and service sectors.
Topics such as performance measurements, role of flow, role of variation, role of
disruption, relationship between flow, variation, disruption and Reliability are studied
as well as the new concept of ReLeanability—reliability as pertains to Lean systems.
The course highlights the critical role that the Lean expert plays and the impact of
their decisions in designing Lean systems with respect to customers, employees, and
society. Students are required to illustrate their ability to integrate Lean and reliability
in an actual business environment.
4.2.4 Methodologies
Lectures—The ideas and principles of Lean are explained in detail using the standard
lecture method both in class and online. The lectures revolve around decomposing
a process and system in terms of the reliability of people, material, equipment and
schedule. The flow is redesigned after stabilization according to the modified version
of the Toyota Production System. The focus of the lectures is to design systems that
are more reliable rather than efficient.
Discussion—Students are asked to relate reliability theory to the assigned projects
after in-class and in-group discussions. The reliability calculation techniques in this
course are general such as series, parallel, k out n, as well as minimum-path, and
minimum-cut vector analysis in the systems without a known structure.
Teamwork—An overriding key component of this class is a semester-long team
project involving an enterprise-level evaluation of the integration of Lean and reli-
ability. The project includes an assessment of an aspect of a company’s current
equipment reliability, human reliability, supply chain reliability, or the reliability of
the Lean system as a whole. It is expected that many of the concepts discussed in
this course be applied in the project. The project requires a graduate-level paper and
presentation of summary recommendations on actions required to transition a firm
into a “Reliable Lean” enterprise.
Game based Learning—This activity is identical to that presented in the Game
based learning section within, Sect. 4.1.
4.2.5 Feedback
Per student feedback, this course introduced students to several concepts which
departed from their prior understanding of Industrial Engineering, including: a con-
ceptual understanding of Lean; specifically how the general goal of increasing
throughput can be achieved by targeting less nebulous things such as cycle time
and WIP. These things can be addressed through mainly reducing variations and
disruptions and levelling/balancing the flow. Students also reported that the concepts
of “ideal operational system” (with its constant demand and zero-level inventory)
and “ideal people system” were new to them. This made them realize the consider-
ation that must be given to people and their cultures (and general well-being) when
designing a Lean system.
4.3 IE 527 Lean Production Systems
Most aspects of the model are covered, at different levels of depth. This graduate-level
course introduces the concepts that comprise the framework of Sustainable Lean.
The three major modules (Ability to define the problem, ability to solve the problem
with precision, and ability to sustain a solution based on cultural development) are
addressed in this course.
Strategies for planning, development and implementation of Lean. Emphasis on

integration of people, technology, processes and information dimensions (including
product development, production and extended supply chain) into a unified frame-
work.
The course is intended to provide participants with the strategies for planning, devel-
opment and implementation of Lean through the integration of people, technology,
processes and information dimensions into a unified framework. Special emphasis
is placed on mathematical and engineering principles behind each of the concepts.
Little’s Law, Queuing Theory, Flow (Push, Kanban & Conwip systems) and Varia-
tion are thoroughly covered using a logical approach. The Sustainable Lean method
is introduced to students within this technical context.
4.3.4 Methodologies
Lectures—The course follows lectures as the main method of information dissemi-

nation through presentations, introducing the concepts and the general theory.
Discussion—Some aspects of the course allow for discussion, especially when
new concepts are about to be introduced, where the traditional way of thinking
emerges as the common solution to many of the problems addressed by Lean. Stu-
dents then have the opportunity to reflect on the new concepts and interiorize their
purpose and, where applicable, their connection to immediate job demands.
Case Studies—Documented case studies collected through own experiences and
other available resources provide the ground for critical thinking in the application of
the principles and the results that reflect into the comparison of the actual solution and
what the students analyze and solve, with emphasis in their ability to define the prob-
lematic situation. This methodology supports the objectives of physically locating
the constraint in the form of a critical path, categorizing the critical path to identify
key issues, and linking the approach at the project level with throughput/capacity and
organizational outcomes to ensure projects are aligned with organizational initiatives.
Cooperative Learning—This methodology supports learning through the contri-
butions of the members of the entire class, by sharing their reflection on the concepts
addressed, and finding research relevant to the concepts where it is applied. Link-
ing the approach at the project level with throughput/capacity and organizational
outcomes to ensure projects are aligned with organizational initiatives, as explained
through Little’s Law provides the ground to put the equation in context for different
work environments. At the same time, the alignment within operational and orga-
nizational outcomes presents different approaches within these environments. The
participation of all the students in the class contributes to present these different
environments, enriching the learning experience. Mitigation of risk by honoring the
culture of employees is another area where this methodology applies, as cultures
differ from each environment.
Teamwork—Students participate in teams to not divide efforts, but to solidify
knowledge with the contributions of all members. Teams usually comprise two or
three individuals, depending on the enrollment. Link the approach at the project level
with throughput/capacity and organizational outcomes to ensure projects are aligned
with organizational initiatives, solution start with stabilizing the process, and design
flow after stabilizing the process based on modified TPS are the topics that are suited
for teamwork. Most of these concepts are addressed by the reflections of the team
on the games, which are explained furtherly in the following paragraph.
Game Based Learning—This activity is identical to that presented in the Game
based learning section within, Sect. 4.1.
Simulation Based Learning—Simulation is used in course components
amenable to the use of a computer-based environment. In the model, this supports
the explanation of the principle in Little’s Law, as well as the use of supply chain
and other available simulations to explain the use of Lean, in combination with other
resources.
4.3.5 Feedback
As a graduate level course, participants were introduced to a new perspective of

operational excellence, with an evaluation of 3.75 (in a scale of 1–5, being “Totally
disagree” to “Totally agree” respectively). Even when some challenges were faced
in regard to the workload, the different pedagogical methodologies supported the
knowledge acquisition and comprehension for the students in different learning

styles. This course provides a comprehensive platform for their capstone project,
which is a requirement for degree completion, with relevant impact (subjectively
reported by the students and their supervisors at their respective jobs) for the
organization where they work.
4.4 IE 531 Systems Thinking and Modeling
To sustain a solution based on cultural development and mitigate risks, by applying

systems engineering, to predict resistance in business dynamics.
Application of Systems Thinking Theory to enhance the ability to: (1) identify the
right projects to be developed at an organization, (2) define the problem-solving
strategies, (3) and predict the sustainability success of the implementation of solu-
tions. As a support for the decision-making process, system dynamics modeling with
Anylogic Simulation is applied to build and emulate behavioral effects within feed-
back loops caused by the interrelationships of variables, parameters and response
stocks representing a system.
The structure of the class is mainly based on a problem based solving teaching
methodology. This course teaches use simulation models to demonstrate how a sys-
tem would work and would provide a detailed analysis of more about the archetypes
related to systems thinking. The main topics covered in the courses are Quality
Function Deployment, Systems Boundaries, Feedback Loops, Hierarchies, System
Dynamics, and System Archetypes. This course starts with the theoretical note on
each lecture and ends with a detailed case study analysis at the end of it. The course
mainly focused on the real time examples performed at the organizations and medical
institutions.
4.4.4 Methodologies
Lectures—This course primarily uses presentations as a major teaching technique

and Software based techniques to teach the concepts and general theory.
Case Study—Projects and case studies are taught based on the concepts covered
in the class, for example—emergency room analysis for a hospital. This case study
clearly identifies issues faced by emergency rooms, using a simulation model.
Simulation Based Learning—Simulations support the explanation of the prin-
ciple of system Archetypes, modeling of feedback loops and stocks, and systems
dynamics. Simulated case studies highlight the significance of different archetypes
and the impact of their solution approaches. This explains the overall structure of the
coursework and detailed analysis of topics covered in each lecture.
Project Based Learning—Projects are developed for mid-term and final exami-
nations, for which students develop apply systems thinking methodology to address
a specific goal. They build a causal loop model that explains the behavioral relation-
ships of different activities/events in a production system.
4.4.5 Feedback
The content of the course demonstrated the use visualization aids and simulation
models. Students were active in class and were engaged with the course. Profes-
sional students reported that the course made it easy to apply the concepts to their
workplaces. A few students made the work in this course the baseline for their grad-
uate work. Students found simulation modelling related to archetypes a challenging
technical and conceptual aspect of the course, but were found to overcome this hurdle
in their final projects.
4.5 IE 532 Systems Based Requirements Engineering
This course introduces the Sustainable Lean framework, specifically the tools and
techniques in Module 1 and 2.
Introduction to process design, with emphasis in the requirements stage. Most of

the theory has been developed in the field of information systems and software
development, but the applications are transferable to other fields of operations. The
stages of special focus of this course are: eliciting requirements, modelling and
analyzing requirements, communicating requirements, agreeing requirements, and
evolving requirements.
The course is intended to provide participants with the strategies for planning, devel-
opment and implementation of improvement and/or change within an organization
on problem failure techniques with a holistic approach using requirements planning.
The application of the methodologies utilized to obtain, structure, segregate, prior-
itize and translate into action items of the necessary requirements for a successful
project. The main topics covered in the courses are Material Requirements Planning
(MRP), FMEA, and Process Failures Techniques. This course starts with the theoret-
ical note on each lecture and ends with a detailed case study analysis at the end of it.
4.5.4 Methodologies
Lectures—All the major concepts and ideology of the course materials has been
taught using presentations. The lectures revolve around textbook materials in the
initial stages, leading to advanced and state-of-the-art material in later stages.
Discussion—Some aspects of the course work allow for discussion, especially
since requirements planning is new to most students, even those with professional
backgrounds.
Case Studies—Case studies, as designed for working professionals, highlight
issues or concepts relevant to their respective organizations. These include: steps in
requirements planning, identification of potential failures using FMEA techniques,
forecasting the demand in the company, and supplier and customer Relationships.
Project Based Leaning—Students develop a project related to their workplace
to which they apply the requirements planning methodology.
4.5.5 Feedback
Similar to the feedback received for the course, Sect. 4.4, working professionals
found this course relevant to their duties, and some have adopted its principles into
their Master’s research project. This course is new and is expected to evolve along
the same trajectory as the systems thinking and modeling course.
5 Dissemination of the Sustainable Lean Model—Programs
The previous classes are implemented through the regular curriculum at the Univer-
sity of Tennessee in both undergraduate and graduate levels. In addition, these have
provided a platform for non-traditional educational programs:
• Lean Enterprise Systems Summer Program.
• Onsite Master’s Program.
• Heath Integrated Business and Engineering Program.

A comprehensive summary of the Lean Enterprise Systems Summer Program is
provided, along with highlights of the other two listed programs.
5.1 Lean Enterprise Systems Summer Program (LESSP)
LESSP was established in 2011, in response to the growing recognition that Higher
Education Institutions (HEI) are undergoing the process of globalization. Its basis
is represented in Fig. 10. Luijten-Lub et al. (2005) document the international-
ization of HEIs as an academic movement since the beginning of the twentieth
century. Some international projects, as presented by Berry and Taylor (2014),
have developed into partnerships which subsequently evolve into joint-research and
institutional strengthening projects. International collaborations allow for building
pedagogical strengths to which educators aspire in the realm of critical problem-
solving—effective interaction, leveraging of analytical skills, and generating new
connectivity patterns (Siufi 2009).
LESSP followed the precedent that HEIs internationalize for primarily two rea-
sons (Stromquist 2007): 1. Driven by economic factors, focusing on administrative,
teaching, and research practices, and 2. Driven by cultural and environmental ini-
tiatives, that create new ideas and more localized responses. Initial editions of the
program were solely in cooperation with universities in Latin America. Since then,
its benefits have been experienced by 819 students from Brazil, China, Colombia,
Mexico, and United States (Fig. 11), working with 80 companies, and developing
more than 150 projects.
LESSP is a vehicle for the dissemination of Lean philosophy and practice and
has evolved to become a vehicle for delivering Sustainable Lean education to partic-
Fig. 10 Educational
philosophy of LESSP
Fig. 11 Distribution of
LESSP participants by
nationality
Fig. 12 Student feedback

for LESSP
ipants. Students solve a real problem in a US company as a deliverable at the end of

the month-long program. In doing so, they collaborate within a multicultural team
and develop an understanding of teamwork in a globalized context. Participants are
initially familiarized, by way of online lectures, with the fundamental concepts of
Lean production. The next phase takes place onsite at the University of Tennessee’s
Knoxville campus. In this phase, the participants are instructed in Sustainable Lean.
It is during this phase that students regularly visit companies to which they have been
assigned projects, and at the end, present a solution consistent with Sustainable Lean
principles. Therefore, LESSP showcases the foundation, dissemination, and practice
of Sustainable Lean in a compact timeline.
A survey applied by the Institute of International Education (IIE), educational
partner of the program, during the years of 2015 and 2016 respectively, among 296
Brazilian students, presents that 80% of them consider the program “Outstanding”
or “Above Average” and only 3% have the perception of the program is not rel-
evant (Fig. 12). Those numbers reflect the perceived value regarding the teaching
methodology, highlighted by the students, that combines the practical and theoret-
ical approaches in a multicultural environment which creates, as consequence, a
high-level efficacy in developing career-ready competencies.
5.2 Onsite Master’s Program
The Onsite Master’s Program—formally known as “Master of Science in Industrial

Engineering (Systems Concentration) Onsite Cohort Program”—was established
in 2011. It was founded on the strong working partnership between University
of Tennessee, Knoxville and two organizations of national importance in the US:
The Y-12 National Security Complex (Y12) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory
(ORNL). The target audience for this program is non-traditional students—those
who are working professionals who need to balance their work life and family
obligations. Additionally, these individuals have to be able to demonstrate the return
on investment for the time spent on their onsite Master’s education.
The target audience and objectives of the program are perfectly aligned with the
method of instruction and content of the Sustainable Lean model. Their academic
experience must enrich their professional experience—that is, they must see a direct
connection between what they learn and how it can be used at work. The program
focuses on a capstone project which address this practical need. Professionals in
systems and related areas are required to develop or sharpen their critical problem-
solving abilities. The course structure of the program, which delivers critical thinking
and problem-solving instruction by teaching all the essential techniques and elements
of the Sustainable Lean model, is shown in Fig. 13.
The program has demonstrated strong academic results (Fig. 14). The graduation
success rate is close to 100%, with all participants graduating within the expected
timeline of two years; this contrasted with traditional graduate programs which may
take up to four years to complete. Pedagogically, the program has set graduates up for
a lifelong learning mindset—which favorably places them to climb the organizational
ladder. One of the ways of achieving this has been the emphasis on Project Based
Learning and the bootstrap effect of creating an environment in which participants
mentor each other.
Fig. 13 Onsite Master’s Program—course structure

5.3 Heath Integrated Business and Engineering Program
The program’s blended courses focused on organization problem solving and system-
based thinking, seminars with industry leaders, executive mentorships, manufactur-
ing facility visits, collaborative team projects, and co-curricular activities will allow
students to become new leaders that can impact and influence those around them
with a big picture perspective. This is a sophomore-level undergraduate course, the
depth of teaching in this class is fairly less compared to the other courses. Sustainable
Lean techniques are introduced in a Lecture format to let students get an idea of what
process improvement projects to focus on.
The methodology in this program combines the Project Based Learning with
Lectures, as students are given detailed information about their final project prior
to the beginning of classes. An important aspect for this program is to integrate the
stakeholder’s point of view and the reason for process improvement.
6 Discussion
The presented work is driven by two needs in education: the broader need to trans-
form the educational experience offered in university settings, and the specific need to
inculcate in students a critical thinking and critical problem-solving mindset. Teach-
ing Lean has been a response to these needs, especially in Industrial and Systems
Engineering, and its derivative fields of study. It has, for forty years, provided a
framework and context within which the requirements of employers and the recip-
rocal skills developed in students could complement each other. However, results
from the use of Lean in industry raise some questions about the efficacy of meeting
these goals. Lean is difficult to sustain in most settings. Practitioners have been found
to focus on tools and techniques engendered within Lean, rather than extrapolate a
more general set of critical thinking abilities.
Fig. 14 Onsite Master’s Program graduations

The indicators point to moving beyond the prescribed form of Lean, towards an
approach which focuses on critical thinking, encapsulates powerful ideas in Lean, and
gives high importance to the sustainability of the solution. The approach must directly
address the principal barrier to sustainability: the conflict between operational goals
and those relevant to employee quality of life. Once the approach is developed, its
dissemination must possess clarity, structure, and should itself be sustainable.
The Sustainable Lean model provides a systems approach targeted at resolving
precisely these issues. It comprises four modules spread across three phases, each of
which aspires to systems thinking and critical problem-solving goals: 1. Ability to
define a problem, 2. Ability to solve a problem with precision, 3. Ability to sustain
the solution considering a cultural context. These goals guide the development and
use of the framework and tools in the Sustainable Lean model.
Methods for dissemination of Sustainable Lean are courses and programs which
are already in place at the Center for Advanced Systems Research and Education
(CASRE) at the University of Tennessee. Courses touch upon one or more topics
within the Sustainable Lean model. It is equally relevant that courses are designed
such that modern learning techniques—for example, Project Based Learning, Coop-
erative Learning, and Game Based Learning—are integral to each course. This devel-
ops “soft skills” valuable to industry (Fliedner and Mathieson 2009) and bridge the
gap between instruction and expectation. Programs aggregate different subsets of
course materials in innovative ways—be it in the form of international collabora-
tions for undergraduate education, onsite programs for professionals, or collaborative
business and engineering programs.
These courses and programs are at different stages of maturity but results across
the board are encouraging. Enrolment in each course and program has attained a satis-
factory steady-state. Student feedback is positive. However, there exists the potential
of conducting a formal study of student and professional learning from Sustainable
Lean instruction. Such a study will echo previous work done by Alves et al. (2016).
The number of industry partners in project-based activities has gone up, to the extent
that industries have begun participating in student-led trials of the Sustainable Lean
model.
A caveat is necessary to provide a full understanding of these developments. This
model is in a transitional stage, where courses were designed for a specific need to
be covered in Lean but lacking a connecting framework that systematically presents
with the use of diverse learning methodologies the topics of the holistic model.
Perhaps, integration and expansion of learning methodologies that adjust with the
current learning styles of new generations are still to be considered, the current model
provides this platform to continuously improve and enhance the subject matter.
In conclusion, universities are at exciting crossroads. The traditional model of
teaching centered on memorization is making way for approaches which yield tangi-
ble benefits to students and their future employers alike. Critical problem-solving is
one of the weakest areas of academic instruction and yet, one of the strongest quali-
ties desirable to industry. The Sustainable Lean model is, we believe, a contribution
in the right direction for Lean education in particular, and transformative education
in general.
Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank the following graduate assistants and teaching assis-
tants, who have significantly contributed to either the instruction or development for the described
courses and programs: Roshanak Akram, Abhinav Raghavan, Aravind Satyanarayanan, and Vasanth
Mannivannan. Our thanks to Prof. Messias Silva for his insights on pedagogy.
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Ergonomic Analysis in Lean
Manufacturing and Industry
4.0—A Systematic Review
Marlene Ferreira Brito, Ana Luísa Ramos, Paula Carneiro

and Maria Antónia Gonçalves
Abstract In 2015, the UN defined well-being and decent work/economic growth as

two of 17 sustainable development objectives. Nevertheless, the extreme pressure for
businesses to be competitive in their markets of choice seems to be having a negative
effect on workers’ well-being. In the manufacturing sector, the effective inclusion of
Ergonomics in processes and installations has been proven to decrease costs related
to disability, extra or overtime hours, medical care and premiums or fines for occur-
rences. The aim of this work was to review the existing scientific knowledge about
the impact of adopting LPS (Lean Production Systems—a model used to increase
competitiveness by the creation of more value for customers with fewer resources)
in manufacturing companies from the point of view of Ergonomics. It reports, based
on the literature reviewed, how the integration of both LPS and Ergonomics princi-
ples, from the workstation design phase onwards, can bring benefits to the workers’
welfare and simultaneously potentiate improvements in productivity. This paper also
intends to present trends and opportunities for future research in this area, including
in the Industry 4.0 field. In the authors’ opinion, this paper is a valuable contribution
for practitioners, in manufacturing environments, and researchers.
1 Introduction
Economic readings of sustainability usually take as their basis the consensus reached
by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED 1987), which
gave the following definition of sustainable development: “Development that meets
the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs”. The definition and promotion of sustainable industrialization
M. F. Brito (B) · M. A. Gonçalves

CIDEM, Porto, Portugal
e-mail: marlenebrito@ua.pt
A. L. Ramos
GOVCOPP, Aveiro, Portugal
P. Carneiro
ALGORITMI, Guimarães, Portugal
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13515-7_4
96 M. F. Brito et al.
by the United Nations is one of the 17 objectives to put an end to poverty, protect the
planet and bring about prosperity for all. In particular, in the manufacturing sector,
sustainable production is taken to mean the creation of viable economic goods while
keeping the environmental impact to a minimum and preserving energy and natural
resources but, most of all, empowering employees and reinforcing the community
and security (Vega et al. 2018).
Guaranteeing safe working conditions is a crucial factor for the empowerment
of workers. Even though this factor is taken into account within the description
of sustainable industry, not many companies actually contemplate or develop this
strategy within their sustainability plans (Alayón et al. 2017). However, good
ergonomic practices and their consequences at the micro and macro-economic levels
represent a robust input to sustainability; in this way, measures in practice intend to
protect people against negative health consequences, promote the integrity of their
health and quality of life, and also lower costs to companies (Falck and Rosenqvist
2012). Due to economic, environmental and social difficulties, from global warming
to waste disposal at a local level, there is also a significant need to improve manu-
facturing performance in order for there to be less industrial pollution, less material
and energy use, less wastage, and fewer psychological disorders for human resources
(Kumar 2014).
Lean is a style of management based on the human factor which recommends
that staff work with a mindset directed towards reducing losses and waste (Tajri and
Cherkaoui 2015). The primary objective of Lean production is to decrease costs and
improve productivity by eliminating waste. Anything other than the smallest amount
of equipment, materials, parts, space and employee time required to produce the
demanded products is considered waste (Suzaki 1987). Past studies investigating
the alterations in the quality of working life due to the implementation of LPS have
revealed both negative and positive consequences on workers’ health and perceptions
of workplace safety and job satisfaction (Miguez et al. 2018).
Stuart et al. (2004) reported that when Lean improvements give too big an empha-
sis to processes, health and safety sometimes suffer because of the creation of new
Ergonomics problems. According to Kester (2013), Lean processes may make jobs
exceedingly repetitive, while removing critical rest time for employees. In fact,
the amount of money companies spend on compensation claims is essentially a
waste—which is against the key Lean principle of reducing waste.
Tortorella et al. (2017) stated that the Lean manufacturing method presents the
human element as a vital factor for continuous improvement sustainability. Saurin and
Ferreira (2009) said “Lean Production and ergonomics are not necessarily in conflict
and that there are plenty opportunities for synergy between both areas”. According
to Brito et al. (2017a) is important to consider ergonomic aspects when designing or
redesigning a workstation in order to get effective productivity improvements. The
same authors concluded that it is possible to reduce the setup time and the MSD risk
considering the ergonomic aspects when using the SMED tool (Brito et al. 2017b).
The aim of this work was to review the scientific knowledge on the impact of
adopting LPS from the point of view of Ergonomics. This paper also intends to present
Ergonomic Analysis in Lean Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 … 97
trends and opportunities for future studies in this area, including in the Industry 4.0
field.
The contribution of this paper is valuable for researchers and practitioners as it
clarifies the relationship between LPS implementations and its consequences on the
workers’ well-being. Furthermore, it reports, based on the literature reviewed, how
the integration of both LPS and Ergonomics can benefit the workers’ welfare while
increasing productivity. The research proposals presented in this article are also very
relevant for the development of this topic in the very near future.
1.1 Background
In 2015, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) approved 17 sustainable
development goals (SDGs). The purpose of these goals is to set attainable objectives
that can accomplished by 2030 for sustainable development; e.g., “the goals and
targets will stimulate action over the next 15 years in areas for critical importance
for humanity and the planet” (UN 2015, p. 5).
Figure 1 represents the 17 SDGs across the three interlinked systems: economic,
environmental and social. Sustainability can be achieved only by balancing the trade-
offs among the various goals of the three systems. This paper will focus on the relation
between Ergonomics (#3 SDG—Good health and well-being and #8 SDG—Good
Jobs and Economic Growth) and LPS and Industry 4.0 (#9 SDG—Industry, Innova-
tion and infrastructure).
1.1.1 Lean Production System
The idea of Lean manufacturing had its origin at Toyota, the Japanese carmaker
which has been thriving in the global competition for decades (Cirjaliu and Draghici
2016). Following the emergence of Henry Ford’s system, the vehicle volume rose
sharply to 2 million units a year for the Model T, but the departure of practically all
the producer craft market caused the variety of products to drop from thousands to
tens on offer. Lean production began in Japan; as described by Womack et al. (1990),
it started with the Japanese engineer Eiji Toyoda, who conducted a three-month study
of the Ford Rouge plant in Detroit. After studying the system of factory production
carefully, at what was the largest and most efficient manufacturing complex in the
world, he came to the conclusion that mass production would never work in Japan.
From this first experiment originated what Toyota came to call the Toyota Production
System, which eventually became Lean production.
In 1988, the Toyota Production System (TPS) was introduced in the Japanese
company: Toyota (Vieira et al. 2012). Womack et al. (1990) forecast that Lean manu-
facturing would cause a revolution in manufacturing in the United States and abroad
due to its principles of teamwork, communication, continuous improvement, and
Fig. 1 The systems approach to sustainability applied to the 17 SDGs (Barbier and Burgess 2017)
waste removal, which would result in increased quality, productivity, and market
Query responsiveness (Womack et al. 1990; Womack and Jones 1996).
Lean manufacturing functions by decreasing unnecessary variation and steps in
the work process, and comprises a set of operational tools as well as a strategic
or philosophical side. The philosophical level is dedicated to understanding value
(what the customer or client needs and wants) and how the work process can be
improved by eliminating steps with no value (Womack and Jones 1996; Womack
et al. 1990). Just-in-time (JIT) practices, waste reduction, improvement strategies,
defect-free production and work standardization are the main traits of Lean thinking
(Botti et al. 2017). Eight diverse categories of wastes were identified as part of
the Lean philosophy: transportation, excessive inventory, unnecessary movements,
overproduction, overprocessing, waiting time, quality/defects and intellect underuse
(Nunes 2015).
In an LPS any activities such as “bending to work”, “pushing hard”, “lifting
heavy weights”, “repeating tiring actions” and “wasteful walk” are seen as Muri and
therefore must be eliminated. Any implementation of LPS that does not lower Muri
or, even worse, increases it, should not be seen as a representation of the ‘true spirit’
of the LPS implementation (Cirjaliu and Draghici 2016). Yet, and according to
Seppala and Klemola (2004) and Toralla et al. (2012), a true Lean production
system may tax the workers’ muscular, cognitive, and emotional resources to the
maximum. According to the same authors this system must deploy an integrated
set of work energizers to bring compatibility with the muscular, cognitive, and
emotional requirements. Work energizers might include task variety, employment
security, financial incentives, development and utilization of skills and knowledge,
and awareness of organizational performance, among others (Seppala and Klemola
2004). From that viewpoint, Lean could be said to have clear connections with
Scandinavian socio-technical thinking (Gustavsen 2007), which emphasizes team-
work and employee involvement. Soon after Lean was proposed, however, it was
criticized for having negative effects on the workers. It was concluded that Lean
would make work more intense, raise management control, and impact employee
health negatively (Hasle 2014).
1.1.2 Ergonomics
According to IEA (2007), Ergonomics is a scientific discipline which looks into the
interactions of man with other elements of the system, applying theory, principles
and design methods with the goal of improving human well-being and overall system
performance (Vieira et al. 2012). The main objective of Ergonomics is to develop
and apply adaptation techniques to work in efficient and safe ways so as to enhance
well-being and thus increase productivity (Santos et al. 2015). In fact, improved
ergonomics will lead to superior working conditions and therefore increased job
satisfaction. There are several benefits of the increase of job satisfaction in any
factory, such as: higher work morale, reduced turnover, stronger commitment, and
improved productivity (Wong and Richardson 2010).
Research into Ergonomics and working conditions has, for a long time, largely
centered around standard production work. In spite of this, Backstrand et al. (2013)
comment that it is important to look at Ergonomics/Human Factors as a part of
Lean production practices. Moreover, it is frequently argued that failure to consider
the holistic, process view of Lean production and the socio-technical facets of the
interaction between human behavior and operational tools leads to limited success
(Liker and Morgan 2006; Joosten et al. 2009).
Although it is known that Ergonomics can greatly contribute to productivity
improvements, the Ergonomics approach is still not an accepted method in many
industrially developing countries (IDCs) struggling to improve productivity. They
view Ergonomics as expenditure rather than investment (O’Neill 2000). Addition-
ally, many workers are not aware of the ergonomic features of their work. This
is mainly because they have no references about what ergonomic postures and limb
movements look like and which ones are ergonomically inadvisable. Also, the thresh-
old when a certain movement gets out of the recommended area is unknown. Most
workers follow motion sequences that they are familiar with because they are seen as
comfortable or effective. Some of these motions may not be favorable, but workers
will not necessarily notice that unless the motion immediately causes pain or dis-
comfort. The motion, however, might have a negative long-term effect if repeated
regularly. But if a long-term effect manifests itself, it is too late to intervene, and the
worker fails to relate it to the actions which have caused it. Several publications show
that work-related musculoskeletal issues are a common issue in industry (Bernard
and Putz-Anderson 1997; Armstrong 1993).
According to Yazdani et al. (2018) organizations ought to present Ergonomics and
Musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) prevention as an significant component of their
business via its inclusion in management practices.
1.1.3 Industry 4.0
Since the late eighteenth century there have been three technological developments
in industry. The first industrial revolution took place in the change from manual labor
to steam-powered machines, which resulted in new opportunities and facilities for
industrial production. The second revolution, which happened in the mid-nineteenth
century, had as its key components the use of electricity, introduction of mass pro-
duction and the division of labor. The third revolution, which took place in the 70 s
and whose effects remain to this day, is characterized by the use of electronics and
information technology for improved automation systems (Yin et al. 2018).
We are currently in the midst of the fourth technological revolution and the rise of a
new technology and digital industry, known as Industry 4.0. The term ‘Industry 4.0’,
coined in 2011 at the Hannover Fair in Germany, designates an industry whose main
characteristics encompass connected machines, smart products and systems, and
inter-related solutions. These aspects are used together for the creation of intelligent
production units based on integrated computer and/or digital components which
monitor and control the physical devices (Lasi and Kemper 2014). In this sense, the
goal of Industry 4.0 is an autonomous and dynamic production, which integrates
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to enable the mass production
of highly customized products (Tortorella and Fettermann 2018).
Figure 2 depicts the time line of industry from 1.0 to 4.0. (Yin et al. 2018).
According to Rubmann et al. (2015), the transformation must be intensified by
nine grounds of advanced technology: autonomous robots, simulation, horizontal
and vertical systems integration, the industrial Internet of things, cybersecurity, cloud
computing, additive manufacturing, augmented reality and bi data and analytics. For
the development of an Industry 4.0 environment, Deloitte developed a framework
with the concepts that form the fourth industrial revolution interface, shown in Fig. 3.
The main components of Industry 4.0 include the ‘Internet of Things (IoT)’,
‘Internet of Services (IoS)’ and ‘Cyber-Physical Systems’ (CPS). Collectively, the
technologies make continuous communication possible and permit a ceaseless trade
of information and interaction between people (C2C), people and machines (C2M)
and machines themselves (M2M). That relationship is required to enable the exec-
utive level to uphold connectedness to the customer base and the wider heteroge-
neous community. As fluctuations in customer and market trends become apparent,
Fig. 2 Timeline of industry 1.0–4.0 (Yin et al. 2018)
Fig. 3 Nine technologies that transform the industrial production (Doh et al. 2016)
the executive level can make informed decisions to maintain strategic relationships
without relying exclusively on lower tier recommendations. The traditional relation-
ship of a management system mainly controlling workers will give way to active
engagement. The engagement will be a two-way transfer of knowledge between the
management and operational levels. Management decisions will be enhanced based
on the shared knowledge (Davies et al. 2017).
Industry 4.0 is a technology-driven method to build up a modular and change-
able production setting. Lean Automation tries to put together Lean Production and
Industry 4.0 to get the best from both worlds (Kolberg et al. 2017). Unlike what
is commonly thought, Lean Production does not exclude automation. According to
its founder Ohno and current studies, repeating and value-adding tasks ought to be
automated (Ohno 1988). Ohno named this principle Autonomation.
Researchers defend that automation will not lead to less human interaction or
worker-less production facilities but the competence necessities might change. In
reality, the individuals’ skills requirements will probably increase and become even
more specialized (Tortorella and Fettermann 2018). It will be more necessary for
workers to execute complex and indirect tasks such as collaborating with machines
in their daily work (Levy and Murnane 2013). This trend is heading towards the
following three outcomes: workers will need to (1) solve unstructured problems, (2)
work with new information, and (3) perform a number of non-routine manual tasks
(Siemens 2013). Handling continuously new information and a large quantity of data
plus communicating with machines are therefore the basic elements of future work
tasks (Gehrke et al. 2015).
Tortorella and Fettermann (2018) show that LP practices are positively liked with
Industry 4.0 technologies and their concurrent implementation paves the way to larger
performance improvements. Accordingly, smart feedback devices, worker support
systems and improved man-machine interfaces facilitate better empowerment and
involvement of workers in the organization (Karre et al. 2017).
2 Research Design
This work is based on an extensive literature review of the relationship between

LPS and Industry 4.0, and their impact on occupational ergonomic conditions, as
well as on workers’ well-being. The context is LPS implementations in industrial
environments, and mainly in workplaces in the manufacturing industry. To execute
this study, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach was used. According to
Denyer and Tranfield (2009), it identifies current publications, selects and evaluates
contributions, analyses and synthesizes information, reporting evidences in such a
way that relevant conclusions can be drawn regarding what is already known and
consolidated as well as what is still understudied.
This SLR followed the framework proposed by Transfield et al. (2003), who
highlight three core phases for conducting a systematic literature review: (1) planning
the review, (2) conducting the review, where the papers for analysis are selected and
a summary of the data obtained is made, and (3) communication and dissemination
of the results, reporting the recommendations and evidences from the whole review.
The search process was performed on 18 May 2018. So as to obtain a comprehensive
set of noteworthy contributions concerning our core goal (Denyer and Tranfield
2009), and at the same time minimize bias, the data of this SLR were collected using
two databases, which are two of the greatest repositories in business research and
are often used in such research projects: Thomson Reuter’ Web of Science (Social
Sciences Citation Index—SSCI) and Elsevier’s Scopus. Our goal in defining the
search keywords was to find as many papers as possible which looked at information
technologies in the context of Lean manufacturing. Thus, in regards to the SSCI
database, the search was carried out using as keywords “lean” AND “ergonomic*”,
“lean” AND “industry 4.0” and “industry 4.0” AND “ergonomic*” on the topic field.
To guarantee the quality of this paper, our review was restricted to articles or reviews
written in English, and there was no time restriction. As for the SCOPUS database,
we used the same research keywords as in the SSCI in three alternative fields: title,
keywords and abstract. Based on these parameters, 598 articles were found, as can
be seen in Table 1.
The results obtained indicate that Scopus is the most pertinent academic database
for finding articles concerning the integration of Ergonomics, Industry 4.0 and Lean.
According to Meline (2006), a significant part of any systematic review is the
definition of inclusion and exclusion criteria. This makes sure there is an objective
reasoning behind the choice of literature. The inclusion criteria, guiding the choice
of databases and filtering settings in the database, are the following: all peer review
documents available up to and including May 2018 were taken into account.
After obtaining the first set of articles from the different databases, the initial step
was to eliminate the duplicates. Afterwards, the first screening process investigated
the titles and abstracts of the identified articles and removed articles which were: (1)
not in English, (2) not related to Ergonomics, Industry 4.0 and Lean manufacturing,
or (3) lacking a full text assessment. As for those remaining, full-text articles were
gathered and screened. Articles were omitted in this second screening process if
they were considered only vaguely connected to the topic. The typical examples of
articles excluded because of this criterion are those that mention ergonomics and/or
Lean manufacturing as examples without further analysis between the two and/or
studies from non-manufacturing contexts.
Table 1 Search results in each of the databases

Keywords/No of “Lean” and “Lean” and “Industry 4.0” Total
articles “Ergonomic*” “Industry 4.0” and
“Ergonomic*”
Scopus 315 77 19 411
Web of Science 121 54 12 187
598
The exclusion criteria are summarized in Table 2. All remaining articles were
included in the literature analysis.
Based on this methodology, the initial sample of 598 articles was cut down to 37
articles for the literature analysis. As represented in Fig. 4, the method of filtering
articles is depicted in accordance to the PRISMA flowchart.
The whole research strategy (including the two databases) resulted in a sample of
598 articles. 131 duplicated papers, 15 non-English papers, 215 not fully assessed
papers and143 irrelevant papers were found and promptly removed. In a further
screening stage, 57 other papers were considered irrelevant for the purposes of this
research, and therefore excluded. As a result, the final sample included a total of
Table 2 Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion Criteria All available peer review documents available up to and including May
2018
Exclusion Criteria Non-English (NE)
Not related to Industry 4.0 and lean manufacturing (NR)
No full text (NF)
Vaguely related to Industry 4.0 and lean manufacturing (VR)
Fig. 4 The PRISMA flowchart shows the different phases in the systematic literature review
(Adapted from Moher et al. 2009). See Table 2 for explanations of the exclusion codes
37 papers done over a period of 19 years, which were deemed relevant for further
analysis. The relevant articles were put together in a database where they were sorted
and categorized and had their key standpoint and findings extracted.
3 Results of the Descriptive Analysis
The review identified 37 articles that comply with the inclusion and exclusion criteria
and thus present a contribution towards explaining the link between occupational
ergonomic conditions and LPS and Industry 4.0.
The results are structured in two parts: a quantitative analysis and a qualitative
thematic analysis detailed in the next section.
The number of publications related to the association of the concepts of “Lean”,
“Industry 4.0” and “Ergonomics” has been growing over the last few years. It is clear
that this is an emerging research area, with most of the studies being published in
2016 and 2017. Figure 5 shows this evolution.
Regarding the source where the studies were published, nearly 50% come from the
following journals: International Journal of Production Research, Human Factors and
Ergonomics in Manufacturing and Applied Ergonomics. These are followed by the
publications in Procedia Manufacturing. Figure 6 depicts these results, corresponding
to the source of the reviewed publications with two or more entries.
10
8
6
4
2
0
Year 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999
No of articles
Fig. 5 Evolution of the publications over the years
No. of Articles
International Journal of Production Research

Procedia Manufacturing
Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing &…
Applied Ergonomics
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Fig. 6 Source of the publications with two or more entries

Mixed Methods
16%
Case Study
Surveys / 30%
Interviews
14%
Model /
Framework L. Review
16% 24%
Fig. 7 Research methods in the investigated articles
Figure 7 presents the research methods utilized in the articles reviewed in this
SLR. The Case Study leads, followed by the Literature Review. Both represents
54%of the methods used in the articles of this SLR.
Brazil is the biggest contributor for the 37 articles analyzed in this review, with 7
articles, followed by the USA with 6 articles and then Germany and Italy, both with
3 articles. Figure 8 depicts the origin of all the articles reviewed.
The articles can be categorized according to the three arrows describing the rela-
tionships between the keywords used in the databases. Figure 9 presents the catego-
rization of the articles according to the proposed conceptual framework.
The first study examined was the work “The impact of lean production and related
new systems of work organization on worker health”. This paper, published by Lands-
bergis and colleagues, in 1999, in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology,
with a total of 244 citations, was one the first studies that examined the impact of
Lean production quality management on occupational injuries, illnesses or on job
characteristics related to job strain.
4 Results of the Thematic Analysis
In order to enrich the qualitative analysis, more publications were added based on
the references suggested in the 37 articles found using the methodology described
in Sect. 3.
UKAustria
Canada3% 3%
China Brazil
Czech Republic3% 3% 19%
3%
Denmark
3%
France
3%
Greece
3%
Hong Kong
3%
Slovakia
3% USA
Malaysia 16%
3%
Norway
3%
Portugal
3%
Romania
3% Germany
India
5% Sweden 8%
Italy
5% 8%
Fig. 8 Origin of the articles reviewed
Fig. 9 Categorization of the articles according to the proposed conceptual framework

4.1 Health Effects in a Lean Environment
The comprehension evolution on Lean production may be summarized as an empha-

sis on quality in the literature of the early 1990s, through quality, cost, and delivery
(late 1990s), to customer value from 2000 onward (Silva et al. 2016).
Until 1990, LPS implementation was entirely tool–focused and normally
neglected the human aspects of the high-performance work system core of the Lean
manufacturing approach (Koukoulaki 2014). In reality, Lean production tools are
frequently put in place in order to remove non-value-adding activities and reduce
variability in the work process, without considering the Lean production philoso-
phy (Shah and Ward 2007). Consequently, most studies in the 1990 s report adverse
effects on employee health (Hasle 2014).
Landsbergis et al. (1999) reviewed 19 studies from the car industry. Twelve of
those presented information about health consequences in the form of musculoskele-
tal disorders (MSD), fatigue, stress, and tension. Six of these studies demonstrated a
clear connection to MSD and two an equivocal link. Four showed a clear association
with fatigue, stress, and tension, and three an equivocal link. A few found no associ-
ation and none found any beneficial consequence on health. The result of the review
undoubtedly indicated negative consequences for workers in the form of intensifica-
tion of work, stress, and MSD. Berggren (1993) reported that Lean means working
more smartly and also harder, not just more smartly. The same author noted other
downsides of LP, such as the standardization of cycle time, which stops employees
from managing the pace at which they work. Still, and according to Hasle (2014),
some of these results ought to perhaps be interpreted as outcomes of traditional
Tayloristic rationalization and not as results of Lean by itself.
After 1990, there was a steady broadening of focus away from the shop floor to
diverse sectors by businesses which adapted their production systems to embrace a
new design based on “Lean principles” (Womack and Jones 1996). These principles
entailed the identification of customer value, the management of the value stream,
the developing of the capability for production flow, the use of “pull” mechanisms
to sustain the flow of materials at constrained operations, and, lastly, the pursuit of
perfection through cutting down to zero all forms of waste in the production system.
Concerning risk factors and health effects, the research focus began moving from
mechanical exposure and health effects, for example, MSDs, to psychosocial risk
factors and stress. The conclusions from these studies are mixed, with some job
characteristics being impacted negatively and others positively (Table 3).
According to Koukoulaki (2014) the reported harmful results may be a reflection
of ‘rigid’ Lean implementation strategies applied in the automotive industry, caused
by Just-in Time (JIT) systems. It seems that these JIT practices are the basis of
an intensification of work that is connected to increased levels of strain and stress.
Furthermore, pressure from team working may have stopped workers from reporting
their symptoms and forced them to work in pain (Koukoulaki 2014).
Parker and Conti defend that Lean production is not by definition negative and
that what matters most are the choices companies make in Lean implementation. For
Table 3 Some of the adverse and positive effects in an LPS, as reported in the literature
Adverse effects Positive effects
Authors Results Authors Results
Parker (2003) Increased job Finnsgård et al. Reduced trunk
depression (2011) flexion and
shoulder elevation
due to the use of
smaller containers
(Lean concept)
Westgaard and Winkel Mental problems Jackson and Work roles with
(2011) Mullarkey (2000) greater breadth,
more variation,
higher skills
utilization and
higher cognitive
demands
Landsbergis et al. (1999) Stress, low job Westgaard and Job enlargement
satisfaction, and Winkel (2011)
low decision control
Jackson and Mullarkey Fewer timing Saurin and Ferreira Improved working
(2000) controls, higher (2008), Hunter conditions
demands and more (2006)
conflicts in the Lean
teams
Koukoulaki (2014) Stress and increase Koukoulaki (2014) Autonomy and
of musculoskeletal empowerment
risk symptoms
example, a company might choose to apply one Lean characteristic to its extreme,
(e.g. removal of ‘waste activities’), which would have a direct effect on work inten-
sification, while minimizing other characteristics that might act as a buffer to stress
(e.g. autonomy and group support in teams). According to these authors, this dan-
gerous combination could only result in the harmful effects of Lean production
(Koukoulaki).
In general, the findings of the surveys and literature reviewed show that the effects
of Lean production on working conditions are more evident in the car industry
(increased stress and symptoms of MSDs) and less evident in other manufacturing
sectors, which is logical given that in the automotive industry the Lean implementa-
tion is full and its effect on working conditions can be expected to be more obvious
(koukoulaki 2014). Lewchuk et al. (2001) also indicate that a more strenuous working
environment is in place and a higher level of psychosocial discomfort (tense feelings
and exhaustion) occurs in the auto plants with the most comprehensive enforcement
of Lean. Nevertheless, it is not clear whether this is the result of Lean or an indus-
trial context and implementation strategy characterized by management pressuring
employees and poor industrial relations (Hasle 2014). Moreover, Lean implementa-
tion is not the same across diverse companies, sectors and continents and the results
can depend upon what is implemented and how (Koukoulaki 2014).
In effect, and according to Murray et al. (2010) and Pai et al. (2009), misapplication
of Lean techniques could originate safety issues, health problems and accidents,
which is in accordance with Arezes et al. (2015): “the reported disadvantages of LPS
implementations may result from the misunderstanding of the Lean principles and
possibly by implementing similar solutions that may be effective in a specific work
context but not suitable to all possible situations”.
Several studies have also attributed the increased work pace and lack of recov-
ery time in Lean companies to JIT practices and work standardization (Saurin and
Ferreira 2009). In the origin of such a phenomenon is the fact that Lean processes
often result in highly repetitive operations, stressful postures and high forces, while
removing critical rest periods for employees (Kester 2013). Injured workers are not
capable of working, and replacement workers are not as efficient at executing the
tasks. As a result, increased injury rates compromise the desired results for Lean
processes. In the long term, the economic savings from quality, productivity and
efficiency improvements pay for the bigger cost of employees’ compensation claims
for MSDs (Botti et al. 2018).
On the other hand, when Lean production was first introduced, it was described
as an efficient system for production that also had beneficial results for workers,
increasing their autonomy and empowerment (Koukoulaki 2014).
The ambiguity of the consequences of LPS on working conditions was detected
by Saurin and Ferreira (2008), who looked at 52 scientific articles on the subject,
and listed the number of positive or negative results that were cited. Overall, 48%
of the citations were connected to positive impacts and 52% referred to negative
impacts, although most studies showed that positive and negative impacts occurred
at the same time. Furthermore, and according to the same author, due to the intrinsic
characteristics of LPS, such ambiguity might also be a result of a number of factors,
such as:
• the impact of each company’s organizational culture, in particular the extent to
which safety and ergonomics are core values;
• the different degrees of maturity of companies’ Lean systems, which in turn depend
on a set of variables (e.g. the types of products and processes, the length of time
since LP was adopted);
• the socio-economic context of the region where the plant is situated (e.g. unem-
ployment rates; labor standards, the role of unions);
• the degree of workforce involvement in the LPS implementation process.
In what concerns positive effects, Hunter (2006) reported ergonomic and produc-
tivity improvements, and Saurin and Ferreira (2008) pointed out that employees had
a positive perception of their working environment and that working conditions got
better after the adoption of LPS. Hunter also described a lowered repetitive motion
injury risk in a cellular (Lean concept) manufacturing job enlargement methodol-
ogy. Under this scheme, workers have more tasks to execute on each cycle around
the cell, which allows microinjuries further time to heal (Hunter 2002). Finnsgård
et al. (2011) demonstrated that materials exposure using smaller containers, a LPS
concept, makes workstation performance better in terms of less non-value adding
work, reduced space necessities for materials exposure and reduced trunk flexion
and shoulder elevation demands on operators.
Womack et al. (2009) looked at the link between work organization and job
characteristics under Lean manufacturing and work-related musculoskeletal disor-
der (WMSD) risk factors. The results suggested that Lean manufacturing does not
necessarily make workers’ risk for WMSD injuries higher.
Schouteten and Benders (2004) consider that the ambiguity of these findings has
to do with the lack of an external assessment framework supported by validated
research instruments.
4.2 The Integration of Ergonomic Aspects During Lean

Implementation
What numerous companies fail to realize is the potential for further increasing the
productivity gains if ergonomic principles were integrated and implemented at the
same time as Lean Systems (Nunes 2015). Since Ergonomics is most commonly
housed within the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) department (essentially
to answer legal requirements and to perform risk management), managers have a
tendency to inadvertently narrow its scope of intervention to hazards, instead of taking
advantage of its help to advance organizational effectiveness, business performance
and costs (Nunes 2015). According to Westgaard and Winkel (2011), integrating the
requirements for effective production and a healthy workforce in the analysis and
devising of production systems could be a solution to the apparent conflict of interest
between Ergonomics and rationalization. Moreover, the integration of ergonomics
during the Lean manufacturing implementation can potentially lead to obtaining
considerable gains in productivity, lowering absenteeism (Santos et al. 2015) and
simultaneously improving working conditions (Alves et al. 2016).
Since ergonomic hazards can lead to Lean wastes and vice-versa, workplace
ergonomics and Lean manufacturing are deeply inter-related (Aqlan et al. 2013,
2014). Lean Ergonomics may decrease lead time by eliminating the waste of non-
productive manual material handling movements and activities (Galante 2014), such
as stretching, bending, awkward postures and extensive reaching, as well as increase
the efficiency, safety and health of workers (Yusuff and Abdullah 2016). Thus, the
Lean team must take into account Ergonomics and safety, at the same time as waste
reduction and value creation, core values of the Lean process (Wilson 2005). For
instance, by incorporating risk assessments into the value stream mapping process
(Kester 2013), obtaining parts efficiently in the workstations and finding tools quickly
(Weber 2005).
The literature has several examples of the benefits of integrating Ergonomic
aspects in an LPS, such as:
Fig. 10 Health effects in a

lean environment
• Miguez et al. (2018) showed good results by getting together a multidisciplinary

team of certified ergonomists, engineers, managers and direct employees in the
use of concepts of Ergonomics and LPS to improve a workstation, such as lowered
costs and lead time as well as improved health and safety of workers.
• Williams and Douglas (2011) improved efficiency by more than 40 percent by
becoming more organized, improving standards, cutting down excess motion in the
cells, improving Ergonomics and safety, creating common processes and reducing
the number of procedures required to assemble a product.
• Scheel and Zimmermann (2005) reported significant results when integrating
ergonomic principles within a Lean implementation process in a Kaizen event,
such as: shortened cycle times, travel distances reduced in square footage, from
67 to 100%, and reductions in the existing ergonomic risk factors.
Furthermore, Brannmark and Hakansson (2012) concluded that there is a tendency
for expanding the risk of WMSD (Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders) when
Lean implementation is not done side by side with an ergonomic intervention program
focused on addressing matters such as reducing monotony and repetitiveness of work.
As discussed in the previous section, the literature is not consensual about the
workers’ health in a Lean environment. In fact, when ergonomic aspects were not
considered during the implementation of an LPS both positive and negative aspects
were identified. However, when ergonomic aspects were considered during LPS
implementation, the literature is consensual in identifying only positive aspects.
Figure 10 depicts these results:
In summary, the importance of integrating ergonomic aspects in Lean manufac-
turing is consensual. The following subsections explain some important components
to consider during the implementation of an LPS, considering Ergonomics.
4.2.1 Training
According to Kester (2013), the misunderstanding of the Lean principles might be

solved by training, which is a key component of any Lean process. Basic Ergonomics
concepts and ergonomic design factors need to be included in the training in order
for the team members to recognize risk factors and apply these ergonomic design
possibilities as they develop conceptual designs (Kester 2013). Griffiths et al. (2007)
reported increased productivity and product quality, lowered life cycle costs, reduced
lost work days and error rates, and improved worker satisfaction after the develop-
ment of Ergonomics training to educate engineers in the principles and methodologies
of Ergonomics, quality, and Lean manufacturing.
According to Browne and O’Rourke (2007), essential to worker safety in Lean
production operations is understanding the merit of informed, empowered, and active
workers with the knowledge, skills, and opportunity to act in the workplace to remove
or reduce hazards.
4.2.2 Design
Yusuff and Abdullah (2016) defined Ergonomics as a method of designing worksta-

tions, work practices and work flow to house the capabilities of workers. According
to Greenwald (2009) employers must avoid only adding Ergonomics at the end of a
project and instead use it throughout the project as an essential component. Since the
goals of Ergonomics design complement the goals of the LPS and can alleviate the
risk created by some Lean solutions (Greenwald 2009; Kester 2013), this integra-
tion (Lean and Ergonomics) ought to be done early, in the design of the workstation
(Murray et al. 2010).
In reality, ergonomic hazards originate from badly designed workstations and
chairs that do not alleviate highly repetitive assembly operations often involving
forceful motions and awkward positions (Browne and O’Rourke 2007). Yusuff and
Abdullah (2016) share this opinion: “Good ergonomic design will reduce awkward
postures or excessive effort during work”.
Workstation design is therefore a key process to ensure effectiveness, customiza-
tion, automation and competitiveness in high volume environments, requiring less
time, space, cost and inventory. With that in mind, workstations play an essential role
in manufacturing processes. Lean workstations ought to be designed with a focus
on minimizing waste and concentrating operators on critical issues, and from the
operators’ perspective (Gonçalves and Salonitis 2017).
Jackson and Mullarkey (2000) suggest that the balance between positive and
adverse effects of LPS depends on management options in the form of work design.
From a worker’s perspective, the attention to ergonomic issues related to workstation
design, like access to materials, equipment and tools, and communication among
workers, is essential for the operator’s safety while working in the cell (Fiore 2016).
Weber (2005) reported that workstation need to be comfortable for the operator,
and include the tools and supplies required to execute the current task, allowing for
maximum performance without adverse effects on physical workloads (Tajri and

Cherkaoui 2015). In Hunter’s (2008) opinion, the main goal of the Lean production
cell designer is job enlargement, by giving the worker additional work tasks, which
lends itself to beneficial ergonomic effects given that the added time required to do
more work provides the human body with more time to heal micro injuries.
4.2.3 Development of Tools and Monitoring Ergonomics in Lean

Implementation
Given that Lean implementation tends to affect both the technical and socio-cultural
aspects of an organization, human factors must be intrinsically considered alongside
this process change. This key point, however, is beyond the scope of traditional
Lean implementation roadmaps, or looked at separately as a secondary approach
(Tortorella et al. 2017).
According to Yazdani et al. (2015), MSD risk assessment tools and techniques
appear to be partially outside the main management process due to their complexity.
As a result, MSD prevention may end up not being “on-the-table” and not be given
enough attention.
MSD prevention is usually approached via an MSD prevention program and is
diverse from other organizational management systems such as a Quality Manage-
ment System (QMS) or an Occupational Health and Safety Management System. As
a distinct program, it is frequently overlooked and poised to be subject to cuts during
financial downturns. Moreover, it is hard to implement since it doesn’t make use of
the existing management systems that the company has in place. Present practices
for MSD prevention activities are usually limited to short-term projects to address
a specific issue or a program consisting of multiple projects. These projects and
programs normally stand alone, in isolation from the main business structure and
the way that organizations address other issues including quality, general health and
safety and environmental issues (Yazdani et al. 2018).
On the contrary, MSD prevention might benefit from incorporation into
approaches such as QMS, and continuous improvement approaches including Six-
Sigma and Kaizen. Including MSD prevention in a framework already adopted by
these companies, by maximizing similarities and compatibility for integration, allows
the program to have increased sustainability, undergo continuous improvement and
incur less costs for the organization. This can be achieved by using common language,
tools, goals, and framework (Yazdani et al. 2018).
Thus, MSD prevention practices ought to be designed in a way that is completely
compatible with and facilitates integration into other management infrastructures
through, for instance, the use of a quantifiable, repeatable, reliable, and measurable
risk assessment tool, such as RULA. This is consistent with Perez and Neumann
(2015) and Village et al. (2014).
According to Naranjo-Flores and Ramírez-Cárdenas (2014), it is necessary for
there to be a methodology of intervention focused on the correct application of both
concepts (LPS and Ergonomics) in order to achieve results without neglecting the
human factor.
The first tool found in the literature, developed by Toyota in the early 1990 s, is
a measuring instrument known as TVAL (Toyota Verification of Assembly Line),
which analyzes the workload of each assembly job quantitatively. Based on experi-
ments, Toyota assesses work posture and load, along with task length at each work-
station. TVAL enables process planners to recognize physically demanding jobs in an
objective manner, prioritize the workstations to be improved, and concentrate efforts
for improvements where they will have the biggest impact. Alterations include low-
cost automation assists, height-adjustable conveyors, power assist devices, and the
distribution of high-strain tasks. Job rotation also became more frequent, with a 2-
hour rotating pattern being made into the norm at Toyota Kyushu in 1995 (Pil and
Fujimoto 2007).
Various tools have emerged in recent years:
• Wong et al. (2014) developed a Lean index to assess the leanness level of the
organization in sustaining Lean transformation from a socio-technical perspective,
which considers the interdynamics of human, system and technology.
• Jarebrant et al. (2016) proposed the application of the Ergonomic Value Stream
Mapping (ErgoVSM), a tool which aims to improve ergonomic conditions while
productive performance indicators are also in focus in a LPS. The implementa-
tion of ErgoVSM on its cognitive modality is an effort for acknowledging the
significance of assessing health risks within each workstation at companies.
• Gonçalves and Salonitis (2017) proposed a tool to measure and evaluate Lean
and ergonomic principles in order to design leaner and safer workstations. This
model has the form of a checklist which is based on the current best practices in
Workstation Design of assembly lines.
• Aqlan et al. (2013) developed a framework that combines Lean and ergonomic
steps to effectively eliminate Lean and ergonomic wastes.
• Tortorella et al. (2017) proposed a method that comprises a combination of tech-
niques which allow for the identification of deficiencies related to the adoption
Lean Manufacturing practices which may support the implementation of socio-
technical practices, indicating a prioritization of improvement opportunities to
better sustain them.
• Botti et al. (2017) proposed a mathematical model to design Lean processes in
hybrid assembly lines. The aim was to provide an effective, efficient assembly line
design tool that meets the Lean principles and ergonomic requirements of safe
assembly work.
• Rao and Niraj (2016) proposed a model of a framework regarding the integration
of Ergonomics and Lean manufacturing systems based on various tools.
• Nunes (2015) presented a model of a framework regarding the integration of
Ergonomics and Lean Six Sigma (LSS) based on the DMAIC cycle to help the
decision-making process in the execution of the integrated implementation of
Ergonomics and LSS continuous improvement processes.
• Gnanavel et al. (2015) developed a methodology which incorporates Ergonomics

in layout design in a Cellular Manufacturing System (Lean concept)—the Suzhal
layout. This methodology can be easily adopted to improve productivity by pro-
viding workers with a safe workplace.
4.2.4 Lean Automation
The motives to automate the manufacturing processes include improved quality and
efficiency demands, as well as the presence of hazardous working conditions and the
high cost of specialized manual workers. Using technology to automate hard or repet-
itive tasks positively has a positive effect on safety and ergonomic issues, as well as
other labor challenges experienced by several organizations, e.g. an aging workforce
and the related expected increase of injuries in the labor force (Botti et al. 2017).
Although automation has been extensively adopted in manufacturing, many com-
panies still rely on manual workers to perform assembly operations. The current
practice demonstrates that the decision to automate rather than include manual work-
stations is chiefly guided by economic considerations and production needs. Robot
technology is broadly used in the manufacturing industry when products are well-
defined and properly designed. In particular, high production volumes allow a rea-
sonable payback time for the sizeable investment in automatic machines (Lien and
Rasch 2001). Nevertheless, the present market requires companies to find a balance
between the advantages of automated production and the dynamic demand for cus-
tomized products. When automation is not able to provide great flexibility, production
system design demands the joint optimization of human and technical aspects (Botti
et al. 2017).
Beginning with its Kyushu factory, Toyota abandoned full automation efforts in
assembly, shifting its focus instead to “in-line mechanical” automation. This automa-
tion consists of equipment and component jig-pallets in synch with the auto bodies
moving on the traditional continuous conveyers. This makes it possible for automa-
tion zones and manual assembly zones to coexist on the same assembly line. With
in-line automation, mechanical means of alignment between auto bodies, jigs, equip-
ment and component are used to the extent possible rather than sophisticated methods
such as vision-sensing technologies. Since mechanical methods are less expensive,
simpler, and easier to monitor and fix, production workers can assume responsibil-
ity from maintenance staff. The equipment is also designed as a complement rather
the substitution of production workers’ assembly tasks. For instance, in the case of
under-body bolting equipment, an employee sets parts and positions bolts, which are
then tightened to the proper torque by in-line equipment (Pil and Fujimoto 2007).
Figure 11 depicts important components to consider during the implementation
of an LPS, considering Ergonomics.
Fig. 11 Components to consider during the implementation of an LPS, considering Ergonomics
4.3 Industry 4.0 and Future Trends
According to Heng (2014) few practitioners can provide a concrete definition of

Industry 4.0. Researchers and practitioners have diverging opinions regarding which
elements compose Industry 4.0, how these elements relate to one another and where
Industry 4.0 is applicable (Buer et al. 2018). Some even defend that Industry 4.0
does not bring anything new, that it merely brings together existing technologies
and concepts in a new package with a catchy marketing name (Drath and Horch
2014). This ambiguity and absence of a clear definition will lead to communication
problems and complicate research and education on the subject (Pettersen 2009),
and also make it more difficult for companies to identify and implement Industry 4.0
solutions.
Sanders et al. (2016) argue that Industry 4.0 together with Lean manufacturing
may increase productivity, reduce waste and as a result reduce costs. Rüttimann and
Stöckli (2016) predict that Industry 4.0 will materialize in pieces that need to be
integrated into existing Lean frameworks and will ultimately increase the flexibility
of Lean manufacturing. Thus, the introduction of Industry 4.0 does not remove Lean
manufacturing but instead helps to increase the maturity of the firm’s Lean program.
Khanchanapong et al. (2014) likewise suggest that advanced manufacturing tech-
nologies (AMTs) might need to be supported by Lean practices to maximize the
manufacturing performance increase.
With the appearance of computer integrated manufacturing, there was s pecula-
tion that factories of the future would operate autonomously without the need for
human operators. Although such a statement proved to be infeasible in a practical sce-
nario, it originated the concept of Lean automation, in which robotic and automation
technologies are employed to achieve Lean manufacturing (Sanders et al. 2016).
According to Vysocky and Novak (2016) robots are used in the sense of robotic
assistants to increase the quality of work of the human worker.
Human–robot collaboration introduces new opportunities in the cooperation
between humans and machines. Personnel share the workspace with the robot, which
helps them with non-ergonomic, repetitive, uncomfortable or even dangerous tasks.
The robot monitors its movements by using advanced sensors that allow it not to limit
and primarily not to endanger its human colleague. Currently, industrial robotics
is about robots replacing workers who are tasked with non-ergonomic duties. For
instance, manipulation with heavy payloads, manipulation in positions which are
uncomfortable for the worker, or dangerous tasks, such as manipulation with toxic
or hot objects. Robots are similarly installed in monotonous tasks which are uncom-
fortably repetitive or demand high accuracy (Vysocky and Novak 2016).
Through a multiple case study, Strandhagen et al. (2017) find that organizations
with repetitive production systems as the norm should have an easier transition to
Industry 4.0 than non-repetitive production systems. Other researchers defend that
only big enterprises will be able to take advantage of Industry 4.0 and that small and
medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) might quickly become the victims of Industry 4.0
(Sommer 2015).
According to Davies et al. (2017), while it is vital to have a well-defined technical
architecture to support Industry 4.0, the deployment of the initiative will also depend
on appreciating socio-technical features. The virtualization of processes and the
employment of virtual reality in an industrial context create Virtual Ergonomics,
through which it is possible to offer valuable support in decision making as part
of the design process of new production lines, or parts of it, lowering the need for
physical prototypes and cutting down time and costs of development. Through this
technique it is possible to evaluate the Human Factors (HF) by introducing, in virtual
environments which have already been created for the prototypes of product and
process, virtual dummies, digital biomechanical models which simulate man from
the kinematic and dynamic point of view (Laudante 2017). The use of digital models
allows a mathematical account of the operator’s movement during the operational
stages which, in parallel with the visualization techniques of virtual environments,
provide the designer-ergonomist with data not available otherwise. Through data
processing, requirements are confirmed to comply with the manual workstation or
the usage of certain equipment present along the production line including visibility,
accessibility and affordability, monitoring of ergonomic indexes and anthropometric
analysis (Laudante 2017).
Current, standard methods have been present for long time and are made through
a series of models that are generated and based on the direct observation of operators
at work. By using this new method for the detection of ergonomic data it will be
possible to introduce substantial innovation in existing production environments,
one which devotes increased attention to the welfare and safety of the operator.
Through technological support, the improvement of workers’ activities is an essential
feature for achieving their full potential in performing the different processing steps
(Laudante 2017).
There is no doubt that throughout the years the way of focusing on Ergonomics
has changed. Electronic tools are a new way forwards in Ergonomics. For example,
with the support of mobile applications it is now a possibility to see a way to create
healthy conditions at work for production and non-production employees as well as
assembly and logistics. At the dawn of the 20th century, most the people had no idea
what Ergonomics was, the quantity of risks which occur at work which are connected
with the health of employees, and the fact that special methods and tools for their
identification, analysis, evaluation and identification could be developed. These days
there are many methods and tools of modern ergonomics which enable everyone to
solve ergonomic problems. It should be a requisite to conduct ergonomic evaluation
perfectly, extensively and, most of all, quickly. The slowness of some solutions
discourages managers and directors and makes an effective improvement of work
conditions impossible. Considering this, Gasová et al. (2017) developed a mobile
application which works as a screening tool to assist big companies which have
dozens of workplaces and fail to identify work risks by themselves.
Since Industry 4.0 is still a very recent field of research, many gaps in the literature
were found regarding the relation between Lean manufacturing, Ergonomics and
Industry 4.0. Several authors proposed future investigation to clarify some of these
gaps:
• In the opinion of Kolberg et al. (2017), LPS is not suitable to fulfil future market
requirements. Other authors do not agree, so the question is who is right.
• Companies that have already implemented Lean manufacturing need guidelines
on how to integrate the new technologies from Industry 4.0 into their existing Lean
manufacturing systems (Buer et al. 2018).
• According to Sanders et al. (2016) the integration of both Lean manufacturing and
Industry 4.0 is an important research field which needs to be extensively explored.
It is unclear which Lean practices could be combined in Industry 4.0, which ones
complement each other, and which contradict each other.
• Further research is needed to understand the full socio-technical impact of Industry
4.0 on how people can work efficiently in a digital environment (Davies et al. 2017).
• Detailed case studies are necessary to explain how to create, manage, operate, and
maintain production systems in the context of Industry 4.0 (Buer et al. 2018).
• The VSM should combined itself with simulation and the use of real-time data
and universal interfaces. The value stream is therefore no longer a focal point only
in project-related practices, but much more in the center of day-to-day business
processes (Andreas et al. 2018).
Beyond the Industry 4.0 field, other gaps regarding the integration of Ergonomic
aspects in an LPS were found in the literature, as well as investigation proposals,
such as:
• Koukoulaki (2014) questions if there are characteristics in Lean production that
mean it cannot lead to the good quality jobs that are fundamental tenets in
sociotechnical systems theory.
• Hasle (2014) reports that there is a need for further case studies, in which
researchers join forces with practitioners in the workplace to introduce LPS in
a form that is expected to bring about a favorable employee outcome.
• Future studies are needed to document the best practices in the integration of
MSD prevention into the organizational framework, including the management
system. Furthermore, the economic evaluation of such practices will be required
to document the cost-effectiveness of these kinds of approaches (Botti et al. 2017).
• It would be interesting to verify the influence of the evolution of LPS and socio-
technical and ergonomics practices on an organization’s performance indicators
(Tortorella et al. 2017).
• It is important to develop a method to assess the LPS impacts on the working
conditions of white-collar employees (Saurin and Ferreira 2009).
• Schouteten and Benders (2004) consider that the ambiguity of the results about
the health effects in an LPS has to do with the absence of an external assessment
framework supported by validated research instruments.
• Psychosocial factors should also be included in the assessment management tools
(Herrera and Huatuco 2011).
• Overall, there are significant knowledge gaps in what concerns the impact of LPS
on workload and labor conditions in manufacturing (Santos and Nunes 2016).
5 Results Discussion and Conclusions
Future occupational health and Ergonomics intervention research may have a greater
chance of success by focusing on insights that help to balance production performance
and worker well-being, resulting in a move towards more sustainable production sys-
tems (Westgaard and Winkel 2011). However, survey studies among manufacturing
managers demonstrated that they still view ergonomics as a health and disease pre-
vention tool instead of as a method for cost saving and waste reduction (Zare et al.
2016).
The extensive use of LPS raises a question about the ergonomic consequences for
employees (Hasle 2014). The present review found several studies reporting positive
and negative effects in the workers’ health during Lean implementation. This lack
of consensus could originate the misinterpretation and misuse of Lean tools.
On the other hand, most authors of the studies analyzed agreed that the integration
of Ergonomics during Lean implementation has the potential to result in gains in
productivity and simultaneously improve working conditions. However, there is a
lack of case studies in which researchers and practitioners could learn better how
this integration might work. There are several important components to consider
during an Ergonomics LPS implementation, such as: Workstation Design, Training,
Automation, Monitoring and Assessment Tools.
Nowadays the competitive market requires companies to find a balance between
the advantages of automated production and the dynamic requirements for cus-
tomized products. According to Ohno (1988) and existing studies, repeating and
value-adding tasks ought to be automated. Workstation design also plays a criti-
cal role in an LPS to achieve workers’ well-being. Thus, as important as training,
workstation design and integration of Ergonomics in the LPS implementation is mon-
itoring it, in order to reduce workers’ health problems and achieve positive effects. In
recent times, several tools have appeared to evaluate and guide Lean implementation
while considering ergonomic aspects. In the authors’ opinion, despite the existence
of several tools, they are general in scope and none of them is dedicated to worksta-
tions or the production area. Therefore, it is our opinion that it would be valuable
for practitioners if a Lean implementation monitoring tool considering ergonomic
aspects in a more restricted scope were developed, to be used in a production area
or in a specific workstation.
In order to clarify several investigation questions which were brought to light
during this work and reduce the existent gaps in the literature found during this SLR,
the authors propose further supporting evidence and scientific clarification, such as:
• More case studies in different areas, to support that LPS and sociotechnical systems
are compatible and in what way;
• Development of tools which integrate Ergonomic aspects in existent managerial
tools, to assess the LPS impacts on the working conditions of white-collar employ-
ees and define a unique, standard assessment tool validated in all areas (health
care, construction, manufacturing, maintenance, etc.). This tool should include
psychosocial factors and should also act as a guide in the implementation of Lean
while considering ergonomic aspects.
• Identification of the effect on an organization’s performance indicators by integrat-
ing the evolution of LPS and socio-technical and ergonomics practices, including
financial ones.
• Clarification of how to integrate the new technologies from Industry 4.0 into LPS.
• Transformation of traditional Lean manual tools, such as VSM and Ergonomics
manual assessment tools such as RULA, into digital tools, so as to not be left
behind in the fourth revolution.
• Clarification of the full socio-technical impact of Industry 4.0 on how people can
work successfully in a digital environment;
According to Kolberg et al. (2017), Lean Production was created in the 1950 s
and therefore does not take into account the potential of innovative ICT and digi-
tal communication. In standard Lean Production, changes in production processes,
buffer stocks or cycle times require laborious modifications. Thus, the suitability of
Lean Production for limited product life cycles and highly customized products is
inadequate because it is not changeable enough for the mass production of highly
customized products. Not only that, it does not use the potential of modern infor-
mation and communication technology (ICT). Taking this into consideration, the
authors wonder what the future of Lean will be, if it will be replaced by another
concept or philosophy and what this will mean for the well-being of workers.
A particular research challenge is that rationalization intervention is a never-
ending process which must adapt to continuously changing contextual factors to
maintain competitive production systems (Hunter 2008).
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Contributions of Lean Thinking
Principles to Foster Industry 4.0
and Sustainable Development Goals
Victor Bittencourt, Felipe Saldanha, Anabela Carvalho Alves

and Celina Pinto Leão
Abstract Have you ever noticed that during a production process, unecessary waste
occurs, or excessive time is spent in particular areas? Or have you ever encountered
a situation in your work environment where a machine could be performing manual
labor, while human time would be better spent in other situations? These questions
are related to two current chains of thoughts: (1) Lean Thinking and (2) The Fourth
Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0. The first question has been answered by the
Lean Thinking philosophy, which has been used since the 1940s by Toyota factories
in Japan. Lean Thinking is a form of thinking that seeks to reduce what is called
waste in a value stream. The Fourth Industrial Revolution assists in answering the
second question since it is based on the automation of production and the integration
of sectors of an industry, among several other purposes. This chapter aims to clar-
ify the integration of both chains and, at the same time, to demystify any emerging
doubts such as: Would Industry 4.0 be responsible for the end of Lean, or would
Lean mentality be the key for companies to succeed in this new industrial revolu-
tion? To answer these questions a systematic literature review has been developed.
Some findings indicate that the integration of both concepts has resulted in a syn-
ergetic relationship benefiting companies and contributing directly to three of the
17 Sustainable Development Goals: Goal 8—Decent Work and Economic Growth,
Goal 9—Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure, and Goal 12—Responsible Con-
sumption and Production.
V. Bittencourt (B) · F. Saldanha · A. C. Alves · C. P. Leão

Department of Production and Systems, School of Engineering, ALGORITMI R&D Center,
University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal
e-mail: victor_blima@hotmail.com
F. Saldanha
e-mail: felipersaldanha@gmail.com
A. C. Alves
C. P. Leão
e-mail: cpl@dps.uminho.pt

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13515-7_5
130 V. Bittencourt et al.
1 Introduction
Nowadays, the Lean methodology is seen as something that goes beyond the reduc-
tion of waste. Lean Thinking is a vision, a philosophy to maximize the value of
products, eliminating all activities that do not add value from the perspective of the
client, i.e. waste. It is important to emphasize that waste, in this case, is not only
portrayed as simply an unsustainable use of raw material. As a matter of fact there
are eight types of waste: transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction,
over-processing, defects and misuse of talents (Liker 2004; Ohno 1988). Apparently
one can have the impression that Lean methodologies go against the new industrial
revolution, since the new era values the automation and digitalization, whereas the
Lean work methodology has a human essence. However, it is one of the biggest mis-
conceptions that can occur within a company. The Lean philosophy goes far beyond
waste reduction application methods. It is a line of thought that must be present
in the implementation of Industry 4.0, in order to have processess improved before
proceeding to its automation and integration.
Imagine waste reduction that can be achieved by jointly implementing the con-
cepts of Industry 4.0 and Lean. A system where human capacity can be better
utilized within a company, by developing new ideas and projects rather than manual
jobs, which can be performed by robots. As well as this, the potential to increase
human capacity can be assisted by the use of smart technologies. These developments
will therefore enable the employment of human beings in functions that require more
intellectual rather than muscular effort. As a result, these changes can even contribute
to a reduction in gender and disability inequalities that exist within the industrial
sector.
Attending to these facts, the objective of this chapter is to present a systematic
literature review about the contributions of Lean Thinking to Industry 4.0 concept
implementation. In this research, authors also present how the integration of both
concepts promote the achievement of some Sustainable Developments Goals (SDG).
This chapter is divided in five sections. After this Sect. 1 that introduces the context
and objectives of the chapter, comes the Sect. 2 presenting a short literature review.
The research methodology is presented in Sect. 3. Section 4 presents the main results
of the systematic literature review. Finally, in Sect. 5 some final remarks are made.
2 Literature Review
This section presents a brief literature review about the origins and definitions of the
concepts introduced in this chapter.
Contributions of Lean Thinking Principles to Foster … 131
2.1 Lean Thinking
Before entering into Lean Thinking effectively, a brief introduction outlines the
history and reasons for this line of thought, as well as why it is so fundamental within
business. The Lean philosophy emerged in Toyota company, Japan, in 1940s, after
the World War II. Japan, a country that had been devastated by the war and companies
were at a much lower stage compared to the factories in the United States. However,
unlike American factories, the Toyota Production System (TPS) model was based
on the fact that only a small percentage of the time and effort was employed in order
to add value to the product (Hines et al. 2004; Melton 2005).
The complete development of Toyota’s production model, from its production
system to its distribution center, in a Lean model lasted approximately 40 years.
During this time, the main Lean tools used were Kanban, 5 S’s, Visual Control,
Poka Yoke and SMED (Melton 2005). However, it was in the early 1990s that Lean
philosophy began to expand out of Japan. The main and first written book on the
methodology employed at Toyota, comparing it with North American production
lines was “The Machine that Changed the World” (Womack et al. 1990). The main
differences between Henry Ford’s, Fordism, and TPS models are summarized in
Table 1, that was adapted from Krafcik (1988). Krafcik (1988) distinguished pure
Fordism from recent Fordism, being the TPS model more similar to the first. The
Table 1 has the characteristics of the recent Fordism.
The use of the Lean philosophy is intrinsically linked to the reduction of waste,
however, the philosophy is something that goes beyond this. The principles of the
Lean philosophy serve to identify among all the activities of the process, those that
add and those that do not add value to the final product, aiming to reduce or, even,
eliminate activities that do not add value. The philosophy is based on production
Table 1 Fordism versus TPS

Characteristics Fordism TPS
Work standardization High, by managers High, by teams
Span of control Narrow Moderate
Inventories Large Small
Buffers Large Small
Repair areas Large Very small
Teamwork Low High
Equipment Expensive and with a unique Manual and automated systems,
function capable to produce high
volumes and variety
Production High volumes and low diversity, Customized products
standard products
Philosophy Hierarchical and functional Divided responsibility pursuit
objective: “good enough” perfection
according to customer demand, which is called pull production, always having as

main goal the continuous improvement of production, in order to reduce activities
that increase the monetary value, but do not aggregate in quality or are not essential
within the manufacturing context (Sundar et al. 2014).
The current and increasingly competitive market has led most companies to adopt
Lean Production tools in order to minimize production costs and thus increase prof-
itability. Among the 25 essential tools of the Lean methodology, some have a greater
acceptance in the market and consequently a greater use (Hines et al. 2004). It is
important to emphasize that the way a company should implement the philosophy
varies according to the business context. However, there are some practices associated
with Lean production that are essential to its implementation: bottleneck removal,
cellular manufacturing, benchmarking, continuous improvement programs, multi-
functional workforce, Just-in-time, batch reduction and one-piece-flow, preventive
maintenance, pull/kanban system, quality, among several other (Mrugalska and Wyr-
wicka 2017).
As far as the implementation of the Lean philosophy is concerned, there are
many disseminated and debated structures. As for example, according to Ålström, in
addition to activities that add value, it must be done when the process is mature, so
that it can extract the maximum of the principles that had been established previously
(Åhlström 1998).
The implementation of Lean in the industrial sector was so successful that over
the years the philosophy has spread to several areas. Currently there is a wide range
of sectors that are implementing the philosophy that was initially developed for an
automobile industry. It can be proven that the use of this tool has had a huge impact
on the advances and improvements in several sectors (Alves et al. 2014).
The success of Lean Thinking is due in large part to its adaptability, and to the fact
that companies implementing this philosophy will always be looking for improve-
ment. In other words, where processes are continuously questioned and where
people are transformed into more than just ‘machines’ for manual labor, but into
eternal apprentices and thinkers (Alves et al. 2012). This key feature of Lean goes
against what can become reality in the future, with the arrival of Industry 4.0, where
people will be directed to jobs that demand more intellectual than physical capacity.
2.2 Industry 4.0
The world has seen some great events through the course of human life, particularly
regarding industrial revolutions. The first industrial revolution took place between
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was at this time that the first machines were
introduced and industries were born. This revolution is identified until today as the
one that presented mankind with automated machines, in especial the steam powered
machine (Popkova et al. 2019).
The so called second industrial revolution has a major difference when compared
to the first industrial revolution, because it has not presented any disruption in pro-
duction. This second revolution can also be seen as an evolution of the first one. It
took place in the beginning of the XIX century ending right after the second world
war (Popkova et al. 2019).
The third industrial revolution started in the United States of America (USA),
however, there are some inconsistencies regarding when it began. While some authors
refer back to 1970, others point to 1990. This revolution marked a revolution in
process and assembly information. And why is that? How much more information are
we able to collect now using computers, cellphones, etc.? All that technology came
out during the third industrial revolution. So, just like the first industrial revolution,
it is also classified as a disrupted revolution (Popkova et al. 2019).
It can be said that the third industrial revolution has never finished, considering
that information remains being collect in large scale and it is this exact amount of
information that is leading to a new industrial revolution, the so-called Industry 4.0
(I4.0), or the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Zezulka et al. 2016). This term came
out for the first time at the Hannover Fair in 2011, which symbolizes the beginning
of the forth industrial revolution (Qin et al. 2016).
Before getting into deeper detail about the I4.0, lets review some important points
that are key to the current revolution. To understand how industry got here, it is
necessary to talk a little about innovation. According to Steve Jobs, “Innovation is
the difference between leaders and followers”, and today innovation is synonymous
with progress and modernity in every area.
In the last few years, the USA has been leading the world economy. In some ways,
their investment in innovation is helping them retain that position. Aiming to reduce
this difference, the European Union has increased its investment in this area (as an
example the Portugal-2020 program) (Witkowski 2017).
But what really means innovation? Schumpeter (1989) points out that innovation
can be defined as a combination of factors that result in some of the cases presented
below:
• Develop a new product or introduce products with new properties
• A new production method
• Acquisition of a new source of raw material
• The opening of a new market.
Those are some examples of what innovation can be (Witkowski 2017). And
how is that related to Industry 4.0? The Industry 4.0 is used for three, mutually
interconnected factors:
• Digitization and integration of any simple technical—economical relation to com-
plex technical—economical complex networks
• Digitization of products and services offer
• New market models.
Today all these human activities are interconnected by communication systems.
Industry 4.0 aims to reduce the human influence in production and promising tech-
nologies are emerging. Some of these technologies are the Internet of Things (IoT),
Internet of People (IoP), Internet of Services (IoS) and Big Data analyze (Brettel
et al. 2014; Bueno et al. 2017).
According to Schumacher et al. (2016) “Industry 4.0 refers to technological
advances where the internet and supporting technologies serve as a backbone to
integrate physical objects, human actors, intelligent machines, production lines and
processes across organizational boundaries to form a new kind of intelligent net-
worked and agile value chain”.
The term Internet of Things (IoT) was first presented by an entrepreneur named
Kevin Ashton in 1999, years before the so-called Industry 4.0 was introduced to the
world. But Cisco consider the true birth of the “Internet of Things” to be from the
turn of 2008 to 2009, when the number of devices connected to the network surpassed
the number of inhabitants on the planet (Witkowski 2017).
A system where everything is capable of exchanging information, especially mate-
rials. Every component carries along some information that can be transferred and
read in a computer. Embedded sensors in the material are responsible for the trans-
mission of data. This ability to extract information during the whole process and
from every component is one of the most important technologies in this new area,
and that is what is called Internet of Things.
Internet of Things has three particularities, the context, omnipresence and opti-
mization.
• Context—Refers to the possibility of an advanced interaction of objects with an
existing environment and its immediate response. It allows objects to provide
information.
• Omnipresence—Illustrates the fact that objects today are much more than just
connections to a user network of human-operators. It is expected that objects will
communicate with each other in a near future.
• Optimization—Represents the functionality which every object possess.
To demonstrate how widely applicable the Internet of Things is, the authors present
the Table 2, that shows some areas where this type of technology is found (Atzori
et al. 2010).
Internet of Things also brings the increase in performance which can be assisted
by shortening the cycle of logistics processes and optimize their cost.
As said before, nowadays, Big Data represents a huge amount of information
that is generated daily. This huge amount of data cannot be treated with traditional
tools, and alongside the I4.0 comes the Big Data analyzes, which gives companies
the capabilities to manage to use forever growing databases (Ma et al. 2015).
Big Data consists of separating what is more important from what is less important,
assisting in obtaining conclusions and support to achieve business objectives. Some
authors point out that Big Data can be divided in four dimensions such as presented
on Table 3 (Walker 2014).
The greatest gain that comes along Big Data is the capacity to analyze a large
amount of data from all kind of sources and refine it according to the needs of the
company. But although it seems quite upfront, the implementation of such technolo-
Table 2 Areas where can be found IoT in use, and its applicability (Atzori et al. 2010)
Area Applicability
Environment Safe operation of the entire anthropogenic environment
Water management The impact of water resources on the environment, their
use and protection and others
Industry Sectors of the national economy
Production (Intelligent industry) Control of production lines, rotation of products on store
shelves and in warehouse
Transport Issues such as location of transported goods, control of the
conditions of transport or storage
Energy Monitoring consumption, usage, process
Cities Organization of pedestrians and traffic, diagnosis of safety
issues, noise, lighting and waste management
Buildings Monitoring, motion sensors, smart irrigation, smart
thermostats
Health Monitoring health and physical activities
Life Solutions aimed at comfort and safety
Table 3 Big data dimensions

Dimension Classification
(McAfee and Brynjolfsson
2012) Volume It is related to the size of the information
Variety When data comes from a different variety of
sources
Velocity Real time data analysis, aiming correct
conclusions based on constant and flowing data
Value Isolate what is important from what is not
gies demand a maturity level that most companies do not have yet, especially small
and medium size companies (Wank et al. 2016).
The industry 4.0 can be understood in two axes, a horizontal axis that represents
the integration that must happen among all participants of the entire value-chain; and
a vertical axis regarding the level of automation. Based on these two characteristics
some maturity models have been developed and other are still in construction, to
assist companies in transition to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
A maturity model is used as an instrument to conceptualize and measure how
ready an organization or a process are to reach a specific target. In this case the goal
is to get to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Pöppelbuß and Röglinger 2011). If you
search Industry 4.0 maturity models, you will find many results, but five of them have
established themselves as the most popular and effective on this topic (Pöppelbuß
and Röglinger 2011).
Some of the results present very promising ideas, but there are not much research
using these models yet. One good example is the model proposed by Schumacher
et al. (2016). This model is based on nine dimensions and assigned 62 items to assess
Table 4 Dimension and

Dimension Category
category to assess I4.0
maturity model (Schumacher Products Basic enablers
et al. 2016) Customers
Operations
Technology
Strategy Organizational aspects
Leadership
Governance
Culture
People
the maturity of a company in the context of Industry 4.0 (Schumacher et al. 2016).
The nine dimensions can be divided in two categories as shown on Table 4.
In regard of the five more commonly used models when the goal is to move towards
Industry 4.0, Table 5 presents those five alongside complementary information, such
as the assessment approach and where it came from.
Those are models that companies can use to check how ready they are to
move towards Industry 4.0, it can also be used as a guide for small and medium
enterprises. As well as the maturity model, one crucial factor in getting to the I4.0
is the companies’ structures. It is necessary that they have both physical and virtual
structure to support the cooperation and rapid response throughout the lifecycle of a
product, from innovation to production and distribution (Gligor and Holcomb 2012).
2.3 Lean Thinking and Industry 4.0
The brief review carried out in this chapter allowed the authors to reflect on these two
concepts that, although with origins and moments of appearance so different, seek
the same: to reduce the cost and to increase the productivity of the companies. How-
ever, they do it differently, Lean Thinking through waste reduction and continuous
improvement mind-set and Industry 4.0 through the exploration of new technologies
powered by IoT.
In addition, although with different approaches, these can and should be comple-
mentary, since the implementation of Lean Thinking will lead a company to train
thinkers (Alves et al. 2012) that will be fundamental in the change required by Indus-
try 4.0. For this training it will be necessary for employees to acquire certain skills,
such as those referred by Brown (2018): critical thinking, problem solving, prob-
lem management and decision making. It is expected, however, that technologies
can also help in this training and in making the right decisions through collabora-
tive work platforms, teaching platforms, “learning factories” (Blöchl and Schneider
2016; Meissner et al. 2018; Prinz et al. 2018).
Table 5 Maturity models and characterization (Schumacher et al. 2016)

Model name Institution/Source Assessment approach
IMPULS—Industrie 4.0 VDMA, RWTH Aachen, Composed of 6 dimensions
Readiness IW Consult with 18 items to appoint
readiness in 5 distinct levels
Empowered and implementation Lanza et al. (2016) Assessment of Industry 4.0
strategy for Industry 4.0 maturity as a quick check
and part of a process model
realization; gap-analysis
and toolbox for overcoming
maturity-barriers are
intended
Industry 4.0/Digital Operations PricewaterhouseCoopers Online self-assessment in 6
Self-Assessment dimensions; focus on digital
maturity in 4 levels;
application as consulting
tool as fee for assessment is
required in 3 of the 6
dimensions
The Connected Enterprise Rockwell automation Maturity model as part of a
Maturity Model five-stage approach to
realize Industry 4.0;
technology focused
assessment in 4 dimensions
Reifegradmodell FH Obertösterreich Assessment of maturity in 3
dimensions including 13
items for maturity
indication; maturity is
assessed in 10 levels;
development process not
finished
Some investigators have already done some work in this area although the lit-
erature is still very diffuse in this matter, with researchers who see LT and I4.0 as
divergent concepts (Kolberg et al. 2017; Ma et al. 2017; Yin et al. 2017). Thus, in
the context of the systematic review carried out in this investigation, it is sought
to evaluate the facilitating effect of LT in the implementation of I4.0, the technolo-
gies that can support/inhibit LP practices and possible barriers or restrictions to the
integration of LP and I4.0.
A systematic literature review (SLR) was the research methodology followed to

explore the literature (scientific journals, books, theses, dissertations, and abstracts
in congresses) relating to Industry 4.0 and Lean Production, and the interaction
between both topics. A SLR is an important research process that uses a pre-planned
research strategy and not simply a review of previous research. This type of review
aims to respond to specific research questions and, building on existing studies,
selects and evaluate contributions, analyzes and synthesizes data, and reports the
evidence in such a way that allows the researcher to draw their own conclusions
about what is known and unknown (Denyer and Tranfield 2009; Thomé et al. 2016).
Also, by bringing together the results of different studies on a specific topic, a greater
understanding of the topic is achieved as well as a more in-depth level of conceptual or
theoretical development than by any individual study (Campbell et al. 2003; Thomé
et al. 2016).
A SLR covers all or most of the following steps (Denyer and Tranfield 2009;
Thomé et al. 2016): (1) planning and formulating the research question; (2) localiza-
tion and searching the literature; (3) data gathering and quality evaluation; (4) data
analysis and synthesis; and (5) interpretation and presenting results. The research
questions that were formulated to guide the SLR are the following:
• Does Lean Thinking haven an enabling effect on the implementation of Industry
4.0?
• Can Industry 4.0 technologies support Lean Production practices?
• What are the possible barriers or constraints related to the integration between
Lean Production and Industry 4.0?
The remaining steps are summarized in Table 6. In line with the research questions,
second step is associated with the sources location (Web of Science, Scopus, Taylor
& Francis, and Science Direct) and searching the literature (secondary sources).
The third step associated with data gathering and quality evaluation, is related to the
search phase of the literature itself. It is in this step that the procedure used is defined,
including the time period, the exclusion criteria and the classification criteria applied.
The time frame considered was from the year of 2011 to 2018. This period was
considered since it was at the end of 2011 that the term Industry 4.0 was used for the
first time (Schwab 2016). The keywords used were broad enough to not restrict the
research and aimed to address the different objectives established by this work.
Due to the large number of works obtained, an exclusion criterion was chosen:
papers that had a superficial or partial approach to Industry 4.0 were excluded. Finally,
only papers in English or Portuguese were considered. Based on this evaluation a
total of 26 papers were selected for inclusion in the review, as illustrated in Fig. 1.
The data analysis and synthesis (fourth step) was carried out through the catego-
rization of the selected papers by title, author, year of publication, type of publication,
type of research and topic approached. The results were categorized in order to give
a better understanding of the studies already carried out in this area of research. The
data gathered and considered most relevant were discussed individually (step five).
Table 6 Summary of procedure used in the SLR

(1) Localization and searching Web of Science, Scopus, Taylor & Francis, Science Direct
the literature Review articles, research articles and conference abstracts
(2) Data gathering and quality Time period: 2011–2018
evaluation TITLE-ABS-KEY (“indústria 4.0” or “industry 4.0” or
“fourth industrial revolution” or “smart factory”) and
(“Lean production” or “Lean manufacturing” or “Lean
thinking” or “Lean management”)
TITLE-ABS-KEY (“indústria 4.0” or “industry 4.0” or
“fourth industrial revolution” or “smart factory”) and (“5S”
or “one piece flow” or “andon” or “kanban” or “heijunka”
or “just in time” or “poka-yoke” or “SMED” or “VSM” or
“TPM” or “SPC”)
Exclusion:
• Not related to both Industry 4.0 and Lean
• Do not approach more than one aspect of Industry 4.0
• Not in Portuguese or English
• Paper not available for download (only summary
available for viewing)
Classification:
• Different aspects of Industry 4.0 were addressed
• Lean principles and tools had a focus on integration with
Industry 4.0
• Improvements obtained from the integration of the two
concepts
• Barriers or difficulties related to the integration between
the different concepts identified
Total papers selected: 26
(3) Data analysis and synthesis The software Excel was used for processing the data. Data
were categorized according to keywords used, the paper’
research method, country of origin, author(s), and year of
publication
(4) Interpretation and presenting Interpretation and understanding about the interrelationship
results between Lean and Industry 4.0 based on the secondary
sources researched, in order to answer the research
questions raised in this work. Individual analysis of the
sources considered more relevant and use of descriptive
statistics in order to uncover the results
4 Results and Discussion
As presented in the previous chapter, through the SLR, 26 articles that meet the
inclusion and exclusion criteria were selected and, therefore, present a contribution
to answer the research questions. Thus, this chapter gives an overview of the articles
included in the analysis before classifying them according to the conceptual structure
IdenƟficaƟon
631 records idenƟfied
through database
searching and keywords
524 records excluded based
on exclusion criterion
Screening
107 records idenƟfied
58 records duplicates
removed
ClassificaƟon
49 records screened
23 records excluded,
with reasons
26 studies
Analysis
included in review
Fig. 1 PRISMA flowchart
presented in Chap. 3. The most important results are then presented according to the
proposed classification scheme.
4.1 Characterization of the Studies/Articles Selected
All articles were collected in an Excel table so that it was possible to analyze quan-
titatively, i.e., number of articles for each keyword searched, number of articles per
year and region, in order to get an idea of where the investigated topic has a greater
popularity. Annex I presents the list of articles and authors of the 26 articles selected
and analyzed in greater detail in order to answer the research questions.
Additionally, when these articles were read, the authors attended to: (1) different
aspects of Industry 4.0 were addressed; (2) Lean principles and tools had a focus
on integration with Industry 4.0; (3) improvements from the integration of the two
concepts and (4) barriers or difficulties related to the integration between the different
concepts identified.
One of these analyzes results is presented in Fig. 2, which shows the number
of articles in which the keywords were discussed. As it is possible to evaluate, the
Fig. 2 Number of articles found by searched keyword
Fig. 3 Number of articles found by database
Fig. 4 Articles by publication sources
search term “Industry 4.0” and “Lean production” represents the largest number of
occurrences, equivalent to 73% of the articles selected to compose the final part of
this study.
The databases Scopus and Science Direct were where most articles were found,
both of which were responsible for contributing with 80% of the material found (each
contributing with 12 and 9 articles respectively), as seen in Fig. 3.
Most of the selected articles were published in the International Journal of Pro-
duction Research (6 articles, representing 23% of the total) followed by an equal
amount by Procedia Manufacturing (6 articles, representing 23% of the total) and by
CIRP Procedia (4 articles, % of total), according to Fig. 4.
Fig. 5 Articles published per year
Fig. 6 Research method of

the analyzed sources
Figure 5 shows the number of articles published per year. It is clear that this is an
emerging research area, with most studies being published between 2017 and 2018,
with the first article published in 2015.
According to Fig. 6, the literature review method represented 81% of the total
identified sources (21 articles), while the case studies represents 19% of the occur-
rences with 5 articles identified.
From the 26 articles in the final sample, Germany is the largest contributor, with
15 articles from German universities or research institutions, as can be seen in Fig. 7.
4.2 Main Results and Literature Classification
Using the conceptual framework proposed in Sect. 3 to categorize the articles selected
for the study, it was possible to identify the main theoretical perspective of the
articles and the areas investigated. This analysis resulted in its structuring in the
three perspectives according the research questions: (1) Lean Thinking enabling
Fig. 7 Country of origin of the selected sources
effect in the implementation of Industry 4.0, (2) Industry 4.0 technologies and its
tools are seen as facilitators to achieve a Lean company’s objectives, (3) barriers,
constraints and difficulties in integrating LT and I4.0.
Table 7 presents an overview of the literature that supports these perspectives.
These perspectives are discussed in the following sections on the basis of selected
articles and research questions.
4.2.1 Enabling Effect of Lean Thinking on the Implementation

of Industry 4.0
An important perspective on the interaction between Industry 4.0 and Lean, is that
the Lean can be used as a basis to build an implementation of Industry 4.0, thus
becoming a facilitator in this implementation. In the articles selected, this interaction
is visible, as shown below, as the authors discuss the positive synergy potentiated by
this interaction.
Thus, Kolberg and Zühlke (2015) highlighted in their work the Lean’s facilitat-
ing role in the implementation process of Industry 4.0. Lean concepts such as work
standardization, organization and transparency are highlighted as support for imple-
mentation of solutions linked to Industry 4.0. At the same time, through the analysis
of implementation cases in the industry, Lean processes improvement capacity is
highlighted from its integration with Industry 4.0.
Table 7 Categorization of the literature based on the proposed structure

Perspective Author
Lean Thinking enabling effect on the Kolberg and Zühlke (2015)
implementation of Industry 4.0 Jayaram (2016)
Tortorella and Fetterman (2017)
Leyh et al. (2017)
Davies et al. (2017)
Mrugalska and Wyrwicka (2017)
Buer et al. (2018)
Prinz et al. (2018)
Lugert et al. (2018)
Beifert et al. (2018)
Uriarte et al. (2018)
I4.0 seen as Lean facilitator Meudt et al. (2017)
Sanders et al. (2016)
Wagner et al. (2017)
Dombrowski et al. (2017)
Fettermann et al. (2018)
Hofmann and Rüsch (2017)
Hambach et al. (2017)
Enke et al. (2018)
Wagner et al. (2018)
Bauer et al. (2018)
Hannola et al. (2018)
Mayr et al. (2018)
Barriers, constraints and difficulties to the Ma et al. (2017)
integration of LT and I4.0 Kolberg et al. (2017)
Yin et al. (2017)
By comparing technologies from Industry 4.0 with Lean methods, the authors
proposed an overview of possible connections and thus presented two cases from two
German companies: Würth and Wittenstein. The Würth company has introduced an
order replenishment system based on Kanban baskets. A sensor detects the amount
of items in the basket and the data is automatically transmitted to the control system.
In addition, the new system is able to send orders automatically to suppliers, causing
the stock to be reduced, space clearance on the shop floor occurs and orders are made
according to the needs of the production line.
Another case analyzed was that of Wittenstein, where a flexible supply chain
system is in operation. Instead of fixed transport intervals, an integrated system with
production and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) determines the milk-run system-
based transport interval, through real-time demand. Also, according to the study, the
interaction between employees with transport system is through portable screens,
thus reinforcing one of the principles of Industry 4.0 which is the verticalization
provided by human-machine interaction. As reported, the system registered gains of
25% with the new implementation.
In Tortorella and Fettermann (2017) the relationship between Lean and Industry
4.0 was analyzed, as well as its influence on operational performance in companies.
According to the same authors, the literature that correlates Lean and Industry 4.0
is scarce and only suggests a positive association between these approaches, but
without empirical tests. Based on the data of 110 companies evaluated, the results of
the questionnaires were validated through mathematical methods. It was indicated
that companies with a low degree of maturity in the framework of a Lean production
system (less than 2 years) presented a low level of interaction with Industry 4.0.
According to the same authors, the degree of maturity of a Lean production system
is associated with a higher level of awareness, which provides a better understanding
of its underlying practices and principles, leading to the conclusion that the level of
maturity of the Lean system in a company is an important variable in a process of
association with Industry 4.0.
Davies et al. (2017) in their research present I4.0 and Lean as mutually supportive,
where Lean methods are seen as facilitators of Industry 4.0 and, I4.0 is analyzed as a
factor that strengthens the Lean. Interoperability is treated from the operational point
of view and from the socio-technical point of view. From the operational point of
view, it is possible to observe the vertical and horizontal integration of the productive
process, from the integration of tools and principles already known by Lean and
I4.0. As an example, it is possible to mention the use of electronic kanban system
and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) system due to the connectivity between
machines/maintenance team. An important point addressed by the authors, which was
not mentioned in other studies, is the restriction of the exchange of information due
to security factors and access protocols, due to the continuous sharing of information
occurring through the Internet in Cyber-physical systems.
These same authors considered sociotechnical factors from an interaction between
Lean and Industry 4.0. It is understood as a sociotechnical system those systems
that involve a complex interaction between people, machines and the environmen-
tal aspects of organizational systems. The complexities that arise with increased
socio technical interaction will be managed through the change in the way people at
each organizational level interact.
According to this publication, the conventional relationship of a management
system that predominantly controls workers will lead to active participation, where
there will be a mutual transfer of knowledge between the management and operational
levels. Management decisions will be optimized based on shared knowledge and
workers at the operational level will no longer be passive agents who carry out their
tasks without any reference. Instead, they will be elevated to the status of “knowledge
worker,” in view of the verticalization of processes generated by increased interaction
between workers and the process.
Mrugalska and Wyrwicka (2017) support the claim that Lean and Industry 4.0 can
coexist and are mutually supportive, which is supported by other authors (Uriarte
et al. 2018) who even claim that barriers in implementing both can be overcome from
a combination of different approaches.
Uriarte et al. (2018) suggests that in the future, Lean, far from disappearing, will
still be a fundamental philosophy to support companies to become more efficient.
Industry 4.0 solutions will support their implementation in companies, overcoming
even some of the existing hurdles for Lean implementation today. Moreover, accord-
ing to the authors, changes in technologies alone will not help in any productivity
gain, an organizational change will be required to support the use of new technologies
included by Industry 4.0.
An investment to adapt the skills of workers will be necessary to embrace the
new advances that this industrial revolution will bring, something that has also been
observed in the publication of Mrugalska and Wyrwicka (2017). This is in accordance
with the principle of respect for people, a key point of Lean, where human aspect
has to be developed with the aim of maximizing individual and team performance
(Ohno 1988).
Buer et al. (2018) show how the simplified, waste-free process achieved through
a Lean transformation simplifies additional efforts to automate and digitize the man-
ufacturing process, thus promoting the implementation of I4.0.
Prinz et al. (2018) investigated a learning factory whose main objective is to
prepare workers for the new reality of the industry 4.0. In this learning factory several
operations of a production line were simulated in different stages and with different
requirements. Lean tools associated with pull production and milk-run system were
also tested in this line, followed by failure simulations that forced employees to find
answers.
According to these authors, employees were then encouraged to use technologies
associated with Industry 4.0 to solve such problems and improve the current sys-
tem, using the digitization of resources in order to obtain real-time information and
assistance, which are considered elementary in the concept of Industry 4.0, being
associated with CPS and IoT. According to the publication, the purpose of the train-
ing is to make clear the benefits of both Lean and Industry 4.0, but for a successful
implementation of new technologies, the production process has to be optimized and
organized by Lean principles and principles.
Still according to Prinz et al. (2018), the implementation of technologies related to
Industry 4.0 in a production system, compromises the optimized use of such resources
without first of all having a framework of the organization, with principles such as
process standardization and production flow, inherent to Lean, which will guarantee
transparency of the productive process and gain of productivity. These authors also
evidenced that companies benefit from the technological implementation of Industry
4.0 through an increase in operational performance with a solid Lean system.
Lugert et al. (2018) investigated the correlation between Lean and Industry 4.0,
focusing on the evolution of the VSM tool in the face of increasing digitization in the
manufacturing environment. After analyzing data provided by 170 Lean management
experts in the German industry, they came to the conclusion that Industry 4.0 and
Lean methods do not contradict each other; rather, there is a great potential to be
gained from combining the two approaches.
According to this author, the main identified disadvantage of VSM is its static
behavior, which from the implementation of Industry 4.0 solutions, can be overcome.
If the real-time data from the manufacturing execution system is put together with
the geographic data collected by an RFID system, the current value stream can be
permanently displayed and bottlenecks, as well as improvements, can be continu-
ously verified. In this way, VSM would change from a static tool to a dynamic one.
This idea is shared by the authors mentioned above (Dombrowski et al. 2017; Enke
et al. 2018; Lugert et al. 2018; Meudt et al. 2017; Wagner et al. 2018).
4.2.2 Industry 4.0 as Facilitator of Lean Thinking
This section reviews existing literature that discusses how Industry 4.0 technologies
can better support the Lean journey, both in the implementation phase and in estab-
lished Lean systems. A detailed analysis of the articles selected for this study shows
that several authors support the idea that the application of modern information and
communication technologies associated with Industry 4.0 in Lean production systems
can improve the performance of such systems, obtaining more efficient productive
processes and logistics.
Hambach et al. (2017) proposes a digitized continuous improvement method
(PDCA cycle) model, from the integration with I4.0 solutions. Thus, for this author,
continuous digital improvement can offer an increased potential and more possibil-
ities for a more efficient improvement of the process. The proposed model is not a
method with which the continuous improvement tool becomes independent of the
actual production it intends to improve. Processes should always be inspected on site,
so the “going to Gemba” principles will remain in place in the future. Therefore, the
PDCA combined with elements of I4.0 is intended to support employees in their
work, not replace employees and their creativity in solving problems. Such an aspect
is also addressed by Sanders et al. (2016), who investigates different dimensions of
Lean manufacturing and how Industry 4.0 solutions can help overcome barriers in
the Lean implementation process.
Wagner et al. (2017) considered the features of I4.0 as a stabilizer of Lean pro-
cesses. To support the development process, present in the I4.0 concept, these authors
created an impact matrix correlating the two approaches. This matrix was carried out
through the evaluation carried out by several leaders of Industry 4.0 implementation
projects. It shows the impact of Industry 4.0 technologies (e.g., big data, augmented
reality) under Lean principles (e.g. Just in Time, 5S, Kaizen).
As the main point of the author’s research, a case study was carried out in an
automotive company that focused on the development of a CPS in order to support
the just in time distribution system of components, resulting in a system that makes
stock balancing based on real-time data. The starting point was the substitution of
Kanban cards for vertical solutions of communication between machines.
The concept involved the development of a continuous information flow system
between orders for manufacturing, delivery, stock, material consumption as well as
automatic vendor orders from the supplier. As a result, the material flow was modified
to a direct delivery system to supply the machines, ending buffer accumulation on the
shop floor. The operation takes place through the detection of all material movement,
still in the central warehouse, through sensors and then the data is released in a big
data or “cloud” type architecture. From the request launched by the production, takes
place the conference of the components that are necessary and, a logistic system was
implemented based on the milk-run in order to supply the consumption of material.
As a result of the implementation of CPS associated with just in time deliveries, there
was a decrease in stock on the shop floor and also in the warehouse. According to
the author, as a benefit registered by the implementation, it was possible to observe
an increase in the traceability and reliability of the process.
Mayr et al. (2018) investigated the contribution of Industry 4.0 solutions to facili-
tate the implementation of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) of a metal stamping
section of an electrical components industry. As previously it was not possible to
visualize the data of the machine, the objective was to provide transparent data for
operators and maintenance technicians in the workplace. Through the implementa-
tion of monitoring systems, data obtained from sensors installed in the machines, are
sent and consolidated by a database of the type “cloud” that allows the analysis of
the current state from statistical analyzes and data history.
Still in the study of these authors, the mapping of the current and future state is
made available in mobile devices, thus allowing man-machine integration. As all data
is stored in the “cloud”, information can be shared between different departments,
making spare parts request in agile time, scheduling maintenance activities dynami-
cally and gains with the transparency of the information generated. According to the
author, the results show that I4.0 tools can help Lean achieve its objectives.
One of the Lean tools most approached and questioned about its operation within
Industry 4.0 is VSM, with several authors pointing out that the integrated and real-
time data collection can increase the potential of VSM (Dombrowski et al. 2017;
Enke et al. 2018; Lugert et al. 2018; Meudt et al. 2017; Wagner et al. 2018). Such
a combination is named Lean 4.0 (Enke et al. 2018) and VSM 4.0 (Meudt et al.
2017) and according to the authors, this combination can potentiate the tool showing
the reduction of wastes known by Lean systems, as well as make the reading of the
productive flow clearer.
Wagner et al. (2018) in his research, within a project between Bosch and TU
Braunschweig, came to the conclusion that integrating the VSM tool with a Big Data
architecture would provide gains in information transparency. In addition, the KPIs
would be indicated with precision, since some data were reported and filled manually,
allocating an employee to this function. The result is an integrated architecture with
functionalities based on the acquisition of data of all lines in the local production
process.
Authors such as Fetterman et al. (2018), analyze the influence of Industry 4.0
under Lean as a factor with enormous potential to generate new business models, and
with great capacity to impact operational factors. Also, in the investigation of these
authors, a series of successful implementation cases of Industry 4.0 are described in
several global companies such as: Audi, Volkswagen, ThyssenKrupp and Wolfkran.
It was observed that the implementation of solutions based on IoT and CPS, such as
AR (augmented reality), Big Data and RFID, registered significant improvements in
the JIT system, reduction of waste and increase in quality, since some technologies
such as AR, for example, in addition to improving the ergonomic conditions of
workers in the production line, also minimized the occurrence of failures.
4.2.3 Barriers, Constraints and Difficulties in Integrating Lean

Thinking and Industry 4.0
Some authors conceptualize the possible performance benefits from the integration
between Industry 4.0 and Lean. As shown in this section, most authors understand that
there is a positive correlation between these different approaches, but they emphasize
factors considered as limiting. Ma et al. (2017) as well as Kolberg et al. (2017) point
out that Lean methods reach their limits in complex manufacturing environments in
the context of Industry 4.0, being an impediment to creative innovation.
In their research, Ma et al. (2017) highlights the combination of Lean tools and the
principles of Industry 4.0 to develop an intelligent and decentralized Jidoka system
based on the CPS, capable of generating an increase in the flexibility of the production
system. According to the authors, the greatest limitation to such integration lies
in the absence of an understandable architecture that supports integration between
Jidoka and CPS. Under the IoT aspect, networks and protocols are heterogeneous
and complex, making Jidoka’s data analysis and decision-making capability limited.
In order to solve this issue, the author proposed an architecture based on a Lean
system enabled by CPS technologies.
Yin et al. (2017) stressed the importance of mass customization as a competi-
tive advantage and that, although flexible and efficient, Lean systems have a slow
response capacity. Taking this into account, the author’s research concludes that
smart factories and the Industry 4.0 environment have the answer to implementing
the mass customization strategy.
The authors use the case of Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer, which
uses a collaborative work platform with IoT and IoS connectivity, which allows the
communication of its customers between technical staff and hardware/software ven-
dors and other customers. The company encourages interaction between its products
and customers through the connection promoted by IoT, and often launches products
with new designs and provides online services based on feedback from its consumers.
4.3 Discussion
It is possible to observe, from the analysis of the position of the authors according
to the proposed perspectives, that in many cases an overlap of ideas occurs. Figure 8
illustrates this overlap: (1) LT seen as facilitator of the implementation of I4.0, (2)
I4.0 as a facilitator of Lean, (3) barriers, constraints and difficulties in the integration
between the different concepts.
By analyzing some publications, namely, Ma et al. (2017), Kolberg et al. (2017),
Yin et al. (2017), it is possible to observe that Lean is treated as a limiting factor in
the context of Industry 4.0, although the authors only want to reinforce the need to
include elements of the Industry 4.0. Thus, it is fundamental to analyze and interpret
the concept of Lean introduced by the authors and of Industry 4.0 to understand the
role and importance of each one.
Fig. 8 Venn diagram on identified perspectives
Lean, by definition, has successfully challenged mass production practices, pro-

viding greater flexibility in production systems and processes, resulting in more
complex products and supply chains. Industry 4.0 aims to connect the physical and
virtual worlds in industrial production and/or services, so it is possible to observe
that it is not only the use of sensors and robotization of the shop floor. It is clear then
that the high investment required for such a technological acquisition, to digitize a
productive process in the context of Industry 4.0, is of no use if the process is out of
control and full of waste.
The result according to Nicoletti (2013), will be the reproduction of some type
of waste as the automation of an inefficient process does not make it efficient. For
this reason, Lean concepts such as standardization, organization and transparency
are highlighted in the literature (Leyh et al. 2017; Prinz et al. 2018; Tortorella and
Fettermann 2017) as the pillars for the implementation of solutions related to Industry
4.0, that is, Lean is an important way to consolidate I4.0.
Thus, through the review it is possible to systematize how LT is a facilitator of
the implementation of I4.0. In this way, it is a facilitator because:
• It trains people as thinkers;
• Simplifies processes and reduces/eliminates wastes so that they are not automated;
• Reduces the possibility of compromising scarce resources;
• Increases the transparency of work processes and organization.
In addition, it was possible to verify that the technologies of I4.0 can help the
implementation of Lean because:
• Employs technologies that facilitate people’s work (e.g., platforms of collaborative
work and improved man-machine communication);
• Employs technologies to reduce human effort;
• Connects the real and virtual world;
• Makes production more flexible.
Thus, from the models proposed and analyzed through this review, it is possible
to affirm that the integration between the two concepts is positive, with Lean and I4.0
supporting each other. That is, by linking Industry 4.0 practices to Lean concepts, it
can be said that there is a more effective search for improvement.
Nevertheless, there are still many companies that do not know or understand Lean
Production benefits. For example, Portuguese companies are not aware of this, as
proved by surveys developed in this context (Abreu et al. 2018; Maia et al. 2016; Silva
et al. 2010). Furthermore, it is the international companies that are ahead in these
advancements, by implementing Lean Production over a longer period of time and
encouraging others to follow. At the same time, they are concerned with the imple-
mentation of I4.0 and undertaking strategic partnerships with local universities to
develop research projects related to this issue (Abreu et al. 2017b; Costa et al. 2017;
Freitas et al. 2017; Pereira et al. 2016).
In addition, the waste-free mind-set embodied by Lean Thinking, causes a need
to measure what is happening on the shop-floor, that allied with digital ways of
doing so, facilitate precise monitoring of energy expenditure, water and raw-materials
consumption, or greenhouse emissions by productive workstation or sector. Thus,
although little has been said on this subject, Lean Thinking and Industry 4.0 can fur-
ther assist companies’ relationship with the environment, namely, by implementing
devices on machines that better monitor energy and water spent in processes and
pollutant emissions. This is an environmental relationship that can be observed in
Gerlitz (2015), Moreira et al. (2010), and Abreu et al.(2017a) researches.
The complementarity of these two will then allow not only a better economy, but
also a better environment and an increase in corporate social responsibility, i.e. the
three pillars of sustainable development. Thus, this combination can help companies
meet the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals, in particular the
Goal 8—Decent Work and Economic Growth, Goal 9—Industry, Innovation, and
Infrastructure and Goal 12—Responsible Consumption and Production (United
Nations 2018).
A new reality, as a result of the combination of Lean and Industry 4.0, will allow
these goals to be reached from the due production planning, based on real-time
communication and information systems, which will allow the flexibilization of the
actions of the machines. With fewer failures, more security and automation of pro-
cesses, production will occur from demand, avoiding waste and using less resources,
leading to lower production costs.
Regarding the human factor (Lean’s key point), it is too early to say exactly what
the impact of the digitization proposed by I4.0 will be, given that there are still few
studies evaluating the impact caused by Industry 4.0 in this area and, most of them
approach the subject superficially. However, it is possible to affirm that the human
factor will always be a key point in any productive process. The main change will be
in the nature of work at shop floor level, which will require well-trained employees
and the requirement of different skills.
5 Final Remarks
The main purpose of this work was to study the relationship and contribution of Lean
Thinking in the context of Industry 4.0. Despite the growing popularity of Industry
4.0, the literature on its relationship with the popular field of Lean Production is
still scarce. Considering the importance of analyzing such symbiosis, a systematic
literature review was conducted to investigate the role of Lean as an agent within
the Industry 4.0. The review was conducted for the period from 2011 to 2018, which
resulted, after a filtering, in a total of 26 articles analyzed, after applying the exclusion
criteria inherent to the SLR. It is clear that this is an emerging research area, with
most of the sources being published between 2017 and 2018, representing 85% of
the studies evaluated in this research.
With the results presented in Sect. 4, it was identified that Lean is seen as an impor-
tant agent in the implementation and consolidation of I4.0 and Lean concepts such as
work standardization, organization and transparency are fundamental in supporting
the implementation and consolidation of the Industry 4.0.
It is important to note that, although the current sample of studies provides some
indications of possible performance impacts, it is necessary to study this area to
a greater depth, given that in most of the analyzed sources interoperability has not
been approached in a holistic way. However, it is possible to observe that, according
to the sources analyzed, the main focus of research is on how the technologies of
Industry 4.0 can be used to support existing Lean practices and tools, emphasizing that
increasing flexibility of production, employment of technologies to reduce human
effort, and the enhancement of man-machine communication systems will be the
main benefits.
It was also observed that technological factors could be a hindrance, with the
absence of a standard architecture generating difficulties in the integration process
between CPS and Lean tools.
Finally, it should be emphasized that the human factor must be better integrated
within existing models, since employees will continue to be an essential part of the
processes. Therefore, further research is needed to understand the impact of certain
key Lean aspects within Industry 4.0, which have not yet been addressed in depth.

UID/CEC/00319/2013.
Annex I. Articles Selected and Analyzed
Authors Year Articles Different Lean Improvements Barriers or

aspects of principles and from difficulties
I4.0 were tools had a integration of related with
addressed focus on both concepts integration of
integration both concepts
with I4.0
Dombrowski 2017 Interdependencies of 1 1 1 –
et al. Industrie 4.0 & Lean
Production Systems—a
use case analysis
Enke et al. 2018 Industrie 1 1 1 –
4.0—Competencies for a
modern production
system: a curriculum for
learning
Prinz et al. 2018 Lean meets Industrie 1 1 1 –
4.0—a practical
approach to interlink the
method world and
cyber-physical world
Wagner et al. 2017 Industry 4.0 impacts on 1 1 1 –
lean production systems
Mayr et al. 2018 Lean 4.0—a conceptual 1 1 1 –
conjunction of lean
management and
Industry 4.0
Wagner et al. 2018 Identifying target 1 1 1 –
oriented Industrie 4.0
potentials in Lean
automotive electronics
value streams
Kolberg and 2015 Lean automation 1 1 1 –
Zühlke enabled by Industry 4.0
technologies
Davies et al. 2017 Review of 1 1 1 1
socio-technical
considerations to ensure
successful
implementation of
Industry 4.0
Mrugalska and 2017 Towards lean production 1 1 1 –
Wyrwicka in Industry 4.0
Bauer et al. 2018 Integration of Industrie 1 1 1 –
4.0 in lean
manufacturing learning
factories
Buer at al 2018 The link between 1 1 1 1
Industry 4.0 and Lean
manufacturing: mapping
current research and
establishing a research
agenda
Leyh et al. 2018 Analyzing industry 4.0 1 1 1 –
models with focus on
lean production aspects
(continued)
(continued)
with I4.0
Lugert et al. 2018 Empirical assessment of 1 1 1 1
the future adequacy of
value stream mapping in
manufacturing industries
Tortorella & 2017 Implementation of 1 1 1 1
Fettermann Industry 4.0 and lean
production in Brazilian
manufacturing
companies
Ma et al. 2017 SLAE–CPS: Smart lean 1 1 1 1
automation engine
enabled by
cyber-physical systems
technologies
Kolberg et al. 2017 Towards a lean 1 1 1 1
automation interface for
workstations
Meudt et al. 2016 Value stream mapping 1 1 1 –
4.0: Holistic
examination of value
stream and information
logistics in production
Jayaram 2016 Lean six sigma approach 1 1 1 –
for global supply chain
management using
industry 4.0 and IIoT
Sanders et al. 2016 Industry 4.0 implies 1 1 1 -
Lean manufacturing:
Research activities in
industry 4.0 function as
enablers for Lean
manufacturing
Yin et al. 2017 The evolution of 1 1 1 –
production systems from
Industry 2.0 through
Industry 4.0
Hannola et al. 2018 Empowering production 1 1 1 -
workers with digitally
facilitated knowledge
processes a conceptual
framework
Fettermann 2018 How does Industry 4.0 1 1 1 –
et al. contribute to operations
management?
Beifert et al. 2018 Industry 4.0—For 1 1 1 1
sustainable development
of lean manufacturing
companies in the
shipbuilding sector
Hofmann and 2017 Industry 4.0 and the 1 1 1 –
Rüsch current status as well as
future prospects on
logistics
(continued)
(continued)
with I4.0
Uriarte et al. 2018 Supporting the Lean – 1 1 1
journey with simulation
and optimization in the
context of Industry 4.0
Hambach et al. 2017 Development of a digital 1 1 1 –
continuous improvement
system for production
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Lean Tools Contribution to Sustainability
Outcomes: Insights from a Set of Case
Studies
Alexandra Maria Baptista Ramos Tenera, Carina Maria Oliveira Pimentel,

Rui Manuel Ferreira Dias and João Carlos de Oliveira Matias
Abstract Current research establishes an interrelation between lean tools and eco-
nomic performance. However, the synergetic relationship between the lean tools
and the triple bottom line approach is not so well explored and understood, mak-
ing it a relevant research topic. So, this chapter aims to explore how some basic
lean tools, such as 5S, Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and Single Minute Exchange
of Die (SMED) can support improving enterprise sustainability concerns. To attain
this objective several industrial case studies are explored to illustrate how a set of
sustainability outcomes may result from application of some lean tools. Moreover,
the potential synergies that can be obtained by lean thinking integrated with other
continuous improvement management approaches, such as Six Sigma and Theory of
Constraints, and their relationship with sustainability improvement outcomes, will
also be here illustrated and discussed.
A. M. B. R. Tenera (B)
Faculty of Sciences and Technology, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering,
UNIDEMI, FCT NOVA, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal
e-mail: abt@fct.unl.pt
C. M. O. Pimentel · J. C. Matias
Department of Economics, Management, Industrial Engineering and Tourism (DEGEIT),
GOVCOPP, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal
e-mail: carina.pimentel@ua.pt
J. C. Matias
e-mail: jmatias@ua.pt
C. M. O. Pimentel
UNIDEMI, FCT NOVA, Caparica, Portugal
R. M. F. Dias
AMORIM & Irmãos—EQUIPAR, Zona Industrial do Monte da Barca, Coruche, Portugal
e-mail: rdias1263@hotmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13515-7_6
162 A. M. B. R. Tenera et al.
1 Introduction
Past research has clearly established the interrelation between lean tools and eco-
nomic performance. Yet, the synergetic relationship between the lean tools and the
triple bottom line approach is not so well understood. So, in order to explore how
some basic lean tools, such as 5S, Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and Single Minute
Exchange of Die (SMED) can support improving enterprise sustainability concerns,
we discuss the sustainability concept and put it in place into the lean manufacturing
perspective.
1.1 Sustainability
The most global definition of Sustainable Development (and directly of Sustainabil-

ity) was firstly assumed by the United Nations World Commission on Environment
and Development (WCED) and is as follows: “development that meets the needs
of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs.” Moreover, they add that “sustainable development is the process
of change leading to harmonization of the use of natural resources, direction of
investments, the orientation of technological development and institutional change
and to increase the potential of satisfying human needs of present and future
generations” (WCED 1987). Thus, Sustainability is a multi-dimensional concept
composed of three distinct dimensions: economic, environmental, and social,
typically known as the triple bottom line (TBL) (Elkington 1998). Even though the
most important initial contribution for the sustainability concept was the recognition
that economic sustainability alone is not a sufficient condition for the complete
corporate sustainability (Dyllick and Hockerts 2002), the recent emphasis given
to sustainability has made this issue more complex, considering its position at the
junction of several disciplinary fields (Montabon et al. 2016).
On the other hand, as an example of the importance of its unquestionable added
value, the concept of Quality is directly connected to Sustainability concept. Until
this decade the quality of products and services included their functions and intended
performance and the correspondents’ perceived value and benefit for the customer. At
moment, the quality concept is broader than the previous one. An organisation with
a focus on quality promotes a culture translated in behaviours, attitudes, activities
and processes that provide value while satisfying the needs and expectations of the
customers and other relevant stakeholders. The quality of an organisation’s products
and services is determined by their adequacy to satisfy the customers and also by the
impact, intended or not, on other relevant stakeholders (ISO 2005). Here emerges
the importance of corporate sustainability.
From the corporate vision, the synergies resulting from the three dimensions are
the beginning to the implementation of sustainability initiatives. In this way, compa-
nies face enormous challenges in trying to operationalize the concept of sustainable
Lean Tools Contribution to Sustainability Outcomes … 163
development. So, the inclusion of environmental and social worries enables compa-
nies and their supply chains to continue thinking in strategies and not only in tactical
concerns, having in mind not only economic but also environmental and societal
concerns. This evidence has alerted industry leaders and policy makers to the need to
implement measures that can promote new patterns of consumption and production
to drive sustainable development.
Magon et al. (2018) present a study whose aim is to provide a research synthesis
about the overall state of the art of empirical research on the impact of sustainabil-
ity management practices on performance, encompassing social and environmental
dimensions. They concluded that there are positive effects of sustainability on per-
formance (as lower costs, better delivery and product quality, enhanced volume and
mix flexibility), although different mechanisms drive the sustainability-performance
links and they differ according to contexts.
According to Neri et al. (2018), the significance of sustainability is increasing
not only among scholars, but also among others, such as industrial and company’s
decision makers, and policy-makers. However, the same authors recommend the
“obligation” to adopt industrial sustainability measures to improve sustainability
performance, bearing in mind some barriers and the lack of drivers. Moreover, they
present a novel framework of drivers based on a literature review on drivers to sustain-
ability and to the areas of occupational health and safety, eco efficiency, and energy
efficiency. But, and independently of the indicators choice, many times dependent of
the size and activity (Feil et al. 2015; Van Schoubroeck et al. 2018), they are centred
on economic, environmental, and social aspects.
1.2 A Lean Manufacturing Overview
The emergence of Lean Manufacturing (LM) has revolutionized in the last decades
the manufacturing systems. This philosophy was introduced and tested through the
Toyota Production System (TPS), in the 70s, gaining recognition with the publication
of the book “The Machine that Changed the World” (Katayama and Bennett 1996).
LM is a manufacturing system that is focused on the elimination of wastes thereby
facilitating process streamlining and waste reduction (Vinodh et al. 2011). It is also
a business approach, widely used by industries mainly to mitigate and eliminate all
kinds of waste, and to improve productivity as a way of enhancing the competitiveness
of organizations (Chaple et al. 2014), that delivers better value for customers by
removing non-value-adding activities (Womack and Jones 2010).
LM is supported by a number of manufacturing practices and principles.
According to Shah and Ward (2003) the most usual manufacturing practices linked
to lean manufacturing are: continuous improvement; cross-functional workforce;
JIT/continuous flow; reduced batch size; preventive maintenance; pull produc-
tion/kanban and total quality management. Womack and Jones (2010) identify the
following set of five key principles to serve as a roadmap to a LM implementation:
(1) Specify value from the customer viewpoint;

(2) Identify all steps and actions involved in manufacturing a product and map the
value stream in order to eliminate the non-value adding activities;
(3) Create a smooth flow of the product towards customer’s reach;
(4) Ensure value is pulled by customers from the preceding upstream activity; and
(5) Begin the process again and continue it until a state of perfection is reached to
create perfect value with no waste.
Moreover, Liker and Meier (2006) present a set of 14 foundational management
principles followed by Toyota in the application of TPS/LM, organized in four cate-
gories: philosophy, process, people and partners and problem solving. The 14 prin-
ciples are: (1) base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at
the expense of short-term financial goals; (2) create a continuous process flow to
bring problems to the surface; (3) use pull systems to avoid overproduction; (4) level
out the workload (heijunka); (5) build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get
quality right the first time; (6) standardized tasks and processes are the foundation
for continuous improvement and employee empowerment; (7) use visual control so
no problems are hidden; (8) use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that
serves your people and process; (9) grow leaders who thoroughly understand the
work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others; (10) develop exceptional people and
teams who follow your company’s philosophy; (11) respect your extended network
of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve; (12) go and
see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation; (13) make decisions slowly
by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement decisions rapidly; and
(14) become a learning organization through relentless reflection and continuous
improvement.
In the literature a set of elements are considered essential to the success of lean
manufacturing. Among these are the reduction of machine setup times, inventory
and waste reduction, responsiveness of manufacturing, the development of partner-
ships with suppliers, the development of quality and improvement programs and
the implementation of foolproof systems (Pinto et al. 2018). Also, grounded on
the literature Pinto et al. (2018) identify several lean manufacturing benefits, such
as financial savings, less reworking, reduced lead time, increased quality, reduced
inventory, improved responsiveness, positive impact on business performance and
improved customer satisfaction, among others.
1.3 Towards Lean Sustainability
The shift towards sustainable manufacturing processes and products led business
organizations to improve their environmental performance and efficiency. Thus, the
‘lean thinking’ has evolved to ‘lean and green thinking’, as a targeted intervention
for organizations to implement sustainable business models that reduce waste and
improve material efficiency, and subsequently minimize costs (Caldera et al. 2017).
Brown et al. (2014) argue that innovation play an important role to the achievement
of sustainable manufacturing systems and that the transformation will require an in
depth knowledge of system wastes that goes beyond the largely time-based wastes
(muda) to include muda of the environmental and societal variety. Many evidences
suggested that lean is beneficial for sustainable manufacturing, dominantly consid-
ering the environment and economic perspectives (Hartini and Ciptomulyono 2015).
Furthermore, according to Vinodh et al. (2011) tools and techniques of lean manufac-
turing, such as just-in-time, total productive maintenance, pull production, cellular
manufacturing, 5S/7S, kaizen, visual management, poka-yoke, and value stream map-
ping, can facilitate achieving sustainability. A systematic literature review developed
by Caldera et al. (2017) was undertaken to show how the implementation of lean
and green initiatives could lead to sustainable business practice. Moreover, the paper
discusses the impact of lean methods on environmental performance and presents
a variety of integrated lean and green models. The authors conclude that so far ad
hoc and limited use of lean thinking within corporate sustainability initiatives can be
found. Hartini and Ciptomulyono (2015) present another literature review, empha-
sizing the relationship between lean and sustainable manufacturing, as well as their
impact on performance.
In a recent paper, Souza and Alves (2018) proposed a model aimed at improving
corporate sustainability, by integrating quality, environmental, social responsibility,
and occupational health and safety management systems with the lean manufacturing
system. Their model is based on the rational use of resources and energy while
engaging and empowering people.
Organizations should consider environmental impact and quantify sustainable
gains associated with lean initiatives (Vinodh et al. 2011). In this light, Fliedner
(2008) presents a set of environmental benefits an enterprise can achieve through the
use of some lean methods/tools, such as Kaizen Events, Value Stream Mapping, 5S,
and Cellular Manufacturing.
The relationship between lean operations and sustainable operations were already
addressed by Piercy and Rich (2015) and some of the associated benefits of
synchronizing lean and sustainability principles include reduced costs and lead
time, improved process flow, compliance with customers’ expectations, improve-
ment of environmental quality, as well as, employee morale, and commitment
(Vinodh et al. 2011).
2 Research Study Approach
Given the limited access to available data, lack of prior knowledge and insufficient
understanding of how lean and sustainability can be operationally related, in order to
have some understanding of the topic under research a pragmatic research strategy
was used, exploring some available continuous improvement case studies from lean
managed based companies, by describing and analyzing in each case, quantitative
available data and then developing a qualitative discussion of the obtained results
considering each case study context and purpose, methodology and tools used in
each case diagnostic, planning and actions taken to obtain the analyzed available
results and crossing them with current available lean and sustainability concepts and
measures detected through a bibliographic research.
In the results discussion and inductive approach was used in which extracted and
collected data resulted from the developed case analysis was discussed linking current
sustainable concepts and models with companies operational metrics improvement
with the purpose to get a better understanding how lean tools used in shop floor can
impact on sustainable factors of lean based companies, conducting the research from
a set of lean based shop floor cases sample analysis.
3 Case Studies Presentation and Discussion
In this chapter several cases will be used to identify and illustrate how lean tools, such
as SMED, 5S, and VSM, can influence sustainability outcomes in different referential
continuous management concepts including in hybrid and integrated approaches as
in Theory of Constraints, Lean and Six Sigma (TLS) Management System.
3.1 Case Study #1: SMED Methodology Implementation

in an Automotive Industry
This case was developed in an automotive industry by Matias (co-author of this

chapter) and recently published by his research team (Bidarra et al. 2018).
The Single-Minute Exchange of Die methodology (SMED) is one of the method-
ologies integrated in the Lean Production philosophy that uses a set of techniques
as a way of minimizing setup times, contributing to the reduction of idle times and
increasing productivity. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the contribution of
the SMED methodology to reduce setup times in the stamping process of metal com-
ponents in an automotive industry. While most of the studies on SMED methodology
focus on costs and productivity of equipment’s and machines, in this case study the
focus was on its contribution to reduce setup times and consequently increase the
human resources productivity in the stamping process of a plant producing metal
components to automotive industry.
This company has several management systems implemented and certified. It is
certified by ISO/TS 16949 standard because is a supplier of the main Original Equip-
ment Manufacturers (OEMs) in the automotive market. ISO/TS 16949 is a technical
specification which aims to indicate the specific requirements of ISO 9001 for the
automotive industry. Together specify the requirements for a quality management
system where a firm needs to demonstrate its ability to consistently provide products
that meet customer and applicable regulatory requirements. Is certified also by ISO
14001 standard that sets out the requirements for an environmental management
system and helps firms improve their environmental performance through more and
efficient use of resources and reduction of waste, seeking to create a balance between
profitability maintenance and environmental impact through the commitment of all
organization. Beyond that, this company has as philosophy to give also priority to
occupational Health and Safety targeting a goal of zero accidents per year. In this
sense, the application of SMED methodology can help to reduce the setup times
observed at the beginning of the project.
Traditionally manufacturers used large lot sizes and, consequently, long produc-
tion runs so as to decrease the number of needed setups. However, this infers high
work-in-process (WIP), high finished product inventories and longer lead times. For
now, this paradigm has changed dramatically towards a more diversified production,
smaller lot sizes, special emphasis on quality rather than quantity, among others. So,
through the application of solution approaches such as SMED, is possible to reduce
setup times, WIP and provide better work conditions for operators, and consequently
move towards sustainability.
To be more competitive in a highly demanding market, the firms are encouraged
to implement LM concepts and corresponding practices. This research factory is no
exception. It is one among many that share this organizational culture focused on
consistent integration of Lean Manufacturing with a medium-long term perspective.
• Case Study #1 Profile.
The unit supplies stamped metal parts, sub-sets, soldered sets, chassis and more
recently precision parts to the main OEM in the sector. The firm has a diversified
production of around 80 different products in the metal components, and an average
of 80% of the firm’s products are metal parts pressed on cold metal sheet, which is
equipped with a pressing area ranging from 30 to 630 Tons.
• Case Study #1 A SMED Methodology Implementation.
In order to meet the targets of the unit, the management created a project divided
into several stages and supported by a pilot phase (Fig. 1), being the Press 4 chosen
for the pilot project. This machine was chosen not only because this is the stamping
equipment with the greatest number of monthly setups in the studied unit, but it
is also responsible for the production of the reference accounting for the greatest
income.
Figure 1 illustrated the project steps while Fig. 2 illustrates the phases involved
in the SMED project in Press 4.
During the eight months before the beginning of this project, the average setup
times of the stamping process was 39 min, collected from the Operations Department
and the records of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, and 40 min for
Press 4. According to the manager of the research firm it would be necessary to
reduce the setup times for press 4 to an average of 25 min, in order to improve the
productivity of the stamping process to the required levels.
The most obvious short-coming was the existence of long waiting time during the
process. The total time to change references was, in average, 51 min of which 45 min
Fig. 1 Steps used for the

Start
implementation of this
SMED project
Equipment and/or Product

Selection
Definition of the setup

times
Team work definition
SMED methodology
application
Was the expected reduction No

in setup times reached?
Yes
Standardization of the
setup processes
Periodic monitoring of
processes and results
No Is it necessary to define Yes

a new goal?
Fig. 2 Phases of the SMED project implementation
corresponds to the setup time. The operator presented a long time waiting period of
around 15 min while the team leader presented two periods of waiting.
The main reasons given by the operators and the team leader for the inefficiencies
occurred in the preliminary stage of the analysis are: (a) execution of external tasks
during the setup, including the preparation of raw material, movement of tools,
utensils and containers, and quality control of the last exiting production pieces;
(b) time lags between the operator and the team leader to perform tasks jointly
which originates a waiting time. The sequence of tasks is not balanced giving rise to
bottlenecks. In the text below the implementation steps that followed the preliminary
stage are introduced:
• Stage 1: Separation of internal and external tasks: Some of the tasks performed
by the operator in the initial stage were transferred to the team leader, having an
impact on internal tasks performed by the operator. At the same time, other internal
setup tasks carried out by the operator were transferred to the team leader as a way
of shortening the idle time of the equipment and turning more productive the
waiting time of the team leader.
• Stage 2: Converting internal into external tasks: According to the analysis of the
initial stage the greatest setup time consumption occurs in removing and inserting
tools period. This process managed by the team leader implied movement of tools
while the machine was idle, thus causing long waiting times for the operator. In this
sense part of internal work was redefined, creating intermediate support near press
4. Therefore, the entry tool was then brought to the location in the pre-setup stage,
ready for an immediate change. The intermediate support served to receive the
exiting tool, which was then transported to the store once the setup was finished.
• Stage 3: Optimizing all setup activities: The work regarding this stage was
divided in three fundamental activities: (1) optimizing tasks through technical
solutions; (2) optimizing the method by reorganizing the task sequence; (3) stan-
dardizing operations of reference change. The cleaning and removal of scrap metal
was developed for the operator but this activity was suggested to be divided with the
team leader. By making that division the waiting time still remains in the sequence
of the team leader, closing the gap that had been transferred from stage 2.
Table 1 Improvements reached through all stages

Preliminary stage (min) Stage 1 (min) Stage 2 (min) Stage 3 (min)
Pre-setup 5 9 15 15
Setup 45 35 23 20
Post-setup 2 4 10 13
Total time 52 48 48 48
• Case Study #1 Results Discussion.

It became clear that in order to eliminate the waiting time of the operator, it was
enough to fit into this inactive period the planned parameters of the machine. This
activity should be performed in internal work, but there is no technical limitation to be
done after inserting the tool of the new reference. Table 1 presents the improvements
across all stages.
The total working time was not noticeably reduced, the reduction being from
52 min at the beginning of the project to 48 min at the end. Yet, most of the time
when the machinery was stopped was greatly reduced, from 45 min at the preliminary
stage to 20 min at stage 3.
This outcome was very important to demonstrate that SMED provides notable
gains in the method and arranging stages. In this sense, it was possible to demon-
strate the gains in the productivity and in reducing the lead times and, consequently
increase the firm sustainability (reduced setup times and WIP, thus contributing to
the economic sustainability and environmental sustainability, for example through
the inventories decrease and better working conditions for operators (social sustain-
ability).
3.2 Case Study #2: SMED Application on an Electron-Beam

Machining
This case was also developed in an automotive industry by Matias (co-author of this
chapter) and recently published in Robalo et al. (2018) by his research team, which
included other co-author of this work.
As manifested in case study #1, the SMED methodology allows reducing the
equipment’s setup times, enabling economical production in small batches. It is
important to reduce lead times and to quickly respond to market demand. Another
advantage is the economic production of small manufacturing lots, which usually
requires low investments in the production process. In addition to that, SMED can
reduce the occurrence of errors in the equipment.
In case study #2, the SMED methodology was applied to an electron beam machine
(EBM) workstation which can be used for a wide range of applications and services.
The case study company core business is the manufacturing of electrical wires
and cables for the automotive industry, holding a leader position in this market.
Like in case study #1, this company has several management systems implemented
and certifications, namely ISO/TS 16949. Due to the increase of demand that the
company was experiencing during this project, an increment in its production was
indispensable to keep following their clients and reach new ones. This lead to the
development of this research aimed at reducing the setup times of a machine type of
the company.
The company has three electron beam machines. Tuna machine is located in
Manufacturing Unit 1, Farrusco machine in Manufacturing Unit 2 and Cora is located
in Manufacturing Unit 3.
Due to spool capacity, different per cross-section and diameter, the operators are
obliged to load new spools many times per shift. Since the number of new loads cannot
be reduced, due to different kinds of limitations, the machine setup-times are crucial.
A multi-functional group was created to implement the SMED methodology (Produc-
tion, Maintenance, Industrial performance, EHS (Environment, Health and Safety),
Corporate Process Engineer departments and also the Plant Manager of the company).
Two important processes occurring in this type of machine are extrusion and
irradiation processes. During irradiation process, two main setup types exist which
can also be divided in different subtypes. Reel loading with the same recipe, means
that the operator will load a new reel with the same reference that it was doing
previously, or the operator can have to load a new recipe to crosslink a new reference
and this reference can have, or not, a different diameter. The diameter difference has
a massive impact in the set up effort as it will be demonstrated later on this section.
Threading e-beam is normally done when the wire break in the production line. In
this particular case there is no need to switch the rolls inside the conveyer. There exist
different rolls regarding the wire diameter to crosslink. If the difference of the two
references is too high the operators may be obliged to load new rolls in the e-beam.
During the SMED study a production instruction was created for the different rolls
and when they need to change them.
Loading reels (independently of the wire diameter) represent a high % of the
setup time in irradiation process. Due to this massive impact, the SMED study was
dedicated to reduce the time of loading reels. In parallel, some improvements were
suggested for further future SMED workshops.
• Case Study #2 SMED Methodology Implementation.
Figure 3 presents the different steps of this project and Figs. 4 and 5 present the
results from a diagnosis of the setup times. Table 2 presents the tasks and duration.
• Stage 1: Separation of internal and external tasks: The equipment has an
important impact in the setup tasks independently of the setup type. But, the
setup tasks performed by the operators (manual tasks) were separated in inter-
nal/external setup and a thorough evaluation was performed in order to identify
opportunities of converting the internal setup tasks into external ones. 41 internal
Fig. 3 Steps applied in SMED project
Fig. 4 Setup before SMED Workshop
Fig. 5 Setup time analysis

Table 2 Tasks and durations

Action Time of the Setup
operation (s) Same ref. New ref. (> New ref. (< Diam New ref. (<
Diam) & same rolls) Diam & new
Kills)
Preparing new spool
Taking out the 10 X X X X
reel of fee pallet
Rolling reel until 5 X X X X
pay-off area
Striping both 10 X X X X
ends
Putting duct-tape 5 X X X X
in the end of the
spool
Stopping machine
Reducing speed 300 X X X X
in the last spool
Stopping e-beam 50 X X X X
Threading
Drain out all wire 300 X
inside e-beam
Deconditioning 60 X X X
e-beam
Open e-beam 180 X X
door
Switching rolls 1200 X
Threading 500 X X
e-beam
Threading rest of 300 X X
production line
Close e-beam 60 X X
door
Choosing recipe 10 X X X
Conditioning 310 X X X
e-beam
Taking out empty spool
Open pay-off 5 X X X X
door
Unbrake spool 5 X X X X
Take out wire 2 X X X X
tension
Put some wire on 3 X X X X
the door lock to
avoid unstringing
of fee pay-off
Cutting wire 1 X X X X
Close door 2 X X X X
Platform up 5 X X X X
(continued)
Table 2 (continued)
Action Time of the Setup
operation (s) Same ref. New ref. (> New ref. (< Diam New ref. (<
Diam) & same rolls) Diam & new
Kills)
Unlock spool 3 X X X X
Platform down 5 X X X X
Spool take out 2 X X X X
Loading new spool
Putting spool in 5 X X X X
pav-off
Platform goes up 5 X X X X
Lock spool 3 X X X X
Platform go 5 X X X X
down
Node between 60 X X X X
spool
Lock spool 1 X X X X
Taking out the 5 X X X X
wire put in task 3
Put connection to 30 X X X X
ground
Put duct tape in 10 X X X X
spool
Put duct tape in 2 X X X X
node
Put tension in the 3 X X X X
wire
Close door 2 X X X X
Connect pay-off 1 X X X X
Starting machine
Start e-beam 300 X X X X
(Ramp up)
and two external tasks were identified. To finish accurately the manual setup
tasks, the operators need to use different tools, such as scissors to cut wire and
duct tape, which are always available in the operators’ work clothes.
• Stage 2: Converting internal into external tasks: Five internal setup tasks (stage
0) were converted in external tasks. Converting internal setups into external ones
did not have an important impact in the global setup, since it was reduced only
by 35 s. But in the operators’ perspective was helpful because it not increased or
added more work and they can use more cleverly and proficiently their own time.
• Stage 3: Streamline operations: In this stage, the reengineering of the setup was
emphasized. The tasks done in the e-beam and in the pay-off were separated and
analysed to determine their importance. Thus, regarding the pay-off, almost 40%
of the time can be considered as not mandatory and can be eliminated if the equip-
ment will be upgraded. Table 3 presents the mandatory analysis per equipment.
Table 3 Mandatory analysis per equipment

Duration (s) Pay-off E-beam Importance
Stopping machine
Reducing speed in the 300 X
last spool
Stopping e-beam 50 X X
Threading
Deconditioning e-beam 60 X
Open e-beam door 180 X
Preparing rope to thread 60 X
e-beam
Threading e-beam 440 X
Threading rest of 300 X
production line
Close e-beam door 60 X
Choosing recipe 10 X X
Conditioning e-beam 310 X
Taking out empty spool
Open pay-off door 5 X X
Unbrake spool 5 X X
Take out wire tension 2 X X
Put some wire on the 3 X X
door lock to avoid
unstringing of the
pay-off
Cutting wire 1 X X
Close door 2 X
Platform up 5 X
Unlock spool 3 X X
Platform down 5 X
Open pay-off door 5 X
Spool take out 2 X X
Loading new spool
Putting spool in pay-off 5 X X
Close door 2 X
Platform goes up 5 X X
Lock spool 3 X X
Platform go down 5 X X
Open pay-off door 5 X
Node between spool 60 X X
Lock spool 1 X X
(continued)
Table 3 (continued)
Duration (s) Pay-off E-beam Importance
Taking out the wire put 5 X X
in task 3
Put connection to ground 30 X X
Put duct tape in node 2 X X
Put tension in the wire 3 X X
Close door 2 X X
Connect pay-off 1 X X
Starting machine
Start e-beam (Ramp up) 300 X X

In this case, the conversion of internal setups into external setups did not had a
great impact, but the application of SMED allowed for a setup time reduction in
more than 50%. The application of the SMED methodology also allowed to entirely
eliminate the scrap generated due to pre-determined actions.
This case study goes in same way of the case study #1. It was possible to demon-
strate the gains in the productivity and reducing the lead times and, consequently
increase the firm sustainability. Yet, in this case study, more visible in better work
conditions perception by operators (social sustainability) beyond economic and envi-
ronmental sustainability.
Identical conclusions can be drawn from other cases developed in an automotive
industry, as in older available automotive manufacturing cases, exposed on Simões
and Tenera (2010) and Alves (2009) cases. Using the SMED approach Simões and
Tenera (2010) on an well stablish automotive company resulted on 31% reduction of
the changeover press equipment’s without requiring additional costs or investments
with the improvements and also enabling operators job ownership and ergonomic
work conditions improvements thought operations order changing considering prod-
uct weight condition. Also in other well-known automotive company SMED applied
on plastic injection equipment’s (Alves 2009) enabled setups reduction at 44% and
46% of the initial time also without any additional cost or investments, just reorganiz-
ing operations, given additional operators authority on change over internal opera-
tions aligned with working conditions improvements and space rearrangements (5S)
applied on changeover external operations.
3.3 Case Study #3: Evaluating the Impact of 5S

in an Automotive Industrial Unit
This case study was developed by Matias (co-author of this chapter) and his research
team in an automotive industry (Fernandes al. 2018).
In this case study in one industrial unit of one of the European largest car producers
is tested how the implementation of lean tools, more specifically 5S, can contribute
to the occupational safety conditions, something typically very important in LM
environments.
This company has several management systems implemented and certified, from
quality to occupational concerns, and is very demanding concerning the quality of
its products. This means that there is a high screening activity in order to ensure
that only compliant products reach the customer. The sorting processes still depend
mainly on labour with the use of motor vehicles, such as forklifts, for the movement
of parts/pieces containers.
There are many hazards associated with this practice since there is a very close
contact between the operator and the forklifts responsible for container handling.
Most of these parts require inspection and evaluation, are large and the material is
aluminium. So, the fall of a container represents a high risk level.
Since the priority of the company is employee safety, it decided to assess the
sorting area risks and to implement actions in order to control and minimize the
existing risks levels.
This study took place at the Supplier Quality Service (SQS), which supports the
production and integrates the quality department. This service is responsible for
ensuring that all supplies (internal or external) meet the quality requirements. To
this, several sorting processes are performed by subcontractors in order to prevent
that non-compliant parts achieve the production process. The choice of this area was
related to its safety criticality. Using the 5S’s, the main objectives were:
• Delimitation of footpath;
• Delimitation of industrial vehicles circulation;
• Definition of the rules to industrial vehicles circulation;
• Limit permitted height in container stacking;
• Use of signs in the sorting area;
• Create a dashboard for the sorting area in order to monitor safety and quality
indicators and set standards.
• Case Study #3: 5S Methodology Implementation.

Initially hazards were identified and an initial risk assessment was carried out.
Later on, the 5S’s was implemented and a subsequent assessment was made. In the
text below presented the implementation steps are introduced:
• Stage 1: Initial State characterization: The sorting consists of the parts evalua-
tion which implies a high movement of containers. The forklift is the equipment
used to make these material handling and stack containers to optimize space.
Although the forklift is very effective and easy to use, it also represents a hazard
and it can seriously injure an operator or collide on a stack of containers. Another
important aspect: the space itself was quite small for the daily activity and some-
times containers were stored temporarily outside. A hazards identification and a
risk assessment has been developed to identify and quantify existing risks. The risk
was evaluated bearing in mind the hazard occurrence Probability (P) and its Grav-
ity (G) (Risk PxG). Both variables were evaluated using a 5 point Likert scale (1
minimum and 5 maximum). The hazards identified were possible fall, fall of
objects, storage and stacking, vehicle loading and unloading, vehicle movement,
vehicle in reverse. Afterwards a risk assessment was done (see Table 4).
• Stage 2: 5S’s implementation: The implementation of the 5S came from the
need to maximize the existing space, improve working conditions and, above all,
to assess the extent to which the application of Lean tools influences or not the
occupational safety. The implementation of the 5S began with the registration of
the main difficulties felt by the employees and their perceived opinion about what
had to be changed. The employees converged on two opinions, the concern for
safety due to the presence of the forklift and the location not being ideal since the
available space was considered to be insufficient. The implementation of the 5S
took about 25 days to complete. In an initial phase, data were collected, in addition
to the risk assessment previously presented, then, a pre-analysis form, as seen in
Table 4, was prepared for the first three S. The initial state of the sorting area was
also recorded through photographs which allowed making a visual comparison of
the area state before and after the implementation of the 5S. In Table 5 it is possible
to analyse some of the actions implemented in each step and their impact on the
safety level.
Stage 3: Impact of 5S’s implementation on OHS: Right after the 5S action a
new risk assessment was executed. This was done exactly like the previous one,
through direct observation on the ground. In Table 6 it is possible to observe the
quantification of the potential hazards attributed after the 5S action.
Table 4 Initial risk

Potential hazards P G Risk
assessment
Dangerous movement, fall, slippery 3 3 9
Fall of objects 2 5 10
Storage, stacking 3 5 15
Loading and unloading of vehicles 3 4 12
Vehicle moving or circulation 3 4 12
Vehicles circulating in reverse 3 4 12
Total 70
Table 5 The 5S and its impact regarding safety

Fase Actions Safety impact
Seiri (Sort) • Elimination of the lifting • More empty and empty
crane space, making potential
• Elimination of 5 dangers transparent and
workbenches easy to detect
• Elimination of objects that • Disposal of stored
were on the tables containers has reduced the
• Disposal of containers that likelihood of a dropping
were stored at the sorting container
site • Empty tables have reduced
• Identification and disposal the likelihood of heavy
of non-flow parts according objects falling on someone
to type (conforming or non-
conforming)
Seiton (Set in order) • Delimitation of the various • Creation of a safety zone
areas of the sorting site where the forklift is
• Moving and new layout of prevented from entering
the offices • Barriers protect operators
• Implementation of barriers from a potential drop of a
with two meters of height container
• Apply adhesive tape to the • Since the sorting space is
floor in order to define areas sealed with a chain, it
• Close the sorting zone prevents an immediate and
through a padlock unnoticed entrance of a
• Identification of accesses forklift
through the use of signaling • Warning signs for forklift
trucks
• Pedestrian crossing
information as well as
which Personal protective
equipment (PPE) to use
Seiso (Clean) • Space cleaning • There was no significant
• Replacement of work effect on safety
benches
Seiketsu (Standardize) • Elaboration of an animation • Definition of the traffic
panel and dashboard with rules associated with the
the definition of the new disposal site—contact
reference state to be between man and forklift
maintained changed from excessive to
almost zero
Shitsuke (Sustained • Workstation audit to the • Compliance with safety
discipline) sorting area to evaluate rules
compliance with the 5S
principles
Table 6 Results of the potential hazards evaluation before and after 5S implementation
Risk degree before 5S’s Risk degree after 5S’s
Potential hazards P G Risk P G Risk
Dangerous 3 3 9 1 3 3
displacement, fall,
slippery
Fall of objects 2 5 10 1 5 5
Storage, stacking 3 5 15 1 5 5
Loading and unloading 3 4 12 1 4 4
of vehicles
Vehicle moving or 3 4 12 1 4 4
circulation of vehicles
Vehicles circulating in 3 4 12 1 4 4
reverse
Total 70 25
The likelihood of risks associated with falls decreased after the 5S action and the
space became cleaner and more organized. All hazards associated with the presence
of the forklift, such as its reverse movement or loading and unloading, went from
a probability of “probable” to “unlikely” once the physical barriers were created
between man and machine so that there would be no contact between them. When
the quantification of all hazards is added—a score of 25 points is obtained, a value
considerably lower than the starting value. In addition, there was also an ergonomic
improvement, since the containers to be sorted began to be placed on shelves and
installed at an ergonomic level.
This case study aimed to identify the role of 5S in the safety and to what extent this
tool is useful to assure it. The 5S is one of the most popular tools of the LM, however
it is constantly referred to as a tool to create and maintain an organized, clean and
effective working environment. Several authors advocate a broader definition in the
sense of adding an S, safety, to this tool.
Through this case study it was demonstrated that the 5S plays a fundamental role
in it, and that it is an effective tool for the security consolidation. Process control,
establishment of standards, organization of objects, elimination of obsolete, separa-
tion of spaces were actions that led to a reduction in the probability of occurrence
of accidents and injuries. When the quantification of all the risk of potential hazards
was performed—a score of 25 points is obtained, a value considerably lower than
the value before the implementation of 5S (70). This allowed creating a safe work
environment at the enterprise, which is just as important as increasing productivity,
quality, or income. Once an employee feels safe then he/she will contribute positively
to the productivity, efficiency, and quality of his/her work.
It was possible to demonstrate the gains in OHS and, consequently, the firm
sustainability improvement (at minimum a direct improving of social sustainability,
but indirectly also economic and environmental sustainability, because the provable
reduction of non-conform products).
3.4 Case Study #4: Using VSM for Constraint Identification

in a Cork Industry
This case was developed in a cork industry located in Coruche area—District of San-
tarém—heart of the cork forest, development from several master’s thesis (Furtado
2017; Silva 2015) supervised by Tenera and Dias (co-authors of this chapter).
This cork unit is using Lean Management since 2012, and since 2014 is mak-
ing several exploratory studies to integrate in their Lean program other continuous
improvement approaches such as TOC (Theory of Constraints-T) and Six Sigma (S),
in and integrated TLS management system. The main motivation was the acknowl-
edgement of the results achieved from several organizations using a TLS approach
that have shown that the individual applied methodologies have some weaknesses,
which can be minimized by the integration of the three methodologies, as expressed
in Fig. 6.
This industrial unit, holds the largest portfolio of cork stoppers manufactured
retained by the Group where it is integrated, producing only technical cork stoppers
produced by agglomerating cork granules with glue and paraffin oil. It has 200
employees and a turnover of around 65 million euros, producing about 5 million
corks per day which is equivalent to 1.2 billion corks per year.
Fig. 6 The TLS management approached

The group has also been publishing its sustainability reports since 2006, and over
the years there have been significant improvements in its financial and environmental
performance and the social conditions provided to its employees and stakeholders,
in which, the three different methodologies of continuous improvement have indi-
vidually contributed to the improvement and sustainability of organizations, which
have grown faster more recently during the TLS exploratory studies, as described
below.
This cork stoppers production unit had a serious problem of flow. The unit had
a lot of WIP in different parts of the process, but didn‘t has enough product to
supply the market, although a lot of overtime to supply the market was being used,
increasing company’s WIP every day, which implied significantly in its productivity
and sustainability performance measures as well as in its time to market.
To improve the unit results a set of lean manufacturing tools were been applied
on the gemba, like: 5S, Daily Kaizen and Standard Work (SW). However, the
improvements achieved with these tools were not sufficient to solve the problem.
So the five TOC focusing steps were applied to focus the system improvement on
the integration of the VSM lean tool, for the system characterization and constraint
identification, into two TLS continuous improvement iterative cycles, supported by
an action research study approach.
• Case Study #4 The TLS Case Methodology Implementation.
In order to meet the case targets, a TLS implementation project was developed
considering a TLS model approach sustained by the TOC focusing POOGI (Process
Of On Going Improvement) main steps supported by a pilot first TLS model imple-
mentation phase, in order to solved the identified flow problem with later was again
implemented in a second iterative improvement cycle. The Fig. 7 illustrates the TOC
focusing main logic steps and Fig. 8 details the case main steps used implementing
the TLS improvement approached.
The five TOC Focusing POOGI steps can be briefly described as (Tenera 2006;
Pretorius 2014):
(1) Identify the system’s constraint: Identify which process or processes mostly
limits global system’s performance.
(2) Exploit the constraint: Decide how to turn the constraint more efficient without
considering additional available resources, if possible, “squeezing” the con-
straint at its full potential.
Fig. 7 The TOC 5 focusing POOGI steps

Fig. 8 The TLS model used in case implementation

Value Stream
Daily orders
Supply Chain
SAC
Production Control
Internal Supplier Customers
Granulate 2.600.000 corks/day
RCT Weekly Production TAK TIME= 33.88 s/thousand corks
Planning
External Supplier
Disks
Daily
NTT Bodies
RCT Silos
Finished Product
Warehouse
F
I
F
O
Process 1 I Process 2 I Process 3 I Process 4 I Process 5 I Process 6

TAKT =31.19 s TAKT =33.67 s TAKT =33.89 s TAKT =32.53 s TAKT =39.09 s TAKT =35.08 s
Top.= 21.3h Top.= 21.5h Top.= 23.5h Top.= 23.0h Top.= 23.5h Top.= 23.0h
3 turnos 3 turnos 3 turnos 3 turnos 3 turnos 3 turnos
24h 8h 16h 4h 8h 12h

31.19 s 33.67 s 33.89 s 32.53 s 39.09 s 35.08 s
Fig. 9 1st improvement iteration: initial VSM
(3) Subordinate everything else to the above decisions: this step ensures that all
processes work in order to support the constraint even if this required reducing
local performance measures and make use of excess available capacity.
(4) Elevate the system’s constraint: The constraint performance is now potentiated,
so the only way to improve it is by using new available resources or investing
in new ones.
(5) Evaluate the constraint: The identified constraint should be now improved so
its performance can be now superior to other new potential constraints, which
means the constraint has been broken. In this case the improvement cycle closes
and returns to step (1) for further system improvement, otherwise returns to step
(4) in order to obtain a higher level performance on the identified constraint until
the constraint brokes returning to step (1).
The TLS methodological implementation steps represented in Fig. 8 were:
• Stage 1: System characterisation and constraint identification: The first step
of the TLS implementation model was the characterisation of the system and con-
straint identification through system observations, the development of processes
diagrams, lead time calculation and nominal capability determination, as well as,
system simulation and VSM development (see Fig. 9).
• Stage 2: Exploit the constraint: According to the initial stage analysis (before
any system improvements) the process greatest cycle time was identified. In this
step the Muda identification took place as well as the variability level occurring
in the constraint, in these Gemba observation was used, as well as, the following
lean tools: 5S in workstations organization, Standard Work (SW) on work stan-
dardization, Mizusumashi for logistical flow optimization, visual management to
improve by simplification the shop floor system information and OEE for pro-
cess productivity control and its improvement. Six Sigma tools were also used
as: Ishikawa Diagrams and Control Charts, aiming to check and reduce system
variability and support future problem solving. Operational KPI’s as OEE, Setup
time, cycle time, DPMO and Downtime measures were assessed and used.
• Stage 3: Subordinate: At this stage all system process were subject to a TOC
DBR scheduling in order to align the production system with the system constraint
production rate i.e. control the productive flow and protect the constraint process
performance from flow variations.
• Stage 4: Assess and revaluate: In this case, the constraint process were now
fulfilling the system desired Takt Time, with larger capacity that would be required
to the current demand rate, closing the first continuous improvement cycle of the
system. If that would have happen and the constraint still couldn’t keep up with
the required Takt Time the constraint elevation would be required (see Stage 5).
• Stage 5: Elevate the constraint: In this stage typically new improvement projects
and investments on the system constraint process is required implemented through
more formal improvement projects as Time, Budged and new resources and com-
petencies, will be required, as buying and introducing new machines and equip-
ment or technology; extended changes of plant layout, or on the system constraint
external factors.
The VSM tool was used (see Figs. 9 and 10) to identify and characterized the main
transformation processes, providing an overview of the production process, material
and information flows. This tool was used with the intent to represent the current
state of the system and through it to analyze and identify the main sources of waste
in order to design a future state aimed at improving or eliminating those sources of
waste. In this particular case, promoting the reduction of the product cycle time that
was the main operational KPI considered to identify the system constraint and to
assess the system improvement.
Two consecutive improvement cycles were implemented in which the initial Takt
Time was calculated. The first cycle started in October 2014 and ended in April 2015
with a representative 33, 83 s/thousand corks (see Fig. 9). The second improvement
cycle run from February 2016 to September 2016, with a improved representative
33, 23 s/thousand corks (see Fig. 10). The Cycle Time for each process was then iter-
atively calculated in order to identify the system constraint during each improvement
cycle, which values are shown in Table 7, where the constraint process is displayed
in bold.
In the Table 7 it is also possible to verify the changing of system constraint
after each improvement cycle time in which several Lean and Six sigma tools were
implemented and the case final VSM resulted from the second iteration is presented
on Fig. 10.
Fig. 10 2nd improvement iteration: final VSM
Table 7 Process cycle time changes on each improvement iteration cycle

Process cycle time (s)
Cycle Process 1 Process 2 Process 3 Process 4 Process 5 Process 6
1st initial cycle 31,19 33,67 33, 89 32,53 39,09 35,08
time (October,
2014)
1st iteration 29,80 29,84 29, 66 31,72 26,48 29,09
final cycle time
(April, 2015)
2nd initial cycle 33,00 33,11 33,00 36,46 29,05 32,84
time (February,
2016)
2nd iteration 33,00 33,11 33,00 30,80 29,05 32,84
final cycle time
(September
2016)
Through the analysis of Table 7 it can be verified that there was a degradation
of the cycle times from the first to the second cycle. This was due to the time that
elapsed between the end of the 1st improvement cycle and the beginning of the
second one, indicating that the improvement cycles should be continuous in order to
better sustain the reached improvements results and support the continuous processes
optimization.
In this case study two consecutive continuous improvement cycles were devised
through the continuous improvement TLS model implementation presented before.
The VSM and KPI’s used during this study illustrated and demonstrated the system
improvement in process Takt Time and other operational KPI as well as the system
constraint changes.
This TLS implementation case where VSM was used to support iterative cork pro-
duction cycle improvements along other DBR and lean and six sigma tools showed
WIP reductions, improved company’s time to market, reducing the need of equip-
ment and human overtime, material and WIP waste and also decreasing working
hours which improves employees working conditions and human resource welfare,
contributing to a better sustainable development. Also, reducing the WIP and improv-
ing the Time to Market contributed positively to the financial performance of the
industrial unit and organization’s environmental performance.
Although tested in a lean Company the implementation of the proposed TLS model
wasn’t considered to be not more difficult than the implementation of a Lean or Six-
Sigma project, as the system improvement remains focused on a system constraint
at a time instead of several improvement possibilities in whole the system.
It was also possible to observe that the constraint found went from being the
most inefficient process to become one of the most efficient ones and from that all
others processes benefit from the constraint improvement, resulting in individual and
collective reduction of process cycle times.
In another recent study of the research team (Lamas et al. 2018), in which the
VSM tool was also used in a Portuguese automotive supplier group that produces
parts for the automobile sector to map the pre-series process, in order to improve it
and to better organize the corresponding industrialization process of new projects,
improvements in the same operational outcomes were obtained.
4 Research Main Conclusions
In this chapter several cases were exposed and discussed in order to illustrate how lean
tools, as VSM, 5S, SMED can influence sustainability outcomes in different referen-
tial continuous management concepts including in hybrid and integrated approaches
as TLS Management Systems.
From the cases studied several potential positive relations were identified through
available reached quantitative data subject to an inductive and qualitative analysis.
As a result a better understanding of how operational tools can help to improve

organizational sustainability was grasped.
On SMED cases changeover reductions had impact on productive lead time
reduction, which improve productivity measures, extra capacity enabling stock
reduction and in some case also increasing job operator’s ownership and authority
and job ergonomic work conditions improvements. From 5S, operations simplifica-
tion, human error reduction and operators work safety and human resource welfare
can be improved. The cases where VSM was used showed that VSM can support
WIP reduction, improving the company’s time to market, avoiding or reducing the
need of equipment and human overtime, and decreasing working hours which can
increase employees working conditions and human resource welfare, contributing
to the social aspect of the Sustainability Triple Bottom Line (SBT). Also, reducing
the WIP reduces material usage and can improve the time to market contributed pos-
itively contributing to the organization’s environmental and economic sustainability
performance. For example, all case studies contribute at least directly to one of
Sustainable Development Goals (https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/
sustainable-development-goals/). The case studies 1, 2, 3 and 4 directly to goal 9:
Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure. The case study 3 directly to goal 8: Decent
Work and Economic Growth. The case study 1, 2 and 4 indirectly to goal 6: Clean
Water, to Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth and to Goal 13: Climate
Action.
Considering the GRI Indicators from the several GRI Standards (https://www.
globalreporting.org/standards/gri-standards-download-center/) and satisfying the
triple bottom line (STB) sustainability dimensions, potential positive improvement
can be drawn, as highlighted on Table 8.
Taking into consideration the research topic and the pragmatic strategic approach
used a particular concern with lean based management system within the context
of the cases studies was required, where just a small sample and quantitative work
available data of identified cases was used to establish the potential different views
and answers of the research.
As an inductive research was used in this study, beware that current discussion,
based on a deeper case analysis and longer period of data observation and analysis
can have new results and gradually emerge results changes.
Table 8 Cases sustainable main indicators contributions

Environmental impact Social impact Economic impact
Sustainability Triple Bottom line (STB) industry case indicators
• Energy consumption reduction • Workplace accidents and • Operational Costs
• CO2 emissions reduction injuries reduction reduction
• Water usage consumption • Economic Performance
reduction improvement
• Material, WIP or product
reduction
Acknowledgments This work has been partially supported by UNIDEMI—Research and Devel-
opment Unit for Mechanical and Industrial Engineering by the Portuguese FCT-PEST program
UID/EMS/00667/2019. This work was also supported by the research unit on GOVCOPP—Gov-
ernance, Competitiveness and Public Policy (project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-008540), funded by
FEDER funds through COMPETE2020—POCI (Programa Operacional Competitividade e Inter-
nacionalização)—and by national funds through FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia).
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Clean & Lean Production in Fish
Canning Industry—A Case Study
Anna Bella Siriban-Manalang, Jamica B. Brillante,

Frances Isabel V. Cabahug and Rozanne P. Flores
Abstract The application of Clean Production (CP) and Lean Thinking had been
explored to reduce the environmental impacts of fish canning processes. An industry-
wide survey was conducted to access the current system architecture of the fish
canning companies in terms of their environmental practices and lean tools used. By
conducting a case study, the CP assessment identified the overall and per operation
waste in the fish canning process where material balances showed five (5) main waste
streams. A comprehensive set of CP options were proposed to eliminate the waste
streams. To solve the production waste while managing the problem of decreas-
ing raw fish supply and increasing tin can prices, lean engineering was conducted.
The cleaner production assessment identified the overall and per operation waste in
the fish canning process. Major environmental wastes identified include water, tin
cans, fish meat, and energy. Moreover, non-value adding wastes surfaced in the lean
production assessment are overproduction, waiting, transportation, and inventory.
Proposed solutions were analyzed through a cost and benefit analysis. Results show
that implementing clean and lean technologies can provide the company good bene-
fits. There is evidence to show that the implementation of clean and lean technologies
will greatly reduce the environmental impact of the fish canning industry.
1 Introduction
Decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation and natural resource

use is fundamental to sustainable development. Sustainable Development Goal
(SDG) 12, in particular, which targets to ensure responsible consumption and
production which aims to achieve economic growth and development through the
production of goods and services that improve the quality of life (UN 2015). It
means minimising the natural resources and toxic materials used, and the waste
and pollutants generated, throughout the entire production and consumption pro-
A. B. Siriban-Manalang (B)
Resources, Environment and Economics Center for Studies, Makati City, Philippines
e-mail: annamanalang@gmail.com
J. B. Brillante · F. I. V. Cabahug · R. P. Flores
De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13515-7_7
192 A. B. Siriban-Manalang et al.
cess. This involves processes to reduce, reuse and recycle water, raw materials,
non-renewable minerals, other inputs, by-products and waste. Net welfare gains
from economic activities can increase by reducing resource use, degradation and
pollution along the whole life cycle (UN 2015).
One of the industries responsible for several ill environmental impacts is the
fish canning industry. In the Philippines, wastes from the whole production process
(ranging from its inputs, high water consumption up to its high level of effluent
wastewater discharge) which is currently 77.96% higher in wastewater generation
and 10.45% higher in effluent loads than fish canning industries of other countries
(Consulting With Engineers and Planners 2000). Improving production and reducing
wastes generation in this industry can contribute to achieving SDG goals.
This chapter features the application of Clean Production (CP) and Lean Thinking
as it explored to reduce the environmental impacts of fish canning processes. An
industry-wide survey was conducted to access the current system architecture of
the fish canning companies in terms of their environmental practices and lean tools
used. The CP assessment identified the overall and per operation waste in the fish
canning process where material balances showed five (5) main waste streams. A
comprehensive set of CP options were proposed to eliminate the waste streams. To
solve the production waste while managing the problem of decreasing raw fish supply
and increasing tin can prices, lean engineering was applied.
2 Background
Production systems may be lean but not necessarily clean. Some production systems
may be clean but not necessarily lean. How does one ensure that a production system
be “clean and lean” or “lean and clean” at the same time? “Lean & Clean” is an
emerging concept in sustainability and continuous improvement that balances the
efficiencies of a company’s processes with development of sustainable operating
practices.
UNEP/DTIE defines Cleaner Production as “the continuous application of
an integrated, preventive, environmental strategy applied to processes, products
and services to increase overall efficiency and reduce risks to humans and the
environment”. It is different from the traditional ‘pollution control’ approach to
environmental management. Where pollution control is an after-the-event, ‘react
and treat’ approach, Cleaner Production reflects a proactive, ‘anticipate and prevent’
philosophy (UNEP 1995).
It has most commonly been applied to production processes, by bringing about the con-
servation of resources, the elimination of toxic raw materials, and the reduction of wastes
and emissions. However it can also be applied throughout the life cycle of a product, from
the initial design phase, through to the consumption and disposal phase. Techniques for
implementing Cleaner Production include improved housekeeping practices, process opti-
mization, raw material substitution, new technology and new product design. The other
important feature of Cleaner Production is that by preventing inefficient use of resources
and avoiding unnecessary generation of waste, an organization can benefit from reduced
operating costs, reduced waste treatment and disposal costs and reduced liability. Investing
Clean & Lean Production in Fish Canning Industry—A Case Study 193
in Cleaner Production to prevent pollution and reduce resource consumption is more cost
effective than relying on increasingly expensive ‘end-of-pipe’ solutions.
Lean is centered around creating more value with less work. Lean is a philosophy
derived mostly from the Toyota Production System (TPS), hence the term “Toyotism”
is also prevalent, and identified as “Lean” only in the 1990s.
Lean principles come from the Japanese manufacturing industry. The term was
first coined by John Krafcik (1988). Krafcik had been a quality engineer in the
Toyota-General Motors NUMMI joint venture in Fremont, California, before coming
to MIT for MBA studies. His research was continued by the International Motor
Vehicle Program (IMVP) at MIT, which produced the international best-seller book
co-authored by James Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos called “The Machine
That Changed the World.”
Womack and Jones (2003) proposed that lean is an organizational model that
strategically applies the key ideas behind lean production. They view lean as a group
of separate individuals, functions or organizations that operate as one entity, the
Lean Business System. The goal is to apply lean techniques that create individual
breakthroughs in companies and to link these up and down the supply chain to form
a continuous value proposition to raise the whole chain to a higher level.
Lean thinking has been reduced into three elements: flow, pull and striving for
excellence (Womack and Jones 2003). To be a lean manufacturer requires a way
of thinking that focuses on making the product flow through production without
interruption, a pull system that cascades back from customer demand by replenishing
what the next operation takes away at short intervals, and a culture in which everyone
is striving continuously to improve.
Shah and Ward (2003) defined lean production as a multi-dimensional approach
that encompasses a wide variety of management practices, including just-in-time,
quality systems, work teams (Pagell and LePine 1999), cellular manufacturing, sup-
plier management, etc. in an integrated system. The core thrust of lean production
is that these practices can work synergistically to create a streamlined, high quality
system that produces finished products at the pace of customer demand with lit-
tle or no waste. Reduction of waste in the operation will eventually influence the
cost-quality-time aspect of the industry.
Lean manufacturing starts with lean integration. Implementation begins with a
lean system diagnostic, an assessment of how the work and information currently
flows through the system. A baseline of metrics is established to act as guide points
to determine how to apply lean methodologies to achieve the greatest impact. A
myriad of tools, techniques, methodologies and approaches as summarized below
can be utilized (Abdullah 2003; Achanga et al. 2006; Liker 1997, 2004; Motwani
2003; Mothersell 2000; Shah and Ward 2003; Tajiri and Gotoh 1992):
a. Workplace organization: Involves cleaning up and organizing the workplace to
facilitate orderly and continuous production flow.
b. 5S: A series of activities for eliminating wastes:
(1) Seiri: Sort through items and keep only what is needed while disposing of
what is not.
(2) Seiton: Straighten out, organize and label, ensuring that there is a place for
everything and everything is in its place.
(3) Seiso: Shine and clean as a form of inspection that exposes abnormal and
pre-failure conditions that could hurt product quality and cause machine
failure.
(4) Seiketsu: Standardize systems and procedures to maintain and monitor the
first 3 S’s.
(5) Shitsuke: Sustain a stable workplace in an ongoing process of continuous
improvement.
c. Standardized work: Consists of three elements, takt time, the sequence of doing
things or sequence of processes, and how much inventory or stock on hand the
individual worker needs to have in order to accomplish that standardized work.
Based upon these three elements, takt time, sequence, and standardized stock on
hand, the standard work is set.
d. Waste identification and elimination: Waste is any non-value-adding activity
which needs to be recognized and eliminated. The seven major wastes (Liker
2004) are:
(1) Overproduction: Producing items for which there are no orders. This “just-
in-case” practice generates wastes as overstaffing, storage and transportation
costs because of excess inventory.
(2) Waiting (time on hand): Whenever goods or workers are not moving while
waiting for the next processing step because of reasons like material flow
is poor, production runs are too long, distances between work centers are
too great, stockouts, lot processing delays, equipment downtime or capacity
bottlenecks.
(3) Unnecessary transport or conveyance: Carrying work-in-process long dis-
tances, creating inefficient transport, or moving materials, parts, or finished
goods into or out of storage or between processes adds no value to the
product.
(4) Overprocessing or incorrect processing: Taking unneeded steps to process
product by either using more expensive equipment when simpler tools would
be sufficient, or inefficiently processing due to poor tool and product design,
causing unnecessary motion or even producing defects.
(5) Excess inventory: Excess raw material, work in process (WIP), or finished
goods causing longer lead times, obsolescence, delay, damaged goods, trans-
portation and storage costs.
(6) Unnecessary motion: Any wasted motion workers have to perform in the
course of their work, such as looking for, reaching for, stacking parts and
tools, or even walking.
(7) Defects: Quality defects resulting in re-inspection rework or repair, scrap,
and replacement production mean wasteful handling, time and effort.
e. Value-stream mapping (VSM): A technique used to analyze the flow of materials

and information required to bring the product or service to the customer. It is also
known as “materials and information flow mapping” in the Toyota system.
f. Team-based, multi-skilled workforce: Cross-trained, multi-tasking workers who
are organized as a team and are empowered to work on different equipment or
processes in their work cell.
g. Kaizen events: Events of intensive team involvement, typically of four to five
days in duration, in which the team tries to accomplish as much actual kaizen
or continuous improvements as possible, including activities such as actually
moving equipment, changing operator movement, or improving material and
information flow.
h. Error-proofing (poka yoke): Refers to mistake-proofing. This involves creative
devices that make it nearly impossible for an operator to make a mistake.
i. Just-in-time (JIT): A set of principles, tools, and techniques that allows a company
to produce and deliver products in small quantities, with short lead times, to meet
specific customer needs. Simply put, JIT delivers the right items at the right time
in the right amounts.
j. Cellular manufacturing: Organizing similarly produced parts into families and
arranging the equipment around their process flows into a cell which consists of a
close arrangement of people, machines, or workstations in a processing sequence
to facilitate one-piece flow of a product or service.
k. One-piece flow (takt time): The time required to complete one job or one-piece
of product at the pace of customer demand.
l. Set-up time reduction (SMED): Provides a rapid and efficient way of converting
a manufacturing process from running the current product to running the next
product. This set-up time reduction is key to reducing production lot sizes and
thereby improving flow (mura). The phrase “single minute” does not mean all
changeovers and start-ups would take only one minute, but they should take less
than ten minutes (in other words, “single digit minute”).
m. Pull system (kanban): A materials replenishment system which is initiated by
consumption. A manufacturing process triggers a signal to the previous step when
its parts need to be replenished, This creates “pull” which continues cascading
backwards to the beginning of the manufacturing cycle.
n. Production smoothing: Leveling of production planning so that mix and volume
are even over time. Production smoothing is an important condition of production
by kanban, and is the key to the Toyota production system. The goal is to minimize
idle production time.
o. Balanced work flow: Even out or level the production. This is the process of
stabilizing the system to create “evenness” or a tru balanced lean flow of work.
This is the Toyota concept of heijunka. Achieving heijunka is fundamental to
eliminating mura (unevenness of work for people or machines due to irregular
production schedule), which is fundamental to eliminating muri (overburden-
ing people or equipment beyond natural limits) and muda (non-value-added
activities) (Liker 2004).
p. Inventory reduction: Reducing inventory of raw materials, work-in process

and finished goods to reduce costs, working capital, lead times, and risks of
obsolescence.
q. Visual management: A method of creating an information-rich environment
by the use of visually stimulating signals, symbols and objects (such as signs,
lights, posters, graphs) to catch people’s attention and communicate important
information.
r. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM): Refers to small group activities calling
for total employee involvement and implemented primarily by the production,
maintenance, and plant engineering departments to maximize productivity and
increase OEE (Over-all Equipment Efficiency). It is a strategy adopted by
all manufacturing personnel to realize zero accidents, zero defects, and zero
breakdowns (Tajiri and Gotoh 1992).
Combining Cleaner Production approaches with Lean Production will almost
always reinforce each other. For example, when companies save on materials, it
automatically reduces inventory, or when wastes are reduced and eliminated, it also
reduces waste disposal processes. Conversely, when batch sizes are reduced, green-
related and environmental wastes such as excess electricity, discarded materials,
overuse of water etc. are also reduced. Beyond the environmental benefits Clean-
Lean approaches bring about, the consequences of not dealing with these wastes
include reduced disposal costs, regulatory paperwork and fines and reduced costs of
waste materials.
The research conducted an industry survey of the practices in order to understand the
process infrastructure of the industry. Table 1 shows the methodologies published
for undertaking a cleaner production assessment. The survey questionnaire used was
based on the UNIDO/UNEP manual (UNEP/UNIDO 1996).
Thereafter, from the three respondents, one company was zeroed in for the case
study. The case study utilized the application of cleaner production first prior to the
lean production to bring about a system design for the production system in focus. A
“Clean-Lean” methodology was used where each process was analyzed for cleaner
production options first, after which they were integrated and redesigned to be leaner,
improving process performance indicators.
3.1 Cleaner Production Assessment
The Cleaner Production Assessment procedures were done according to the manual
of UNIDO/UNEP (1996). There are four phases involved in the Cleaner Production
Assessment. The first phase is the pre-assessment, second is the assessment phase,
third is the feasibility study, and fourth is implementation.
Table 1 Methodologies for undertaking a cleaner production assessment

Organisation Document Methodology
UNEP (1996) Guidance materials for the 1. Planning and
UNIDO/UNEP national organisation
cleaner production centres 2. Pre-assessment
3. Assessment
4. Evaluation and
feasibility study
5. Implementation and
continuation
UNEP (1991) Audit and reduction manual 1. Pre-assessment
for industrial emissions and 2. Material balance
wastes. Technical Report 3. Synthesis
Series No. 7
Dutch Ministry of Economic PREPARE manual for the 1. Planning and
Affairs (1991) prevention of waste and organisation
emissions 2. Assessment
3. Feasibility
4. Implementation
USEPA (1992) Facility pollution 1. Development of
Prevention guide pollution prevention
programme
2. Preliminary assessment
The objective of the Pre-Assessment Phase was to select the focus for the second
phase, which is the Assessment. The expected results at the end of this phase were
the Process flow charts and the Focus for the Assessment Phase. Thereafter, inputs
and outputs were evaluated. A rough estimate of the quantities of raw materials, aux-
iliaries, products, by-products, energy, waste and emissions consumed or produced
by each process was made. These estimates were evaluated based on calculations.
The set of comprehensive criteria that was used in setting the focus were as
follows:
• Level of environmental hazardousness
• Costs of raw materials
• Compliance with present and future regulations, charges, etc.
• Costs of waste and emissions management (treatment and disposal)
• Potential environmental liability
• Quantity of waste and emissions
• Energy consumption
• Hazardous properties of waste and emissions (including toxicity, flammability,
and reactivity)
• Safety hazards to employees and the surrounding areas
• Potential for (or ease of) cleaner production
• Potential for removing bottlenecks in production waste or waste and emissions
stream
• Potential for recovery for valuable by-products

• Available budget for Cleaner Production Assessment
• Potential subsidies or grants for investment in cleaner technologies
• Expectations regarding future competitiveness.
The objective of the Assessment phase is to develop an extensive set of cleaner
production options and to identify which of those options can be implemented imme-
diately and which need further, more detailed analysis. The expected results of this
phase are derived material balances, a detailed understanding of the sources and
causes of waste and emissions generation and a comprehensive set of cleaner pro-
duction options.
Lean production was applied to reduce production waste by specifying value,
identifying the value stream, making the value flow, establishing pull and seeking
perfection through the use of the following tools:
• Cellular Manufacturing
• Continuous Improvement (Kaizen)
• Good Housekeeping (5S methodology)
• Just-in-Time Production (Kanban-based production)
• Just-in-Time Distribution
• Production Smoothing (Heijunka)
• Standardization of Work
• Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)
• Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED).
In designing the proposed system for the system under study, the selected lean
tools and cleaner production options were evaluated using cost-benefit analysis in
the desired span of time.
4 Results
A limited empirical study was conducted to access the current system architecture
of the fish canning companies. Only three of the 27 companies invited participated
in the survey.
4.1 Lean Manufacturing Survey Results
The current lean tools used by the industry are identified based on the checklist
provided in the survey. Survey results show that 5S methodology and total productive
maintenance are practiced in these companies. Three companies practiced 5S, and
one company practiced total productive maintenance.
4.2 Clean Production Survey Results
Industry survey results show that the can filling process, followed by washing and
packaging processes applied the highest number of cleaner technologies in the
respondents’ production processes. The following 13 of the 19 cleaner technolo-
gies surveyed were applied by the respondent companies:
1. Considered water saving techniques
2. Considered energy saving techniques
3. Environmental issues are considered in the selection of equipment for producing
the products
4. Possibilities of recyclability and reusability are considered in the design of the
products
5. The possibilities of reducing the use of packages are considered
6. For increasing the recyclability of the products and components, the possibilities
of the composition of the products are evaluated
7. Reducing the usage of natural resources is considered in the manufacturing
processes
8. Possibilities of using energy efficient and clean technologies are considered in
the capacity decision
9. Possibilities of the disposal of the products are evaluated in the design of the
products
10. The environmental effects, that may occur while usage of the products are
evaluated
11. Environmental issues are considered in the design of the logistics network
12. The collection and distribution of the products and components that will be
recycled, remanufactured or reused are designed and planned
13. The participation of customers and end-users in recycling programs through
programs such as education and information sharing are encouraged.
4.3 Current Environmental Practices
The survey results showed that the companies in the industry have implemented envi-
ronmental practices in their canning processes as shown in Table 2. Most processes
require the use of efficient water sprayers as a primary environmental practice that
can address the issue of water consumption.
5 Case Study
The survey covered only large scale fish canning companies monitored by the DENR-
EMB and was limited to the fish species production of sardine, anchovy, pilchard,
tuna and mackerel. It considered only three areas of the industry supply-chain namely
Table 2 Environmental practices

Processes Environmental practices No. of companies
1 Receiving Strict quality control of fresh fish from 3
suppliers
Use of efficient water sprayers (sprayers 0
with aerators)
2 Butchering/Cutting Strict collection of waste procedure 3
Use of nobbing machines 1
with aerators)
3 Pre-cooking Collection for fish sauce, fish oil, or 3
animal feed supplement
Optimize cooking operation through 3
energy saving
Pre-soak tin can containers in sodium 0
phosphate solution
with aerators)
4 Canning Strict canning procedure 3
with aerators)
5 Retorting Proper retort insulation 3
6 Cooling Use of efficient water sprayers (sprayers 1
with aerators)
Reuse of cooling water 1
7 Packaging Proper packing procedure 3
Use of recyclable packaging materials 2
inbound logistics, production or internal supply-chain, and outbound logistics, as

encircled in Fig. 1. Moreover, the feasibility study and implementation phases of the
CP waste audit were not included in this study. The basis for the industry standards
among the fish canning industry of the Philippines is based on the secondary data
coming from the Development Bank of the Philippines (1999).
5.1 Cleaner Production Assessment Phase
The Clean Production audit requires the material balance of the fish canning process:
the whole system and per unit of operation material balance.
Internal Supply Chain ( PROCESS)
Fish Canning
Industry
Butchering /
Cutting Outbound Logistics
(CUSTOMER)
Inbound Logistic ( SUPPLIER) Washing
Inventory
Can Filling / Pre-

High Grade / High
cooking
Quality fishes
Warehousing
Daily catch (
Distribution
by commercial, Sauce Filling
Receiving /
sustenance, &
Freezer
foreign fishing
vessels TRansportation
Seaming
Mid-low grade
type of fish Logistic
Retorting
Packaging
W
te
as
as
Legend: te
W
Flow
Waste
te
s
W
Wa
as
Scope
te
Waste
Boundary
SC
Boundary
Process
Fig. 1 Environmental waste in a Fish Canning Industry (DBP 1999)
Table 3 Product specification for Canned fish

Size Brine filled Canned fish Tomato filled Canned fish
155 grams (%) 425 grams (%) 155 grams (%) 425 grams (%)
Canned fish specifications
Fish meat content 76 80 76 80
Brine solution 24 20 24 20
5.2 Material Balance of the Production System
Canned fish is the final product of the fish canning process, and the company produces
two types of canned fish products: canned fish in brine sauce and canned fish in
tomato sauce packed in a 425 and 155 g cans. The company usually produces 20%
more 155 g canned fish compared to 425 g canned fish regardless of the orders. The
company produces to-stock canned fish products with shelf life of three years. There
is an average of 118 g of fish meat (almost 76% of the total weight of the can) in a
155 g of canned fish, and an average of 340 g of fish meat (almost 80% weight of the
can) in a 425 g of canned fish. Table 3 shows the contents of the canned fish products
for the given sizes.
Table 4 Wastes of the production system

Input Monthly input Monthly waste Portion of waste (%)
1. Raw fish 1,100,000 kg 336,600 kg 30.06
(Imported/local)
2. Tin cans (155 g) 4,000,000 can 111,715 can 2.80
3. Tin cans (425 g) 1,000,000 can 101,882 can 10.20
4. Ice 16,000 kg 16,000 kg 100.00
5. Brine solution 264,000 L 52,800 L 20.00
6. Tomato sauce 264,000 L 39,600 L 15.00
7. Water 10,000 m3 10,000 m3 100.00
8. Energy 181,452 kW – –
Table 5 Cost per type of raw material

Input Cost per unit Monthly cost Monthly cost % of Cost
(PhP) of input (PhP) of waste (PhP) versus
Revenue (%)
1. Raw fish 25/kg 27,500,000.00 8,415,000.00 32.46
(Imported/Local)
2. Tin cans (155 g) 4/can 16,000,000.00 446,859.00 1.72
3. Tin cans (425 g) 7/can 7,000,000.00 713,176.00 2.75
4. Ice 3.5/kg 56,000.00 56,000.00 0.22
5. Brine solution 2.5/L 660,000.00 132,000.00 0.51
6. Tomato sauce 4/L 1,056,000.00 158,400.00 0.61
7. Water 27.6/m3 276,000.00 276,000.00 1.06
8. Energy 5.65/kW 1,026,126.00 – –
Total monthly cost (PhP) 56,974,126.00 10,155,404.00 39.34
Inputs
Inputs are all the raw materials, energy and water used in producing the canned
fish. The values were taken based on the company’s average acquisition cost as
shown in Table 4. All the ice, water, and energy inputs are converted into waste.
Ice is transformed into melted ice contaminated with fish blood. Input clean water
is discharged as cooling wastewater, and contaminated water. Water input for each
unit operation is equal to the wastewater generated (Consulting With Engineers and
Planners 2000; Uttamangkabovorn et al. 2005). Moreover, a large portion of waste
also comes from the raw fish inputs which are the spoiled or off-specification fish,
fish tails, fish heads, and fish offal that cannot be used in the production of canned
fish.
The wastes generated in the fish canning production in the production system
cost an average of PhP10 million per year. In Table 5, the summary of all the costs
associated in the raw material input and the cost of the wastes associated with it.
Table 6 Cost per unit of Canned fish (Brine solution)

Product type Cost of product per Average output per Total cost (PhP)
unit (PhP) month
1. Canned fish 7.32/can 3,888,285 cans 28,481,475
(155 g)
2. Canned fish 21.14/can 898,118 cans 18,987,650
(425 g)
3. Fish meal 15/kg 336,600 kgs 5,049,000
(by-product)
Table 7 Cost per unit of Canned fish (Tomato sauce)

Product type Cost of product per Average output per Total cost (PhP)
unit (PhP) month
1. Canned fish 7.39/can 3,888,285 cans 28,718,075
(155 g)
2. Canned fish 21.32/can 898,118 cans 19,146,050
(425 g)
3. Fish meal 15/kg 336,600 kgs 5,049,000
(by-product)
Outputs
The end product or outputs in this whole system material balance are the 155 g
canned fish and 420 g canned fish and their by-products. Tables 6 and 7 detail the
cost of producing one unit of canned fish.
Data Collection
Figure 2 map out the detailed material balances for whole system and Figs. 3 and 4
map out the detailed material balances for the brine and tomato production systems,
which were based on the worksheet provided in UNIDO/UNEP (1996) manual. All
inputs and outputs were expressed in final product units—canned fish. Production
ratio is 60–40% for 155 g canned fish and 425 g canned fish. Hence, the input amount
is expressed both in 155 and 425 gram-canned fish units. Since the input ratio was
60:40 for 155 and 425 g, the same ratio was used for the output materials. The
conversion factors used are as follows:
1. One kilogram of fish six 155 g cans
2. One kilogram of fish two 425 g cans.
Material Balance of Unit Operations

The amount of inputs and wastes were identified for each unit operation as well as the
percentage of cost of each waste to the PhP 25,921,653.42 average monthly revenue
of the company.
Fig. 2 Whole system material balance
Waste Streams
The wastes produced by the whole fish canning production system were identified
in the material balance. The five main waste streams are spoiled fish, melted ice,
damaged can, spilled sauces, and contaminated water. The causes for these wastes
were categorized into three: raw materials, technology, and operating practices.
Spoiled Fish Waste Stream
The spoilage of fish are observed in the receiving and cutting operations of the fish
canning process. There are five identified causes for the generation of fish wastes.
1. Improper transportation of fish—Fish gets spoiled during transportation or ship-
ping, most especially if they are imported from other countries. There must be
constant ice and/or water to keep the raw fishes in good condition.
2. Improper handling of fish—Improper handling of fish can also make it spoiled.
Fish can have surface wounds from improper handling; and it will be easier for
bacteria to penetrate the body of the fish if such wounds are inflicted.
3. Substandard quality of fish purchased—There is no guarantee that the fish bought
from the fishermen of Navotas Port are in good quality. The same goes for
imported raw fishes. The company has no way of checking the quality of fish
purchased until its arrival.
4. Freezing at insufficient temperature—The setting of the freezer temperature is
insufficient to maintain the freshness of the raw fish for a certain amount of time.
5. Overloading of freezer—Workers at the freezing station overloads a freezer to
avoid usage of other freezers.
IN OUT
Fish Canning Product, By-
Costs (per month in Quantity (per Raw Materials, Quantity (per Costs (per month in
Process Product, Energy,
Php) month) Auxiliaries, Energy month) Php)
(Brine Solution) Waste Emissions
Fish Meal 336,600 kg 5,049,000.00

= 1,211,760 155g cans
27,500,000.00 660,000 kg Raw Fish + 269,280 425g cans
Spoiled Fish 6,600 kg (0.06%) (165,000.00)
= 3,960,000 155g cans
+ 880,000 425g cans = 23,760 155g cans
Receiving + 5,280 425g cans
Freezing Fish Offumes 330,000 kg (30%) (8,250,000.00)

= 1,188,000 155g cans
Thawing + 264,000 425g cans
Damaged 111,715 tin cans (2.8%) (446,859.00)
16,000,000.00 4,000,000 tin cans Tin Cans (155g) Butchering / Tin Cans (155g)
= 3,237 155g cans
Cutting
= 110,000 155g cans
Canned Fish (155g) 3,888,285 cans 28,481,475.00
Washing
Damaged 101,882 cans (10.2%) (713,176.00)
Can-Filling Tin Cans (425g)
7,000,000.00 1,000,000 tin cans Tin Cans (425g) = 22,414 425g cans
= 220,000 425g cans Pre-Cooking Canned Fish (425g) 898,118 cans 18,987,650.00
56,000.00 16,000 kg Ice Sauce-Filling Melted Ice 16,000 kg (100%) (56,000.00)

= 110,000 155g cans = 110,000 155g cans
+ 220,000 425g cans Sterilizing / + 220,000 425g cans
Retorting
660,000.00 264,000 L Brine Solution Spilled Sauce 52,800 L (20%) (132,000.00)
Cooling
Clean & Lean Production in Fish Canning Industry—A Case Study
= 110,000 155g cans = 22,000 155g cans

+ 220,000 425g cans + 44,000 425g cans
Labelling /
Packaging
1,026,126.00 10,000 cu.m Water Contaminated water 10,000 cu.m (100%) (276,000.00)
= 110,000 155g cans
+ 220,000 425g cans = 110,000 155g cans
+ 220,000 425g cans
276,000.00 181,452 kW Energy Energy Consumption 181,452 KW (100%) (1,025,204.00)

= 110,000 155g cans = 110,000 155g cans
+ 220,000 425g cans + 220,000 425g cans
Fig. 3 Production system material balance for Brine solution filled canned fish
205
IN
OUT
206
Fish Canning Product, By-

Costs (per month in Quantity (per Raw Materials, Quantity (per Costs (per month in
Process Product, Energy,
Php) month) Auxiliaries, Energy month) Php)
(Brine Solution) Waste Emissions
Fish Meal 336,600 kg 5,049,000.00

= 1,211,760 155g cans
27,500,000.00 660,000 kg Raw Fish + 269,280 425g cans
Spoiled Fish 6,600 kg (0.06%) (165,000.00)
= 3,960,000 155g cans
+ 880,000 425g cans = 23,760 155g cans
Receiving + 5,280 425g cans
Freezing Fish Offumes 330,000 kg (30%) (8,250,000.00)

= 1,188,000 155g cans
Thawing + 264,000 425g cans
Damaged 111,715 tin cans (2.8%) (446,859.00)
16,000,000.00 4,000,000 tin cans Tin Cans (155g) Butchering / Tin Cans (155g)
= 3,237 155g cans
Cutting
= 110,000 155g cans
Canned Fish (155g) 3,888,285 cans 28,481,475.00
Washing
Damaged 101,882 cans (10.2%) (713,176.00)
7,000,000.00 1,000,000 tin cans Tin Cans (425g) Can - Filling Tin Cans (425g)
= 22,414 425g cans
= 220,000 425g cans Pre - Cooking Canned Fish (425g) 898,118 cans 18,987,650.00
56,000.00 16,000 kg Ice Sauce - Filling Melted Ice 16,000 kg (100%) (56,000.00)
= 110,000 155g cans = 110,000 155g cans
+ 220,000 425g cans Sterilizing / + 220,000 425g cans
Retorting
1, 056,000.00 264,000 L Tomato Sauce Spilled Sauce 39,600 L (15%) (158,400.00)
Cooling
= 110,000 155g cans = 16,500 155g cans
+ 220,000 425g cans + 33,000 425g cans
Labelling /
Packaging
1,026,126.00 10,000 cu.m Water Contaminated water 10,000 cu.m (100%) (276,000.00)
= 110,000 155g cans
+ 220,000 425g cans = 110,000 155g cans
+ 220,000 425g cans
276,000.00 181,452 kW Energy Energy Consumption 181,452 KW (100%) (1,025,204.00)

= 110,000 155g cans = 110,000 155g cans
+ 220,000 425g cans + 220,000 425g cans
Fig. 4 Production system material balance for Tomato sauce canned fish
A. B. Siriban-Manalang et al.
Ice/Melted Ice Waste Stream

Ice and melted ice can either be observed at the receiving unit of operation process
or at the freezing unit. The ice used to preserve the freshness of fish is contaminated
with fish blood.
1. Poor movement plan—Raw fishes are removed from the freezer even if it is not
yet needed. Hence, fishes are placed in a basin filled with ice to keep them fresh.
2. High quality specification—Freshness of raw fish must be maintained all the
time, hence the use of ice is necessary.
Damaged Can Waste Stream

Damaged can be observed in the receiving process. Tin cans are checked upon its
arrival in the receiving area. If there are any irregularities in the shape of the tin can,
it is considered as damaged at once, and a reject as well. There are three main causes
identified that is responsible for the generation of damaged tin cans.
1. Improper handling of cans—Dents and other damages can be inflicted on the cans
in shipments. There is a possibility that cans were not transferred with care from
storage area to shipping vehicle and from vehicle to the company’s receiving
area.
2. Poor packaging—The tin cans received are only wrapped in a plastic. This plastic
is not thick enough to avoid any damages to the cans if collisions occur.
3. Supplier credibility of quality materials—sometimes cans are damaged during
the shipment process, so a credible supplier must be established by the company
to sure that the cans are of packaged properly during shipment.
Spilled Sauce Waste Stream

Spilled and spoilage of sauces can be observed in the sauce-filling operation process.
Since there is only one process responsible for the sauce waste stream, there are only
two causes identified
1. Continuous movement of machine—The movement of the sauce-filling machine
causes overflowing of brine solution and tomato sauce during the process.
2. Imprecise filling of sauce to the can—the viscosity of the sauce, as well as
speed of the conveyor should move at the exact times so that the sauce will not
continuously spill out.
Contaminated Water Waste Stream

Water is the primary source of material that is used in every operation process in fish
canning. The contaminated water is water mixed with fish blood, spillage of sauces,
and chlorinated water that are used for washing and cooling.
1. Continuous water flow—There is no proper water allocation standard observed
in per unit of operation.
2. Leaking taps/valves/flanges—No maintenance attention was made to some small

leaking in the taps, valves and flanges of machines and pipe lines.
3. Disregard of potential for reuse or recycling—The company has an onsite water
treatment facility, however it does not consider recycling the treated water for
other operational uses.
5.3 Cleaner Production Options
Table 8 lists the various alternative solutions considered for the company.
5.4 Lean Assessment
Due to the variation in raw material prices and depletion of fish supply, the challenge
to produce low cost canned fish at a customer specified quality has been a necessity.
Lean application to the fish canning plant aims to achieve the fourfold goals of (1)
remove the non-value adding activities, (2) ensure low-cost production, (3) meeting
customer demands satisfactorily and lastly, (4) enable the system to flow.
Current State Map
Lean thinking starts with the definition of value to the customers. Customers value a
lower price of the product at the longest expiration date. Most of the production wastes
identified involves high inventory particularly the work in process and finished goods
storage. In the current setup, deliveries to customers are made only once monthly.
The current inventory turnover, which measures the annual rate at which inventory
is being delivered, computed is 40. The company’s inventory has gone up by 11%
since the previous year and the product sales have increased almost 32% as well.
The bulk of inventories are held up in raw material and finished goods storage. The
performance factors, depicted in Fig. 5 are at the following current levels:
1. Inventory Turnover and Holding Cost 40 times a year
2. Total Value Stream WIP 92,160 cans 155 g and 30,720 cans of 455g
3. Total Lead Time 58–88 days
4. Health and Safety 1169 incidents.
Future State Map

The future state map is charted for all the products. Starting with the customer’s order,
a withdrawal kanban is sent by the production control to deliver goods right away
to the customer. A supermarket is used for the finished products which would signal
a production kanban from the finishing and canning process box to refill the empty
space in the supermarket. The canning process would then withdraw the needed raw
materials with fish in a first-in-first-out basis. A kanban post is situated in the raw
Table 8 Final recommended cleaner production options for fish canning

Problem area Problem type Alternative solutions (Consulting With
Engineers and Planners 2000; Thrane et al.
2009; FAO 2009)
Receiving Solid waste; Energy The organic load of the wastewaters generated
consumption from the unloading process can be reduced by
reducing the contamination of the fish and by
chilling the catch. Efficient chilling results in the
best-quality fish and reduces losses and saves
energy
Thawing Water consumption; Dry transport of fish to the cutting section
Wastewater; Solid
waste
Cutting Solid waste; Energy The mackerel are de-headed and gutted before
consumption the freezing process. Before the tails were left
on the fish during the freezing process
Cutting Solid waste; Fish cuts are separated by putting a hole in the
By-product wastes; center of the cutting area table to strain the solid
Wastewater parts and not pollute the wash water with blood
Cutting, Washing Effluence; In the washing of containers place a separate dry
By-product wastes container for leftovers of unwashed containers
Washing Water consumption Alternatively, install water-efficient spray
nozzles and solenoid controlled shut-off valves
Thawing–Washing Water consumption Have a scheduled washing of basins and floor
instead of continuous washing
Thawing–Washing Water consumption; Mopping of the floor with a mop or glass cleaner
Wastewater; Solid wiper to direct spilled waste water
waste
Sauce filling Solid waste; A sufficiently large tray to catch spillage from
By-product wastes the filling machine should be installed. The
filling machine should be well adjusted to
minimize the spillage
Cooking By-product wastes Skimming of the oil from the cooking liquors
will increase the income from selling the oil.
This requires no investment, only a change in
working procedures. The aqueous phase left
after oil skimming can be used for production of
fish soup
Seaming Occupational health Muffles is put by the workers or sound-proofing
and safety to contain the noise
Retorting Energy Proper ventilation of the place particularly in the
consumption; Water cooling area to reduce the time of cooling and
consumption water use
Cooling Water consumption Installation of a storage tank
Cooling Water consumption When the water can no longer be re-circulated, it
could be used to clean the sealed cans and for
other cleaning activities
(continued)
Table 8 (continued)
Problem area Problem type Alternative solutions (Consulting With
Engineers and Planners 2000; Thrane et al.
2009; FAO 2009)
Cutting By-product; Water The blood water entrails and offal can be
consumption; transported to collection facilities or to the fish
Wastewater; Solid meal plant in an enclosed system instead of
waste using water flumes
Washing By-product; Water The blood water entrails and offal can be
consumption; transported to collection facilities or to the fish
wastewater; Solid meal plant in an enclosed system instead of
waste using water flumes
Thawing–Washing Water consumption Install meters on high use equipment to monitor
consumption
Cooking and Energy consumption Introduction of proper insulation such that
retorting cookers should always be covered and insulated
to reduce heat loss. Also, cookers should be
insulated and designed so that steam loss is
minimized
Cooking Energy consumption Installation of a damper in the exhaust of the
cooker, combined with automatic or manual
control, can also be effective in reducing steam
losses
Retorting Water consumption; Separate into one capacity water submersion
Energy cooling and get excess cool from the freezer if
possible
material supermarket to send orders in a weekly basis meaning the daily kanban will
be accumulated on a daily basis and update on the order to the suppliers would be
given weekly (Fig. 6).
The current rating based on the lean manufacturing assessment is 1.9 out of 5,
which shows that there is a big room for lean improvement. The gap analysis chart in
Fig. 7 shows that the areas for improvement are the overproduction, waiting, transport
and inventory wastes found in the Lean category (Figs. 8 and 9).
Non-value Adding Wastes
Overproduction
The takt time is based on the available working time of the downstream processes
closest to the customer. The takt times for the different product line are computed in
Table 9.
The work balance chart shows that the takt time is far higher than the process
cycle times which means that the production system can easily meet the time to
fill-in the customer demands and the customer’s orders are so little as compared to
the production capacity. The company’s overproduction can be computed using the
takt time and cycle time and the percentage of which is detailed in Table 10. Given
Fig. 5 Current value stream map

Fig. 6 Future value stream map

Fig. 7 Gap analysis chart
Fig. 8 Work balance chart for 155 g (Brine)
that the company produces continuously 20 days in a month with 390 available work
time per day, the number of cans produced per day is 68,823.53 cans. In this sense,
the continuous production and acquisition of raw material fish even when there are
no orders yet is responsible for the accumulation of finished goods inventory in the
storage warehouse.
Fig. 9 Work balance chart for 425 g (Brine)
Table 9 Takt time

155 g Brine 425 g Brine 155 g 425 g
Tomato Tomato
Takt time (sec) 1.83 7.90 2.29 8.59
Available working time (sec) 23,400 23,400 23,400 23,400
Customer demand per shift 12,772 2962 10,217 2725
(cans)
Table 10 Percentage of overproduction

155 g Brine 425 g Brine 155 g Tomato 425 g Tomato
Available working time 23,400 23,400 23,400 23,400
Customer demand 12,771 2961 10,217 2724
Actual production 68,823 47,755 68,823 47,755
% Overproduction 81% 94% 85% 94%
5.5 Lean Production Solutions
Inventory Management
A demand forecast is useful in smoothly planning the order to suppliers so that
operations that should be carried out without interruptions. Also, the lead time of
ordering in international countries takes one month so clients order by bulk. Although
the supply of fish is seasonal, proper forecasting and inventory management must be
implemented such as putting buffer stock when a season of no fish catch would come.
A buffer stock of 16,200 and 5400 cans is proposed for the 155 and 425 g products
respectively as this is minimum number of units taken out from the supermarket.
The proposal is to be able to ship daily at minimum costs as against the four-day
shipping time given by the company. To reach this goal, information flow must be
changed to electronic to accommodate fast transaction and communication of orders.
Also, to minimize the production costs, finished goods inventory should be kept at the
minimum. A knowledge on the ordering quantity of raw material fish is recommended
since the supply of fish is seasonal and is depleting through time as according to FAO
(2001), average fish supply availability growth slowed from 3.93% in 1979 to 1988
to 2.11% in 1979 to 1997. Also, time spent in getting contractual workers after every
close down is tedious and affects the workers’ productivity.
Demand Level Management
The shelf life of the product is 3 years. A buffer stock of 16,200 cans for the 155 g
and 5400 cans for 425 g is set which is the minimum supply quantity of the company
to compensate for the variability in the supply of fish.
Heijunka
Based on the current state map, the planned change-over time is only 45 min which
can be done during the worker’s break time. The heijunka box would have a pitch of
3.05–3.82 min and 6.32–6.87 min wherein a unit output respectively. There would be
assigned heijunka boxes at the canning and finishing processes. Heijunka box goes
side by side with a kanban card together with the basin color coding.
Cellular Manufacturing
There are a lot of transport stops involved which promotes large batching and accu-
mulation of work in process inventory. In order for a continuous flow to happen, a
proper layout eliminating the accumulation of work in process, large batch sizing and
long transports have to be implemented. The current layout is analyzed and modified
as shown in a proposed layout design in Figs. 10, 11 and 12.
Fig. 10 Work balance chart for 155 g (Tomato)

Fig. 11 Work balance chart for 425 g (Tomato)
Work Standardization
With the modification of the layout, standard work has to be applied so as to maxi-
mize the benefits of the new design and move towards a continuous flow. The work
was standardized using a combination table for the thawing and washing processes
where the processes have the most unnecessary motion. The 5S good housekeeping
processes would be introduced to create a clean and safe environment for the workers.
Improvement Metrics
The new layout had eradicated five process activities and decreased the process
time of some processes. By standardizing the work, the cycle time was reduced by
29–34% and the elimination of the transport processes by the new layout has reduced
lead time by 53–56% for all the types of products. It has also removed all the work
in process inventory by employing a pull system using kanban card and heijunka
boxes. Load levelling has also been possible for the continuous flow and the same
cycle time to produce different product types. With these implemented, the future
state map can be achieved with the improvement of the performance factors as shown
in Table 11. Tables 12 and 13 show the summary of clean production solutions and
lean engineering solutions.
Changes for Man
• Workers, especially the loaders, will travel less distance, will transport the materials
in less time, and will feel less fatigue because of the new layout employing cell
manufacturing.
• Loaders will not need to manually transport the fish cuts from the cutting depart-
ment to the washing department since roller conveyors will be used for material
handling between these workstations.
• Workers in the thawing and washing departments will have their works standard-
ized. They will do the procedures assigned to them.
Fig. 12 Proposed layout

Table 11 Comparison of performance between current state and future state

Performance factors
Lead time Total cycle Inventory WIP (cans) Health and
(days) time (min) turnover safety
(annual) incidences
(per year)
Current state
155 g Brine 58.42 314 40 92,160 1169
155 g 66.24 320
Tomato
425 g Brine 83.11 284 30,720
425 g 87.65 290
Tomato
Future state
155 g Brine 1.9 245 240 2340 0
155 g 2.24 256
Tomato
425 g Brine 2.48 233 780
425 g 2.72 207
Tomato
Percent difference
155 g Brine 97% 22% 500% 0.974609 100%
155 g 97% 20%
Tomato
425 g Brine 97% 18% 0.974609
425 g 97% 29%
Tomato
Average 97% 22% 500% 97% 100%
• Workers will be wearing personal protective equipment other than the apron and
boots that they currently wear.
Changes for Material

• Materials will be ordered based on the forecasted demand. Level of materials
inventory will be controlled since amount of orders are based on demand forecasts.
• Overproduction will be minimized, if not eliminated, since the company will
employ the supermarket system.
Changes for Machine

• Exhaust dampers will be installed on the pre-cooking machines.
• Spray nozzles will be converted into water-efficient ones.
• Solenoid-controlled shut-off valves will be installed.
• Monitoring meters will be installed into the highly used machines and equipment.
Table 12 Summary of clean production solutions
Processes Clean production solutions
Receiving Regulation of fish
catch temperature
Freezing
Thawing Dry transport of Scheduled Use of water Mopping of
fish washing of floors meters floors
and basins
Cutting Dry transport of Bloodwater Install a hole at Separate dry
fish entrails and offal the center of the container for left
to be transported cutting table overs of
to fish meal unwashed
plants containers
Washing Sweep up solid Bloodwater Put Solenoid Separate dry Install water Schedule Install water Mopping of
materials entrails and offal controlled container for left efficient spray washing of floor meters floors
to be transported shut-off valve overs of nozzles an dbasins
to fish meal unwashed
plants containers
Can-filling
Clean & Lean Production in Fish Canning Industry—A Case Study
Pre-cooking Exhaust damper

Sauce-filling Use tray for
sauce spillage
Seaming Wear muffles
Cooling Provide fans for Provide water Get excess cool Provide storage Reuse of water
proper ventilation submersion from freezer tanks for cleaning
Labeling/Packaging
219
Table 13 Summary of lean engineering solutions

Processes Lean production solutions
Freezing Inventory Demand Cellular Heijunka 5S good Standard
Thawing management level manufacturing housekeeping work
management
Cutting
Washing
Can-filling
Pre-cooking
Sauce-filling
Seaming
Cooling
Labeling/Packaging
• A new storage tank for the cooling process will be installed.
Changes for Methods

• Kanban system will be employed by the company. The canning and finishing
process will use heijunka boxes and kanban cards.
• The company will turn from a push production system to a pull production system
through demand level management.
• Schedule of production activities will be balanced for the different product mix.
Each production will be assigned to a specific product type.
• Recycling of water will be practiced in the company. Water will be reused for other
purposes, such as cleaning the cans, washing the basins, and cleaning the floor.
• Schedule for basin washing will be devised by the company.
5.6 Clean-Lean Integration
The case study exhibited that it is more efficient to do cleaner production analysis
first as it refers to issues of technology and process design, before lean analysis
which tackles the flow and integration of processes to achieve flow. It also showed
that CP and Lean reinforce each other. CP helped in surfacing the wastes which are
the same wastes the lean production targets to eradicate. Also, the wastes had been
quantified in different processes and in weighted degrees of environmental impact.
There are many implications of doing CP first before “leanifying” the system. One
is the quantification of environmental wastes that also emphasize process areas for
improvement. Lean served as an aid in exploring more possibilities of CP applica-
tions. When the environmental wastes had been minimized, a clearer macroscopic
picture of the value stream had been possible, which enabled a detailed focus and
elimination of production wastes. Both the lean and clean production tools helped in
congruence with each other as one tool proved complementary and supplementary
to the other.
The proposed solutions were estimated to decrease the water consumption by

86.84% lower than 31.76 m3 /MT current average fish canning industry consumption.
The CP solution on separation of fish cuts, dry transport of fish in basins, and transport
of blood-water entrails and offal to nearby fish meal plant in an enclosed system has
been adapted to decrease the effluent load. The pertinent contribution of conducting a
Lean-Clean production is the achievement of a better supply chain process reducing
waste water generation by 67%. The proposed system does not only minimize the
environmental and production wastes, but also the costs entailed with them.
CP and lean solutions such as installation of water meter, cellular manufactur-
ing, production leveling, reduced material handling for a reduced number of finished
goods inventory, reduced cold storage room requirement for fish due to decrease
in raw material fish inventory were set to continuously improve energy consump-
tion. These taken together will reduce consumption of fish, energy, water and other
resources and reduce production of wastes as well, which ultimately are some of the
means to responsible consumption of natural resource use and sustainable production
processes.
6 Conclusion
This study was able to explore how to integrate CP and lean manufacturing in a
single system and to prove that the integration of clean and lean can minimize the
ill impacts of the fish canning production to the environment. In addition to that, the
incorporation of lean with clean served as a catalyst in achieving the end goal, which
is waste minimization.
In order to evaluate and solve the negative environmental impacts of the fish can-
ning industry, a case study application to one of the fish canning companies was
conducted. Through the CP assessment, it was found out that the total cost of wastes
amount to 39.34% of the average monthly revenue of the company. About a third
(32.46%) of the wastes are due to the spoiled and off-specification fish waste stream.
All in all, there are five main waste streams identified for the production of canned
fish, these are: spoiled and off-specification fish, damaged cans, melted ice, spilled
sauce, and contaminated water. Through the cause assessment, it was found out that
even though the company has an actively-operated waste water treatment facility, the
practice of recycling and reusing materials, especially water, is neglected. By address-
ing the processes with highest waste emissions, CP assessment was able to minimize
environmental wastes through the application of appropriate CP technologies.
Value stream mapping surfaced that four out of the seven production wastes are
evident in the fish canning production for the case study, and these are: overpro-
duction, waiting, transport, and inventory. To address these problems, inventory
management, demand level management, production-levelling (heijunka), cellular
manufacturing, work standardization, and 5S methodology are the lean tools pro-
posed to the system to reduce the production wastes.
The Clean-Lean analysis was used to integrate the CP and lean manufacturing
solutions proposed. The system designed for the company promotes cost-efficient
and environmental conservation process. The case study proved positive monetary
returns for the company as well as lessened ill environmental impacts, in support of
sustainable development goals.
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The Effect of Lean Practices
on Environmental Performance:
An Empirical Study
Marcos Dieste and Roberto Panizzolo
Abstract Lean production has emerged in the past decades as one of the most
popular topics in business and manufacturing literature, as it is the production
paradigm currently applied in many industries. This paradigm is characterized by
five principles and the importance of reducing waste (muda). In the same way, the
environmental performance of companies in terms of pollution prevention and use
of natural resources is another widespread issue for both firms and customers. This
focus on “Green manufacturing” is part of one of the three pillars of Sustainable
development. Lean and the so-called Green paradigm are both focused on waste
reduction and several authors have studied their relationships (common points and
divergences) and the synergic effects of joining these two management approaches.
However, the impact of Lean practices on environmental performance is still unclear,
as limited empirical research has been conducted in this field. In this chapter, a study
is carried out in order to analyze the impact on environmental performance in manu-
facturing firms that have implemented various Lean practices. The chapter is divided
in two parts. First we have conducted a review of the relevant literature in order to
give a state-of-the-art general picture. The second part of the chapter has a strong
empirical focus. Three case studies regarding firms that have started a Lean transfor-
mation program for at least five years are investigated in depth. Moreover, a cross-case
analysis is carried out to map the possible relationships between Lean practices and
particular Green performances. The general findings of the research outline that the
environmental performance of the company is enhanced in the long-term after the
implementation of Lean practices.
M. Dieste (B) · R. Panizzolo (B)

Department of Management and Engineering (DTG), University of Padova, Padova, Italy
e-mail: marcos.diestegracia@studenti.unipd.it
R. Panizzolo
e-mail: roberto.panizzolo@unipd.it

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13515-7_8
226 M. Dieste and R. Panizzolo
1 Introduction
Lean production system (Womack and Jones 1996) is the most influential production
paradigm nowadays with its techniques and methods pioneered between the decades
of 1950 and 1960 by Toyota (Toyota Production System) which have become the
successors of the mass production practices initiated by Ford. This philosophy is
based on the beliefs of “doing more with less” while providing costumers exactly
what they want. In this effort to reduce non-value-added activities in the whole
processes of the company, Lean management establishes seven types of waste, also
known as muda in Lean environments.
On the other hand, the Sustainability concept arises as the “development which
meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland 1987). The aim of the sustainable
strategies is to facilitate the creation of favorable situations by aligning three dimen-
sions of the company also known as triple bottom line or 3BL: social, economic
and environmental. Companies are beginning to include these dimensions in their
corporate and social responsibility strategies.
As regards Sustainability and focusing this concept only in an environmental
performance view, arises the notion of Green manufacturing (Dornfeld 2012) which
“aims a continuous integration of environmental improvements of industrial pro-
cesses and products to reduce pollution to air, water and land; to reduce waste at
source; and to minimize risks to humans and other species”. According to the U.S.
Department of Commerce (2009), Sustainable manufacturing is “the creation of
manufactured products which use processes that minimize negative environmental
impacts, conserve energy and natural resources, are safe for employees, commu-
nities, and consumers and are economically sound”. Among the most important
factors of the increasing importance of environmental performance is the rapidly
depletion of natural resources that has forced companies to continuously improve
their manufacturing systems for environmental efficiency strategies. Consequently,
waste reduction management is critical for the definition of Green production. In this
perspective it seems that Lean production and Green production have many elements
in common since both are focused on reducing waste and increasing efficiency of
production processes.
In recent years, several scholars have analyzed the potential relationships and the
combination of both Lean and Green paradigms. The results achieved so far are not
always homogeneous; some studies strongly emphasize the existence of a positive
relationship while others are more cautious by stating that not always adopting Lean
practices entails improving Green performances. As suggested by Garza-Reyes et al.
(2018) the impact of Lean practices on environmental performance is still unclear,
as limited empirical research has been conducted in this field.
The objective of this chapter is to first conduct a literature review aimed primarily
at describing the phenomenon and identify the preliminary relationships between the
Lean practices and environmental performance measures. Then, three case studies
demonstrating empirically these relationships in the long-term are developed.
The Effect of Lean Practices on Environmental Performance … 227
Moreover, a cross-case analysis is carried out to map the possible relationships

between Lean practices and particular Green performances.
The general findings of the research outline that the environmental performances
of the company are enhanced in the long-term after the implementation of Lean
practices. These results are of interest to academics in both Operations manage-
ment and Sustainability fields as well as to business managers designing Lean and
sustainable operations.
In summary, the next sections address the following topics: Sect. 2 describes the
state-of-the-art with a literature review analysis; Sect. 3 covers the research method-
ology adopted; Sect. 4 provides a general description of the sample; Sect. 5 describes
the within-case analysis for the three companies; Sect. 6 links the evidences found in a
cross-case analysis; and Sect. 7 provides the discussion and managerial implications
of the study.
2 Literature Review
Most of the recent literature about the relationship between Lean and Green
suggests that Lean has positive effects on the environmental performance of firms.
More precisely, the overwhelming majority of literature sustains that both Lean
and environmental performance activities have a waste reduction focus. On one
hand Lean manufacturing seeks the reduction of non-value-added activities and
the improvement of efficiency (Womack and Jones 1996). On the other hand,
Sustainability and Green manufacturing have an environmental and ecologist point
of view: banish waste in order to achieve pollution and emissions prevention as it is
mentioned in one of the three pillars of the Triple Bottom Line (3BL). In particular,
authors such as Garza-Reyes et al. (2018), Helleno et al. (2017), Piercy and Rich
(2015), Chiarini (2014) and King and Lenox (2001) suggest that the application
of some practices composing the Lean transformation path go beyond economic
results and Lean waste (muda) reduction: these techniques additionally enable the
improvement of various environmental measures.
However, in applying Lean techniques some blind spots may appear during
their implementation. This means that in addition to the Lean waste reduction
and continuous improvement concepts, which frequently produce implicit envi-
ronmental performance, there are further “hidden” opportunities to achieve this
purpose (EPA 2003). Moreover, some practices as suppliers reduction, production
process improvements and facility downsizing which imply pollution prevention
can be enclosed in a Lean thinking view even if they are traditionally framed in the
environmental management field.
Nevertheless, not all authors agree that there are only positive relationships
between Lean production practices and environmental performance. Some scholars
defend that Lean may have both positive and negative environmental effects; it
depends on the practices applied and the indicators measured. As was stated for
example by Carvalho et al. (2017), Dües et al. (2013), Rothenberg et al. (2001)
and Simons and Mason (2003), Lean and Green production are in some cases
divergent. Among the causes of this contrast, some authors suggest that the search
for greater levels of productivity and efficiency is not consistent with Sustainable
manufacturing. Additionally, business growth generally implies more production,
transportation, deliveries and stock; these additional activities mean extra wastes
in the normal functioning of the company. For example, integration with suppliers
via Kanban (Monden 1983) requires more frequent deliveries and therefore greater
fuel consumption for transport. An additional point of reflection is that the financial
savings gained by environmental management techniques are not always significant
or even non-existent (King and Lenox 2001).
A small part of the literature somehow rejects this positive relationship between
the two paradigms. Cusumano (1994) affirms that Lean has the limit of producing
increased negative product impacts and may intensify the emissions produced by just
in time and Kanban. Moreover, Venkat and Wakeland (2006) similarly suggest that
carbon dioxide levels can increase after Lean transformation and propose that Lean
supply chains are not necessarily Green, remarking the distance as main impediment
to environmental performance.
The following subsection carries out a review of previous published research
aimed at learning more about the relationship between Lean and environmental
performance, find common points, divergences and good practices. We focus our
attention on the relationships between the Lean practice bundles (Shah and Ward
2003) and environmental performance.
2.1 Relationships Between Lean Practice Bundles

and Environmental Performance
The purpose of this subsection is to understand which of the typical groups of Lean
practices are most closely related to Green production. The Lean paradigm is a multi-
dimensional concept that is characterized by several practices aimed to accomplish
the objectives of “doing more with less” and increasing the value delivered to the
customer. The important work developed by Shah and Ward in 2003 developed a
model that categorizes these practices into four bundles. Other works have proposed
similar classifications, but we used this to compare the company’s environmental
effects because of its importance in operations management literature and its internal
consistency between practices:
• Just In Time (JIT): quick changeover techniques i.e. single minute of exchange of
die (SMED), pull/Kanban systems, flow layout, production levelling (heijunka),
value stream mapping (VSM) and Kanban deliveries.
• Total Quality Management (TQM): standard work, kaizen events, hoshin kanri
(A3), visual management, spaghetti chart, plan-do-check-act (PDCA), 5S and free
pass.
• Total Preventive Maintenance (TPM): preventive and autonomous maintenance.
• Human Resource Management (HRM): autonomous working groups and multi-

functional workers.
In the published literature on this topic, the JIT methods are the most used and
evaluated in order to study their relationships with environmental performance, fol-
lowed by the practices comprised in the TQM bundle. Conversely, the HRM and
TPM practices are the fewer cited and studied in literature.
More in detail, JIT seems to be one of the most positive bundles for the great major-
ity of scholars. This bundle includes the VSM tool, which is typically used by Lean
practitioners to see environmental wastes in processes (EPA 2007; Gustashaw and
Hall 2008; Simons and Mason 2003). In the same way, Hajmohammad et al. (2013),
Piercy and Rich (2015) and Wiese et al. (2015) suggest that some practices related
with the supplier relation (i.e. pull, Kanban deliveries) provide support to environ-
mental actions and therefore leading firms to superior environmental performance.
Similarly, Lean practices included in TQM bundle enhance environmental perfor-
mance according to a great number of academics. Kaizen is considered in literature
an important mediator to achieve environmental performance (Hong et al. 2012) and
through continuous improvement teams, kaizen enhances mass and energy flows
in manufacturing environments (Pampanelli et al. 2014). In addition, kaizen helps
identifying wastes and how to eliminate them along the value stream (Chapman and
Green 2010). Also, 5S is considered a good starting point for learning how to identify
and eliminate waste (Taubitz 2010). Together with productivity increase and defects
reduction this methodology contributes to the environmental performance (Miller
et al. 2010; Vais et al. 2006).
With less importance in literature but with remarkable positive results, the HRM
bundle, by the means of practices such as employee training (Sobral et al. 2013)
and people commitment techniques, improves Lean success, driving firms towards
sustainable operations and facilitating the prevention of failures during the production
process that might lead to rework or unnecessary resources usage (Rothenberg et al.
2001; Wong and Wong 2014).
Lastly, as regards the possible positive effects of the TPM bundle on environmen-
tal performance, authors such as Garza Reyes et al. (2018), Cherrafi et al. (2017),
Chiarini (2014) and Fliedner (2008) highlight that preventive and proactive mainte-
nance are environmental improvement facilitators and can reduce numerous impacts
associated with machinery, such as air emissions and pollution and oil leakage; and
additionally, the TPM practices and tools eliminate process failures that generate
rework, scraps and unnecessary resource consumption.
On the other hand, for some authors, the JIT practices seem to be the most
problematic since, for example, small and frequent batches deliveries produce
additional wastes and emissions to manage. In this sense, authors consider just in
time as the principal area where Lean and Green cannot be combined (Cusumano
1994; Dües et al. 2013; Zhu and Sarkis 2004). Other scholars affirm that there
may exist positive and negative effects at the same time such as the reduction of
inventories versus the need of extra packaging (Corbett and Wassenhove 1993).
In addition, as regards supply chain management, some authors suggest that the
practices which are included in the JIT bundle can conflict with environmental
interests as distances increase along international supply chain (Simons and Mason
2003; Venkat and Wakeland 2006) and can produce mixed positive and negative
effects (Carvalho et al. 2017; Mollenkopf et al. 2010).
Finally, Rothenberg et al. (2001) explain that goals like superior quality of prod-
ucts may lead to greater consumptions of raw materials to achieve the desired quality
levels. In other words, TQM practices cannot support the search of superior environ-
mental performance.
The evidence coming from the literature showed that the link between Lean prac-
tices and environmental indicators is not univocally defined. In order to contribute
to the on-going debate, we have analyzed in detail three case studies related to com-
panies that have started a Lean transformation journey. The aim of this empirical
research is to observe the degree of implementation of various Lean practices and
their impact on the environmental performance of firms. In the next paragraph, we
first present the research methodology employed.
3 Methodology
With the purpose of achieving solid results so that this study may contribute to new
scientific knowledge, this section discusses the research methodology employed.
The studies about the impact of Lean practices on environmental performance
measures have not yet reached maturity, so we have decided to adopt the methodology
of multiple case studies, looking in depth at 3 Lean companies from the Italian
manufacturing industry for a period of at least 5 years from the beginning of the Lean
transformation process (t0 ), see Fig. 1. The aim was to measure the performance of
the environmental indicators in these 5 years deriving from the implementation of
various Lean practices.
The reason why we cover 5 years in our analysis is because the Lean transformation
process represents a change of firm’s strategy which usually lasts more than a year
(Achanga et al. 2006; Porter 1985) and the impact of Lean on operations is not
completely visible immediately after its implementation.
Fig. 1 Time span of

research
3.1 Case Selection Criteria
To develop the empirical part of this research, a sample of 3 companies was chosen
following some strict criteria. Each of these criteria has been carefully identified and
verified. Consequently, the 3 companies studied respect the following parameters:
• are based in Italy and, in particular, located the northeast area, historically
characterized of a large number of industrial companies,
• are profiled in section C of the European NACE code corresponding to
manufacturing activities,
• are engaged in Lean transformation programs for a minimum of 5 years,
• show evident concern for their environmental impact and measure yearly
environmental indicators at least from the starting year of the Lean transformation
process,
• have a Lean Promotion Office and an Environmental and Safety Office.
From a practical point of view, we made sure we would have the opportunity
to observe processes, practices, operational and environmental data and have a full
willingness of the company to view their documents and historical data.
3.2 Theoretical Framework
A theoretical framework is proposed in Fig. 2 in order to schematize the empirical

study of the influence of Lean practices on environmental performance in an industrial
context.
As shown in Fig. 2, seventeen Lean practices were selected. As described in
preceding Sect. 2.1, in order to identify these practices, the model proposed by
Shah and Ward (2003) was adopted along with other important works in the Lean
production literature stream (Shah and Ward 2007; Panizzolo 1998; Flynn et al.
1995; Chan et al. 1990; Biazzo and Panizzolo 2017). We wanted not only to continue
studying the preliminary relationships seen in the literature review, but also to expand
the study with more practices that are currently used in the industry.
Related to the Green production paradigm, the theoretical framework illustrates
a number of categories (EPA 2007) to evaluate the influence of the predefined Lean
practices on companies’ environmental performance. These categories might contain
a large number of different measures, on the assumption that they measure the scope
of the category. In Table 1 for each category a brief description of the content is given,
these categories are based on the framework proposed by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA 2007). Moreover, for the aims of this study we considered
interesting to add an extra category named “hazardous waste”.
Not all categories of environmental measures are of interest to all companies since
they measure the parameters that most affect their activity. Therefore, we will finally
include in the empirical research those that companies made available for our study.
Fig. 2 Theoretical framework used in this study
3.3 Data Collection
The data collection was mainly performed through semi-structured interviews. To

develop the protocol, we used first the information obtained on the literature review
settled before and the theoretical framework developed in Fig. 2. A set of semi-
structured questions was devised into a questionnaire and was used as a structured
interview protocol in order to collect the data of interest for this research. In this sub-
section, we describe the process of collecting and processing the evidences obtained
(Fig. 3).
The first step consisted in giving in advance by email some evidence about the
research. This was done to support the research informing the participants before the
meeting about which data will be useful for the development of the interviews and
identify possible problems of understanding of the questions and solve them before
they arise.
In the second step, we presented to each interviewee the main concepts of Lean
production and environmental performance. We emphasized what we understand
by Lean practices and environmental measures showing their main definitions and
making clear once more the objectives of the research.
In the third stage, we carried out the interviews and the collection of evidences with
the support of the questionnaire. All the interviews took place on-site. The questions
were both closed and open-ended and the respondent was guided to reply in the order
specified: first, demographic questions for categorization; second, the Lean practice’s
implementation part; third, the section about environmental measures and their per-
formance over time; and finally, the section regarding the relationships between Lean
Table 1 Basic environmental measures adapted from “The Lean & Environment Toolkit” (EPA
2007)
Category Measure Definition
Input A. Energy use Any source providing usable power or
consuming electricity: transportation
and non-transportation sources
B. Land use Land covered by buildings, parking
lots, and other impervious surfaces.
Land/habitat conservation
C. Materials use Materials used (total or specific),
packaging, proportion of input
materials that were recovered
D. Toxic/hazardous chemicals use Use of hazardous and toxic chemicals
that are regulated or are otherwise
concern
E. Water use Incoming raw water, from outside
sources (municipal water supply or
wells), used for operations, facility
use, and grounds maintenance
Output F. Air emissions The release of air toxics, carbon
monoxide, volatile organic
compounds, nitrogen oxides, ozone,
particulate matter and fine particulate
matter, sulfur dioxide and greenhouse
gases including carbon dioxide
G. Water pollution Quantity of pollutant in wastewater
that is discharged to water source
H. Solid waste Wastes (liquid or solid) other than
RCRA hazardous wastes
I. Hazardous waste Waste with properties that make it
dangerous or capable of having a
harmful effect on human health or the
environment
J. Environmental impact of the Expected lifetime energy and water
product throughout the entire life use, wastes (to air, water and land)
cycle from product use and disposal or
recovery
practices and environmental measures. At the same time was granted the freedom
to deepen the subject of the answer to each question providing elements, data and
demonstrations that the respondent considered valuable. However, the same interview
protocol was used at each meeting to avoid bias on the interviewer’s part. Interviews
were carried out to provide a deeper view of which Lean practices the companies
implemented and how the influence on their environmental performance measures
occurred. While managers and practitioners were interviewed, their responses were
compared with the archival data furnished. In summary, the information gathered
Fig. 3 Steps followed for the development of the case studies
in this stage was mostly interviewees’ answers, supported by our observation and
archival documents provided by them.
In the fourth step, the evidences and relationships that emerged during the inter-
view were presented to the interviewees, discussed with them and finally approved
in a definitive way.
After the interviews, the information and data were processed in our university
department. If needed, further follow-up questions were done by phone or were sent
by e-mail. In all cases the companies’ anonymity was kept in accordance with the
general request for confidentiality. This was the last stage of the data collection.
For each company we arranged three half-day meetings (4 h):
• The first, to introduce the research and collect the data about the Lean implemen-
tation.
• The second, to know the environmental performance of the company and its
evolution.
• The third, to collect the evidences about the relationships between practices and
measures; ending up with a discussion and conclusion of the evidences.
The meetings were made on-site and in presence of the operations and Lean
managers and the environmental and security officers.
4 Sample Description
A sample of three companies was selected for this study. In Table 2 we summarize
the main demographic data of these firms.
In the next subsections we describe the principal characteristics of each company
under study.
Table 2 Main data of the companies considered
Case study Sector (EU-NACE Location Size Turnover (millions of Starting year of the Person interviewed
code) (employees) euros) lean transformation
Company A Manufacture of metal Vicenza 58 (2017) 18,884 (2017) 2013 (1) Lean manager,
forming machinery and (2) Head of the
machine tools (2480) environmental and
security service
Company B Manufacture of Padova 46 (2016) 15,014 (2016) 2010 (1) Kaizen promotion
agricultural and officer,
forestry machinery (2) Safety and
(2830) environment
officer
The Effect of Lean Practices on Environmental Performance …
Company C Manufacture of engines Padova 373 (2017) 71,700 (2017) 2013 (1) Production system
and turbines, except coordinator,
aircraft, vehicle and (2) Prevention and
cycle engines (2811) security manager
235
4.1 Overview of Company A
Company A is an interesting industrial firm that has been working in the design and
production of bread processing machines for over 50 years. The company’s beliefs
are based on the ancient traditions and skills of the craftsman combined with modern
technologies and innovation. The real mission is to achieve simultaneously, customer
satisfaction and high quality products so that customers can enjoy a healthy, balanced
and fair diet, as well as a tailor-made service that accompanies them step by step.
In 2010 the history of Company A underwent a turning point aimed to encourage
and research innovation. The main pillars of this innovative view were to offer simple
products with excellent quality and at the same time guaranteeing energy saving and
respect for the environment.
In 2013 the firm starts its Lean transformation with the creation of the first kaizen
team which operates within the production department. At the completion of this
first kaizen event, the project was extended to all areas of the company. Thus, during
these last years the renovation involved four aspects: the first was the employees in
terms of change, learning and culture; the second was the splitting of the production
plant in two areas: one for the production of medium-high volume machines and the
other for low-volume products; the third was the establishment of flexible production
lines; and finally, the fourth consisted in the generation of the maximum value to the
customer.
Another important objective pursued by the company in addition to quality and
efficiency is the respect for the environment, which not only applies to its production
processes but also targets its products. Company A offers products with reduced
energy consumptions that constitute an important competitive advantage for the firm.
Currently, Company A is established in the Vicenza province (Italy) with about 60
employees that work in a plant of about 12,000 m2 . The industrial complex includes
all the areas of the value chain such as production, administration and commercial
departments.
4.2 Overview of Company B
Located in the Italian province of Padova, this firm is a very important company
producing small and medium capacity milling plants. More precisely, it is engaged
in the design, manufacture and marketing of agricultural machinery and processing
cereals. The firm is inspired by traditional values and the passion of caring about
nature and living the countryside. Moreover, by using a policy of continuous invest-
ment in technology and human resources, and assisting the customer with the most
up-to-date and timely services, Company B is strongly projected towards the future.
The development of Company B began in 1983 when its main activity consisted
in the production of mills for cereals. Later on, the 90s represented a fundamental
milestone for the agricultural machinery sector as, in order to satisfy the various
needs of the customers, the already wide range of spreader machines for fertilizing
and sowing was increased with new models.
In those years, after some changes in management, the company experienced a
constant growth trend that led in 2002 to the unification of production processes in
the modern plant of Padova. In addition, the pace of work required the enlargement
of the production plant, reaching the current 30,000 m2 of covered area between
headquarters, offices and production in the Padova’s factory.
After the start in 2010 of the Lean transformation process with the implementation
of various Lean production techniques and the establishment of the kaizen office, the
firm can now guarantee its customers greater quality and be competitive at the same
time. The plant starts to achieve after the Lean implementation remarkable results.
Lastly, in relation to the environment, Company B takes care about its impact all
along the value chain, from the design till the end of life of its products. The firm
carefully chooses the materials, lubricants and paints that will be used in the pro-
duction processes. In addition, the use of resistant materials guarantees an extensive
products’ life and, at the end of the machines’ life cycle, these can be disposed easily
and in compliance with the strictest environmental waste disposal regulations.
4.3 Overview of Company C
Company C is a leading Italian company in the mechanical transmission industry.

It designs and produces innovative and high-quality products that significantly
contribute to improve the mobility of people and goods. The firm provides solutions
for sea transportation and offers innovative technology for many uses in this field.
Moreover, the firm offers customers high-added value through a high level of
technology, quality and service.
The story of Company C began in 1929 when the company started the production
of gears and precision parts for motorcycles. After a few decades, in the seventies
the firm entered in the marine sector with the production, in 1975, of its first marine
transmission.
During 1995, the firm takes important strategic decisions which radically changes
its production mix: the terrestrial sector was abandoned (transmissions for lift trucks,
buses and metros, and for railway vehicles) to focus exclusively on the marine sector,
which has become the real core business.
In 2011 the plant located in Padova joined an important international group. After
the fusion, Company B provides complete propulsion systems and components for
all types of vessels such as motor yachts, military vessels, high-speed ferries and
commercial vessels.
The company is very committed to Sustainability and efficiency in order to guar-
antee its economic and financial independence. According to the Lean principles,
since 2013 Company B has an agile organizational structure that constitutes the basis
for its continuous improvement philosophy.
The plant under study is located in a municipality of the province of Padova

and engages currently 373 employees. The site covers an area of 75,000 m2 , of
which 25,000 are indoors. The production structure is divided into 3 separate areas:
mechanical machining, heat treatments and assembly.
5 Within-Case Analysis
This section exposes the evidences emerged from the three case studies. In particular,
describes in detail the main Lean transformation activities involved, synthetizes their
environmental data and the impact of the Lean practices on Green performance for
each company.
5.1 Analysis of Company A (2013–2017)
Lean Practices in Company A

At the end of 2013, Company A launched its Lean transformation process with
the arrangement of its first kaizen event when the volume of sales and turnover
were decreasing due to the economic crisis. This created the need to review the
organization of the company with the aim of recovering margins and revenues and
becoming leaner to be more competitive. Consequently, using the kaizen technique
and enrolling both managers and employees, the company gradually began to look
at the flow of value within the factory, to identify muda and organize the processes
according to the Lean logics; all this by developing the ability to work in a team on
specific issues.
The first step was the training of the kaizen-working group for the improvement
project of the factory: it was decided to develop closer collaborations between the
operations department with the purchasing office, and between the engineering and
technical office. In the kaizen events it was decided to develop and apply the VSM
technique, spaghetti chart and was designed the “concept layout” of the company
for the next years. Starting from this first event, the kaizen methodology has been
applied throughout the company.
Afterwards, Company A started to apply the VSM tool with the aim of define the
current state of the production process starting from the customer and going back
till the suppliers and trace carefully a visual scheme of the flow of materials and
information for each activity. To obtain this information the kaizen group developed
the so-called “Gemba walk” beginning from the expeditions and going back up the
flow, using paper and pencil in order to collect all the useful information about the
process. In this manner, the stages of waiting materials, the flows of material within
the plant and the activities carried out on the product were highlighted.
The mapping of the processes showed that the time of accomplishment of every
single phase was rather low, but the total time between the arrival of the raw materials
and the delivery of the finished product to the customer was significantly high,
equal to three working days. The main causes of this situation were summarized
in two factors: the excessive intermediate buffers between the production phases
and the high number of finished product inventories in the shipping department that
constituted a bottleneck. Some negative consequences of the high Work In Progress
(WIP) were also unveiled such as waste of space, an increase beyond the necessary of
material handling, a greater risk of damage and finally an unreliable delivery system.
The spaghetti chart was used in the company during process mapping, specifically
in the assembly process, with the goal of measuring all the movements performed by
the operator while assembling the machine within the cell. In Company A, before the
Lean transformation, the assembly took place in independent production cells. This
type of organization involved an area in the middle of the plant where the assembly
happened and an area around it with shelves where the necessary parts were stored
in order to assembly. Whenever the operator finished an operation he had to move
towards the shelves to pick up the next lot and return towards the machine to perform
the new operation. This produced excessive movement and therefore a waste of
operator time. One of the analysis conducted showed that the operator made around
1,200 steps that multiplied by 0.8 meters of average stride length required around
1 km of total distance to be walked for the assembly of one product.
The excellent results reached applying kaizen led to change the way assembly
was carried out: the goal at this point was the transition from the independent cells
system to a flow line divided into different phases or levels. To achieve this, the basic
concepts of flow layout and production levelling (heijunka) were used to lead the
transformation. The final aim of the idea was to build a zero-waste assembly line,
eliminating all the muda from assembly and reach a cycle time that approximates
the ideal cycle time. The first wastes eliminated were those related to movement,
placing upstream of the assembly line a supermarket with the function of a small
buffer of components, then an operator or “picker” provides the materials needed for
assembly to the various stages along the lines.
With the new design of the line, the machine is no longer assembled in one phase
and the operator does not take every single component necessary from the shelves
anymore, but it is produced according to a continuous flow formed by different
phases and all the useful materials for the assembly are supplied to them by the
picker. Producing in a continuous flow means making one product at a time, with
each of them passing immediately from one phase of the process to another, without
intermediate staging. In this perspective, the spaghetti diagram no longer makes any
sense, as the material movements are ideally insignificant.
After the definition of the layout of the plant, the Kanban method for the different
types of components and the Kanban deliveries with those suppliers which are placed
near the factory and make frequent deliveries were adopted by Company A. This
process requires that when the picker takes the last piece of a purchased part, a
purchase order is created by SAP. The supplier receives the notification, delivers the
component in the quantity and quality established on a free pass logic, based on the
agreed lead time and on the appropriate container which is placed directly in its place
in the plant. At the time of delivery, an exchange of the ordered code takes place.
Once the empty container of the product has been collected, it is the supplier’s duty
to fill it as soon as possible. This way the full container will be ready for delivery
when necessary. Visual management and coloured signals are used to complete this
process.
Depending on the type of supplier, agreements were made on lots, transport,
containers and other topics necessary to start the new order system. For example,
the supplier undertakes to shorten the delivery lead time and Company A to notify
it in advance if the production of a certain type of product is about to finish, thus
establishing a compensation system. Furthermore, all the containers and shelves have
been standardized and have been supplied by the firm to each of its suppliers.
Afterwards, to support the daily kaizen activities carried out, the Deming cycle
or PDCA was applied. In the first kaizen meetings were discussed problems that
for years had only been exposed and never formalized and therefore never solved
because no one faced them. After a while, in addition to the daily problems, numerous
improvement proposals came directly from a large part of the staff, who realizing
how the PDCA worked, became much more collaborative in proposing solutions and
improvements and in getting involved in it.
Taking advantage of the benefits of the production levelling and the creation of
the continuous flow within the factory it was then decided to implement the 5S and
to standardize activities as further methods to obtain a more efficient, cleaner and
tidier workplace.
Finally, it is worth noting that during this time the firm has applied in a few work-
places practices such as job enlargement and job enrichment but with less success
since they are among the least used Lean practices. Even with TPM they have done
only some testing.
The degree of implementation of the various Lean practices in Company A is
summarized in Fig. 4, measuring in a 1–5 scale whether the practice: (1) is not
known by the company, (2) is known but not implemented, (3) was tested but not
implemented, (4) is implemented but it is among those less used and (5) is among
those that the firm uses regularly.
Impact of Lean on the Environmental Performance of Company A
After describing the Lean transformation process of Company A, we focus our atten-
tion on the description of its effects on the environmental measures of the company
using data provided by interviewees.
First, using Kanban and following the pull logic it was possible to eliminate a big
part of the area dedicated just to the storage of various types of surplus materials. In
addition, the adjacent production area was reduced significantly. As a result of this,
the company went from producing in a space of over 10,000 m2 to one of just over
7,000 m2 with about 3,000 m2 of free space, 35%, now available for possible future
applications and investments and results in a better use of the industrial land.
The change of the company towards a pull system was the main but not the only
responsible Lean practice of the shop-floor reduction and the elimination of the
Fig. 4 Lean profile of Company A
storage. Were also decisive other transformations such as the transition to a flow
line production process, the improvement proposals obtained from the kaizen events
and the establishment of a tidy and clean workplace according to the 5S rules, for
example, the signalling of spaces or zoning.
These five years of changes made possible a better use of land and opened the
possibility for future projects to facilitate more production in less space that is one
of the major milestones to preserve the environment.
After 2013, the company has experienced a continuous and remarkable reduction
of the materials consumption used by production. The implementation of regular
kaizen events was useful to target problems right away to try to eliminate them as
quickly as possible. A large part of these problems was associated with the produc-
tion process and were identified by the operators; their resolution usually involved
easy changes, movements of machinery and adaptations to achieve at the end, more
efficiency and less use of materials.
In addition, mapping the value stream (VSM) was determining to identify the real
flow of materials and afterwards to eliminate the elevated Work In Progress (WIP)
and the high waiting times within the process, as a consequence of them the company
had several material movements, handling of products and a greater risk of damage
that implied reworks and more material needs for replacing damaged WIP, causing
waste.
At the most operational level the firm, applying standard work techniques and the
5S rules, achieved the standardization of the activities made by the working force,
this contributed to reduce rework and to achieve the consumption of materials only
in the necessary quantities required for production. This homogenous and organized
way to do activities also permits the reduction of the use of materials.
Moreover, the strategic integration of suppliers in the company’s supply chain has
enabled the elimination of quality control in acceptance (free pass): if a defective
piece is purchased, it is directly detected during assembly. This immediately activates
an alarm and it is reported to the kaizen team, according to the “autonomation” logic
(jidoka). Afterwards, thanks to the daily activities of continuous improvement, the
teams try to understand the causes of the problem and if necessary they go and
verify the supplier’s process with the aim of eliminating the root causes of defects.
In this way the company reached lower levels of defects enabling less materials
consumption, rework and waste.
Energy consumption levels of the production plant have been also decreasing
over the years since the beginning of the Lean transformation. The benefits of the
reorganization of the layout and the levelling of the production line were crucial
for energy savings achieved (i.e. elimination of the warehouse, reduction of material
movements, less waiting). In addition, the daily improvements obtained in the kaizen
events and the use of visual management, for example, “to turn off a machine when
is not in use”, made small day-to-day improvements which all together made a
significant effect.
On the contrary, these positive effects regarding energy use in the plant were
partially offset by the use of the Kanban deliveries. With this Lean practice the
dimensions of the batches have been reduced, but the delivery frequency was also
increased producing more material movements inside the company which imply
higher energy consumptions. To solve this problem that is not only an environmental
one but also regards the increase in transporting costs, the firm has implemented
a policy for the reduction of suppliers. Moreover, in the future the firm plans to
implement the so-called “milk run”. This project aims to find the right trade-off
between storage costs and transport costs, finding the optimal number of withdrawals
to minimize the total cost and being economically and ecologically sustainable as
far as possible.
The environmental results of Company A can be summarized as in Table 3. This
table shows the environmental indicators measured (or not) by the company and for
each one the performance over 5 years (improved, not improved or not changed).
Company A used environmental measures related only to the first three classes:
energy use, land use and materials use. For all three types of indicators the participants
reported a largely reduction in the 5 years under investigation. This means that even
if a negative effect of Kanban was identified during the study, the positive effects of
other practices counter this issue. Please note that all the values of the environmental
indicators have been normalized with respect to the company’s turnover measured
in real and constant prices.
Table 3 Environmental
Category Measure Performance over
performance of Company A
5 years
Input A. Energy use Improved
B. Land use Improved
C. Materials use Improved
D. Toxic/hazardous Not measured
chemicals use
E. Water use Not measured
Output F. Air emissions Not measured
G. Water pollution Not measured
H. Solid waste Not measured
I. Hazardous waste Not measured
J. Environmental Not measured
impact of the
product throughout
the entire life cycle
Finally, observing Table 3 it emerges that for most of the environmental categories,
Company A does not measure any indicators.
5.2 Analysis of Company B (2010–2015)
Lean Practices in Company B

Since the start of the Lean transformation path in 2010, the company has been using
a mixed pull system. This solution involves the use of the supermarket for most of
the parts used in the production and production “made-to-order” for the rest (a small
part) of the components. The idea is to supply the lines using mainly a supermarket
and using internal Kanban. Moreover, big and/or expensive parts are managed on-
demand, supplying the lines only when these are needed. The advantages brought
by the Kanban system were, among others, the simplification of the production
processes. This leaded to reduce the use of the material requirements planning (MRP)
tool and to improve the ability to respond to changes in demand.
As regards the layout, the firm adopted the solution of a “flow layout”: a single
assembly line shared by all the different model of machines. The shift from unbal-
anced cells to a continuous flow of production and an effective design of all the parts
involved, using Kanban techniques, have allowed to:
• Reduce non-value-added activities and the assembly time.
• Respect considerably the takt time.
• Increase productivity and flexibility to changes in demand.
• Reduce the stock substantially.
• Eliminate overtime hours.
Afterwards, the SMED technique was applied to sustain the flow layout and the
reduction of the set-up times. In this context, some of the actions taken were:
• Design of quick fastening and coupling devices to eliminate screws or other com-
plex systems to be managed.
• Avoidance of the transport of disassembled or semi-finished parts from one part
of the establishment to another during shutdown.
• Placement of a tool trolley near every machine.
Subsequently, all internal and external flows of the plant were drawn using the
value stream mapping method. With the data obtained from the application of this
methodology, various improvement projects were developed with the aim of achiev-
ing the objectives that meet the needs of the final customer as much as possible. For
example, from the observation of the VSM it was possible to notice the presence
of “transportation muda”. Some parts start their “journey” from the supplier ware-
house, then are transported to Company B’s warehouse, hence are addressed to a
subcontractor that carries out some external processing and, finally, they return to
Company B where the painting and assembly operations are carried out. This was
an important observation to keep in mind when drafting the future state map.
From the current state map, it was also possible to comprehend the times neces-
sary for carrying out the various manufacturing processes and also the number of
workers employed in the activities. Consequently, the VSM tool was found to be of
fundamental importance in order to be able to visualize, in a single sheet, critical
information and therefore have a general picture of the situation.
Furthermore, for Company B was crucial to develop a “kaizen approach” that
makes it possible to progress step by step towards long-term objectives, continuously
adapting to the changing conditions of the competitive environment. In this case, the
firm carries out training of employees through learning paths, kaizen events, and
workshops for the assimilation of Lean techniques. From the kaizen events was born
the idea of implementing the 5S and PDCA rules together with weekly audits in the
processes to guarantee the continuous improvement in practice. Additionally, during
the kaizen events, the use of the spaghetti chart was recommended to calculate the
number and length of movements within the factory of the employees. This had never
been done before.
The standardization of the operations was another priority for Company B. The
actual times that the workers employed in performing their activities were collected
and examined using time and motion methods. Furthermore, these times are contin-
ually reviewed and corrected according to the kaizen approach.
In summary, the changes described above follow the principles of the Lean phi-
losophy. However the firm declares the difficulty to implement some of the practices
currently used since they comprise changing the organization culture, which is a dif-
ficult and time-consuming task. Other practices that are not actually implemented are
free pass and Kanban deliveries, since these requires a strong collaboration with sup-
pliers. Consequently, Company B is the firm with less Lean practices implemented
within our case studies using only 9 practices out of the 17 under study. Its Lean
profile is outlined in Fig. 5.
Fig. 5 Lean profile of Company B
Impact of Lean on the Environmental Performance of Company B

Besides the changes and improvements in the manufacturing processes and within
the production plant, the implementation of Lean also affects the environmental
performance of Company B.
Among all the advantages deriving from the use of Kanban, the company observed
a 90% stock reduction and consequently a remarkable reduction in the use of pack-
aging and energy. This was supported by a strict control of the stock under FIFO
(first in first out) rules and a regular use of reusable packaging like plastic pallets
with standard dimensions which facilitated the movements of the products within
the plant. Moreover, other improvements were observed using a pull philosophy in
the plant:
• Reduction of worker movements with the introduction of the new picking Kanban-
based structures. Now, supplying the workplace it is much more efficient and com-
fortable instead of wasting time and energy going and coming from the warehouse
every time a piece is needed.
• Elimination of waiting times and the unnecessary energy involved. This improve-
ment derives from the other positive effects of pull.
The establishment of kaizen events, 5S and PDCA and their weekly audits in the
workplace sustain the continuous improvement approach and made possible the easy
identification and reduction of material waste and facilitate more efficiency in the
workstation. More specifically, after introducing the 5S philosophy, a weekly plan
for checking the maintenance status of each workplace was developed. The plan
settles that once a week the employees of a specific area must stop for sufficient time
to conduct, together with the Kaizen Promotion Office, an analysis of the conditions
of the entire work area. In order to adopt a standard measurement, a checklist was
devised and, through a list of questions the management is allowed to evaluate, from
time to time, the commitment to apply the principles suggested by 5S. In addition to
these practices, VSM was also useful to identify the point of use of raw materials and
their flows, the flows of components in and out of the plant and internal and external
processes and enable further reductions in consumptions.
Furthermore, the use of pull and flow layout in the painting process meant painting
more pieces in each cycle, therefore leading to a dramatic reduction in the use of
water and materials of the plant. The painting process had never been done in this way
because a single-piece was painted in each cycle without a well-organized sequence
of lots defined from the beginning. Since each type of material has its characteristics,
the painting depends on them and for this reason the loading of homogeneous material
for painting is rigorous in order not to have to change painting features frequently,
which means, to have further substantial wastes of time, materials and energy, which
was no longer allowed for Company B.
In general, these practices produced a positive impact in the operations; reducing
considerably the assembly lead time (about 30%) and the movements within the plant
(about 60%), making clear energy savings. Some of these improvements were also
enabled by the application of SMED: using quick fastening devices many set-ups
were shortened (energy consumption reductions). Moreover, many assembly errors
were avoided (materials and waste reductions), as the parts to be managed are simpler.
Finally, the number of material movements in the plant was significantly reduced,
avoiding extra electricity consumptions.
It is remarkable that even if these Lean practices made great improvements in
the energy consumptions of the company, this measure has been constant during the
long-term period analyzed. Research participants declare that some of the activities
like welding are very costly in terms of energy and gas use. Company B is trying to
find a solution to this issue in order to decide whether make these parts or buy them.
Till now, due to the scale of the production of these parts, it is more convenient to
make them internally.
Additionally, the company declares that they have made some trials with Kanban
deliveries. They noted that the movements derived from the deliveries was increased,
this is a source of energy waste, maybe insignificant, within the production plant.
Nevertheless, the company is aware of this issue and is looking for new solutions.
To sum up, the application of these typical Lean tools has contributed to the
reduction of the environmental impact of the firm. As illustrated in Table 4, the
performance of Company B
5 years
Input A. Energy use Not changed
B. Land use Not measured
C. Materials use Improved
chemicals use
E. Water use Improved
Output F. Air emissions Not measured
H. Solid waste Improved
impact of the
product throughout
use of materials and water and the solid waste generated were reduced. That is not
the case of the energy consumed by Company B, which remains constant. Finally,
observing Table 4 it emerges that for half of the environmental categories, company
B does not measure any indicators.
5.3 Analysis of Company C (2013–2017)
Lean Practices in Company C

After the start of the Lean transformation in 2013, the concepts of Lean thinking
applied by the Italian plant have been operationalized through the so-called “zero
defects” project.
Following the Lean principles, the kaizen technique was applied in Company C
to seek continuous improvement. In this context, the firm introduced the “Kaizen
Journal”, which is used for the collection of problems and related corrective and
improvement actions. Two relevant ideas proposed were, for example, the imple-
mentation of the so-called “Low Cost Intelligent Automation” for material handling
and the use of quick die change methods to accelerate the set-up. The figure of project
manager was established for every improvement project launched in order to assure
the correct implementation of the ideas suggested. In addition, a clear deadline for
each idea implementation was also defined in order to better control the scheduling
of the project.
In Company C regular kaizen events are conducted on the main Lean techniques
to be applied, i.e. flow layout, 5S and TPM. During these meetings, solutions for the
daily problems at the workplace were exposed and shared between the participants.
The re-organization into a flow layout assembly line began in 2013 and led to the
reduction of the number of lines from 12 to the current 7. The project was a very
important step in the process of plant reconfiguration according to Lean principles
and implied the application of practices such as Kanban deliveries, free pass and the
use of the spaghetti chart to study the movements of materials and workers among
the lines. Applying this latter practice, the company discovered, for example, that
many components were stocked far from the locations where they are actually used.
This entailed long walks of the worker to pick up what is needed, which causes
waste of assembly time. After the line reconfiguration, this problem was reduced
significantly.
Moreover, the 5S workshops were aimed to instruct participants to create and
maintain a clean workplace. These workshops took place in two consecutive days:
within the first day, theoretical training about the 5S rules was developed, followed by
an audit aimed to understand the current situation of the working place. On the second
day the 5S process was completed, the new solutions were defined and implemented,
and the final audit was followed by a final discussion among the members of the
team to share improvement ideas and the possible solutions in the immediate future
to everyday issues.
Even the workshop on the TPM practice took place on two consecutive days in
a similar way to the 5S workshop. The first day was dedicated to the theoretical
training, the initial audit and the cleaning of the plant to prepare the second phase of
the project. In the second day it was also carried out a final audit and the completion
of the general plan for maintenance. The company expressed a high interest in TPM,
as they believed that “its implementation will enable great efficiency improvements”,
and this actually happened.
Afterwards, another important technique adopted by Company C is the so-called
“changeover optimization” (i.e. SMED), which aims to reduce the incidence of set-
up time on the loss of time and efficiency through the reorganization of activities and
the elimination of unnecessary operations. After the theoretical explanation of the
approach, a pilot project was conducted in the plant in order to record and analyze a
specific set-up. Recording was essential for the next phase in which the movie was
reviewed several times in order to enable the generation of new solutions and ideas
for discussion between the team members.
During all kaizen events it was repeatedly emphasized that improving does not
mean working faster but working avoiding unnecessary material movements and
operations. At the same time, the company promotes the employees’ involvement
facilitating them to work in interdisciplinary groups. By doing so, the workers are
quicker to find the right solution by analyzing a task from different points of view.
For a long-term success, the company combines two strategies. First, trying
to combine the effects of the introduction of radical innovations with small daily
improvements (kaizen). Secondly, using some useful tools for recognizing and man-
aging new improvement opportunities such as:
• Value stream mapping, which is essential to identify the improvement opportuni-

ties that will be discussed during the kaizen events.
• Plan-do-check-act and hoshin kanri to solve problems in a systematic way and
achieve continuous improvement at the same time.
• Visual management, which allows the company’s situation to be known punctually
and immediately through graphs that summarize the most important indicators and
key success factors.
In summary, Company C has implemented several important Lean practices
and the managers interviewed demonstrated their commitment towards continuous
improvement. These practices and tools are regularly used for waste reduction and
process improvement, and even now, the firm is still making some testing to improve
processes applying practices such as: Kanban, production levelling and standard
work.
Figure 6 shows the degree of implementation of various Lean practices in
Company C.
Fig. 6 Lean profile of Company C

Impact of Lean on the Environmental Performance of Company C

In Company C, before the Lean transformation, the assembly was organized to meet
the requirements of mass production with a large automatic warehouse furnishing the
work areas monthly. However, the assembly department was not supplied directly
and the material was stored in 3 large areas from which the workers had to pick
up the parts and take them to their working station. After that, the products to be
assembled and shipped had to go through 8 different assembly areas with waste of
time and a very high probability of error. Following some changes in management
and various kaizen events, a project to solve this was launched and the flow line was
implemented. In addition, the automatic warehouse was replaced by a supermarket
guided by the rules of Kanban deliveries and free pass.
The results of changing to a flow line were immediately visible, the use of energy
was strongly reduced by the elimination of the automatic warehouse and from the
reduction of movements within the plant by the implementation of the supermar-
ket. Also, the flow line permitted to produce more products with the desired quality
and reducing the number of product rejections and therefore, the quantity of mate-
rial waste generated. The positive effects coming from the flow layout also regards
the reduction of solid waste productions and energy consumption. Lastly, employ-
ees’ innovative ideas were crucial in improving both economic and environmental
performance.
In Company C many kaizen events have been launched in order to support a
true transformation of the company into a real Lean Enterprise. As already said, the
most important projects were related to the implementation of TPM, 5S and PDCA
approaches, that needed a cultural change and were essential for the success of the
entire Lean transformation plan and for enabling continuous improvement.
In addition, workers have been trained to take better care of equipment and machin-
ery and have been sensitized to turn off all the machines when not needed. In par-
ticular, after some kaizen events, it was decided to hibernate the machines between
the end of a working day and the start of the next one, saving in this way hours of
energy. Moreover, in the two days of the weekend the machines were turned off to
avoid substantial waste of energy and air emissions. In this way, the plant obtained a
notable air emissions’ reduction and energy savings from (i) maintenance manage-
ment inspired to TPM principles, (ii) managing appropriately the start and shutdown
of installations and machinery, and (iii) from the use of changeover optimization
(SMED) which reduces high waiting times. In this way the company recognized that
was undergoing benefits in terms of cost, waste and pollution reduction and a better
and longer life of the machines and facility.
The firm underlined the importance of cleaning the machines, workplace and
the plant in general. However, this activity under the rules of 5S and TPM requires
more water causing an adverse effect derived from Lean implementation. However,
the increase in water consumption was also due to some exceptional losses that have
occurred in 2016 and 2017 as reported by the plant manager during the interview.
To conclude, it is worth noting that Company C improved its environmental
measures (with the exception of water use) by the regular use of some of the most
performance of Company C
5 years
Input A. Energy use Improved
B. Land use Not measured
C. Materials use Not measured
chemicals use
E. Water use Worsened
Output F. Air emissions Improved
H. Solid waste Improved
impact of the
product throughout
relevant Lean practices (Table 5). Nevertheless, the company experienced some
negative results during the implementation of Lean. To counter these problems,
the firm remarks the usefulness of control and preventive tools provided by Lean
to identify “at the source” the wastes of the processes and, in particular, the
environmental wastes. As seen for Company B, also Company C for almost half of
the environmental categories does not measure any indicators.
6 Cross-Case Analysis
After the within-case studies analysis, the data collected from the companies were
also compared through a cross-case analysis. The cross-case analysis allows for
examination of key variables, themes and patterns across cases, as well as differences
among cases.
In particular, from this analysis it is possible to identify the Lean practices that
these companies consider most important and their degree of implementation. On the
other hand, this analysis allows us to evaluate the most used environmental measures.
Finally, we are interested in understanding relationships between Lean practices and
Green performances to point out those practices that enable sustainable performance
in the long-term.
Table 6 shows for each of the 17 Lean practices investigated the number of com-
panies that have implemented it at level 5. The Lean practices that are regularly used
by all three companies are: flow layout, VSM, kaizen events, spaghetti chart and
5S. In addition, other practices such as Kanban, visual management, PDCA and free
pass were used by 2 out of 3 of the companies analyzed. The remaining practices
were implemented only by one of the three companies under study.
Table 6 Practices used

Lean practice Number of companies using
within the companies
regularly this practice
Flow layout 3
VSM 3
Kaizen events 3
Spaghetti chart 3
5S 3
Pull/Kanban 2
Visual management 2
PDCA 2
Free pass 2
SMED 1
Production levelling (heijunka) 1
Kanban deliveries 1
Standard work 1
Hoshin kanri – X matrix + A3 1
TPM 1
Autonomous working groups 1
Multifunctional Workers 1
With regards to the environmental measures, Table 7 shows for each category the
number of firms which measure at least one indicator of that category. In this sense
energy use is the only measure that is present in the three cases; other measures such
us materials use, water use and solid waste, were used by 2 out of 3 of the companies
analyzed; land use and air emissions were measured only by 1 of the 3 companies;
finally, for the rest of categories, the firms investigated did not make assessments
during the periods examined.
The third column on the right of Table 7 specifies the number of companies that
have improved these measures after having implemented Lean practices. As you can
see, 2 out of 3 of the companies that assessed energy consumption improved this
measure. In addition, for materials use and solid waste, two firms evaluate these
measures and both companies improved them. As regards water use, the situation
is slightly different, since only 1 firm out of 2 improved this indicator. Finally,
land use and air emissions measures are assessed only in one firm. In both cases
these indicators improved after Lean practice implementation. For the remaining
categories (i.e. toxic/hazardous chemicals use, water pollution, hazardous waste and
environmental impact of the product throughout the entire life cycle) we did not find
any evidence.
After having highlighted the level of implementation of the various Lean practices
and the types of Green indicators measured by companies, in the second part of
Measure category Number of Number of
measures used within the case
companies companies
studies
measuring this improving this
category category
A. Energy use 3 2
B. Land use 1 1
C. Materials use 2 2
D. Toxic/hazardous 0 0
chemicals use
E. Water use 2 1
F. Air emissions 1 1
G. Water pollution 0 0
H. Solid waste 2 2
I. Hazardous waste 0 0
J. Environmental 0 0
impact of the
product throughout
the cross-case analysis we are interested in highlighting the possible relationships

between Lean practices and improvement of Green measures.
For this purpose we started from the data in Table 7 observing in particular the
first three lines. With reference to energy use, two companies out of the three that
measure this indicator have stated that they have improved it (i.e. Company A and
Company C). Figure 7 shows the common Lean practices regularly used (level 5 in
the Lean profile) by the two companies.
The observation of Fig. 7 suggests that the Lean practices that support energy use
reduction are:
• Flow layout
Fig. 7 Lean practices which

support energy use reduction
• VSM
• Kaizen events
• Visual management
• Spaghetti chart
• PDCA
• 5S
• Free pass.
These practices usually produce reduction of the movements within the factory and
increment environmental and efficiency awareness within the employees, reducing
the energy consumption of the plant.
Now referring to the second row of the Table 7, the Lean practices used regularly
by the two companies (i.e. Company A and Company B) that have reduced the use
of materials are shown in Fig. 8. Both firms use a set of practices from the JIT and
TQM bundles:
• Pull/Kanban
• Flow layout
• VSM
• Kaizen events
• Spaghetti chart
• 5S.
These practices mainly reduce rejections and waste from defective products which
implies a reduction of the rework. In addition, as a consequence of the standardization
and continuous improvement enabled by these practices, the company is nearer to
the “ideal” use of raw materials for the manufacture of products.
Finally, turning our attention to the solid waste category, Company B and Com-
pany C have improved this indicator. The Lean practices used regularly (i.e. level 5)
by both companies are shown in Fig. 9:
• Flow layout
• VSM
• Kaizen events

support materials use
reduction

support solid waste reduction
• Spaghetti chart
• 5S.
Similar to the previous case, when the number of rejections from production
is reduced, because of the continuous quality improvement and less packaging is
used, because of the reductions of movements within the factory, less solid waste is
generated.
The cross-case analysis carried out in this section has highlighted the key evi-
dences and the general patterns across cases. This analysis complements the single
evidences outlined for each company in the preceding Sect. 5.
7 Discussion and Conclusions
This study was aimed to analyse, through an empirical research, the impact of Lean
practices on one of the main dimensions of Sustainability such as the environmental
performance of the company. We first developed a literature review to synthesise the
main results so far achieved and how to set up empirical research. In particular, the
literature review has allowed us to identify Lean practices and environmental mea-
sures to be investigated. Subsequently, we develop the case study analysis of three
industrial firms that have started a Lean transformation journey in order to exam-
ine if the implementation of various Lean practices can impact the environmental
performances of the company. Both within-case and cross-case analyses have been
carried out.
Making an overview of the implementation of Lean in our sample of firms, the
most used Lean practices are those belonging to the JIT (i.e. flow layout, VSM) and
TQM (i.e. kaizen, spaghetti chart) bundles which correspond to those most analysed
in literature. On the contrary, the practices within the HRM and TPM bundles, are
those less used by our set of companies.
As regards the environmental performances, the firms measured mainly their
energy, materials and water consumption and their solid waste production levels.
Energy use is the measure most used by companies. From one hand this depends on
the “mandatory nature” of this input: the quantity of energy used must be paid to
external energy companies and this makes it easy to measure the consumption in a
simple and precise way. On the other hand the use of energy has important economic
and environmental implications for companies. The same applies to the use of water
and to a lesser extent, since it is more difficult to measure, to the use of materials and
solid waste.
In all companies the use of the Lean practices has made it possible to improve
environmental performance. There are a few exceptions: Company A declares
that the energy consumption was incremented by the implementation of Kanban
deliveries with suppliers, while Company C obtained positive outcomes applying
the same practice. In this sense, we found a possible trade-off regarding this practice
that was already acknowledged in literature and should be handled with attention by
managers (Dieste and Panizzolo 2018). In this perspective, it is crucial for managers
to assess carefully the impact of the Lean practices implemented since the positive
effects of a group of practices can hide the negative effects of one of them, obtaining
less performance than their potential.
Nevertheless, it has been demonstrated that the combination of various Lean
practices usually produce strong positive results on certain environmental measures
of firms, more than they would do separately. This partially occurs due to a “multiplier
effect” that makes more environmental improvements from a pre-existent one. For
example, if a company reduces its warehouse it will enhance immediately its land
use indicator, and subsequently, will reduce for instance the energy consumption
of the plant. Or if a firm builds upon the TQM bundle, the reduction of defective
parts will lead to less material waste generated but also will entail less materials and
energy use. These further improvements are mainly caused by the identification of
the so-called “blind spots” (EPA 2003) that may appear during Lean implementation.
This means that in addition to the Lean waste reduction and continuous improvement
concepts, which frequently produce implicit environmental performance, there are
further “hidden” opportunities to achieve this purpose.
We found during interviews that managers clearly recognized the possibility of
gaining greater environmental benefits from the application of Lean practices. Thus,
we think that this research holds important implications for manufacturing managers
who can develop a richer awareness on the relationship and effect that some of
the most essential Lean practices have on the environmental performance of their
operations. Thus, we believe that this study has several managerial implications
and can help to enhance both the image of the company and its corporate social
responsibility since climate change, environmental degradation and natural resources
scarcity are some of the major issues currently faced by humankind. At the same time,
we think that this chapter helps in filling the research gaps previously highlighted
and extends the extant knowledge about the Lean paradigm and global Sustainable
development.
Finally, from the evidence obtained in the case studies, even if companies declare
that they are environmentally concerned and take care of the environment, they
could do more in this regard. Since Lean provides practices and tools that favor
environmental performance going beyond economic results, companies logically
prioritize these last objectives and they do not develop a proper control system of
their environmental effects in short, medium and long terms. Thus, from the academic
field, it is important to empirically demonstrate the effects of Lean and to show
managers that obtaining economic and environmental performance is easier than
expected, by the means of Lean.
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The Lean-Green BOPSE Indicator
to Assess Efficiency and Sustainability
M. Florentina Abreu, Anabela Carvalho Alves and Francisco Moreira
Abstract Over the years, companies have been progressing their management
strategies and transforming their production systems to cope with the pressing envi-
ronmental challenges and remain competitive, prosper and meet the market demands.
It is no longer enough to only satisfy the demand. The companies face a new trans-
formation on the way of “doing things”, being it the way performance and efficiency
is improved, or its relationship with all the stakeholders. Lean manufacturing and
eco-efficiency propose a setting for progressively reducing wastes and environmental
impacts. Although Lean Production was not developed to directly tackle sustainabil-
ity issues, its principles and practices convey benefits that could be put, unquestion-
ably, under the umbrella of Green and resulting in synergies known as the Lean-Green
link. This chapter aims to present the Business Overall Performance and Sustainabil-
ity Effectiveness (BOPSE) indicator, which is intended to measure the companies’
Lean-Green compliance. The BOPSE indicator is an integrated metric on compa-
nies’ operational performance and sustainability conformity. This indicator exploits
the Lean-Green production synergies and is operationalized through an indicator
that aggregates and combines Lean production and Green production features. This
indicator weaves a number of sustainability issues, spread over its three dimensions,
with those encompassed by the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) indicator.
Therefore, the BOPSE indicator intends to assess the effectiveness of the businesses
grounded on operational performance and sustainability compliance, aiming at iden-
tifying both specific limitations and broader opportunities for the global improve-
ment of the companies. Hence, the BOPSE indicator drives companies in their way
M. F. Abreu (B) · A. C. Alves (B) · F. Moreira (B)

Department of Production and Systems, School of Engineering,
ALGORITMI R&D Center, University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal
e-mail: abreuflorentina@gmail.com; d7233@dps.uminho.pt
A. C. Alves
F. Moreira
e-mail: fmoreira@dps.uminho.pt

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13515-7_9
260 M. F. Abreu et al.
to meet some of 17 sustainable development goals, namely the 8th—“Decent work

and economic growth”, and the 12th—“Responsible consumption and production”
sustainable development goals.
1 Introduction
Over the last decades, manufacturing industries across the globe have been devel-
oping their management strategies and changing their production systems, so as
to face the environmental challenges and stay competitive. There is a new way of
“doing things”, where performance and efficiency play a key role in the relationship
with the entire stakeholders universe. Lean manufacturing and eco-efficiency offer
one such way, to reduce wastes and environmental impacts in a progressively path.
The lean adoption, rooted on the Toyota Production System, from the Toyota Motor
Company, enabled companies to focus on timely deliveries of quality products or
services to customers, at the right price and minimum waste, by establishing a way
for “doing more with less” (Womack et al. 1990).
The period that followed World War II was characterized by a consumer demand
growth and resulted in improved quality levels and best practices in operation man-
agement (Voss et al. 2002). By the end of the twentieth century, due to globalization,
the competition growth and diversity demand, required manufacturing processes
to be better managed, according to quality, cost, delivery, flexibility, speed and
reliability indicators (Kim et al. 2015). Some pioneering thinking boosted the yield
of solutions that returned more value, i.e. using less human effort, less time, less
inventories, less energy, as well as, fewer resources and less residues.
However, the challenges of the present entail not only highly productive and
responsive production systems, but also eco-efficient ones, i.e. systems that deliver
more value with lower environmental impacts. Both concepts are concerned with
the minimization of all waste kinds, on all their possible forms and occurrence
timings, starting with the most difficult wastes to deal with, i.e. the invisible ones.
This must be attained without increasing the production costs and without hiding
any external environmental consequences, in order to pursue and really achieve
true sustainability (WBCSD 2000). Unveiling the synergetic relationship between
Lean and Eco-efficiency approaches, usually, called Lean-Green (Pojasek 2008), is
therefore an imperious effort.
There are plentiful research on Lean, on sustainability, and on eco-efficiency,
but most of them do not explicitly address the Lean-Green link, instead they denote
other concerns (Martínez-Jurado and Moyano-Fuentes 2014; Garza-Reyes 2015),
or consider other linked techniques (Duarte and Cruz-Machado 2013; Cherrafi et al.
2016; Fercoq et al. 2016). However, there is still a research gap on the literature on
the Lean-Green synergy, as highlighted by Alves et al. (2016) in their systematic
literature review, over the 2001–2015 time-frame. The main results revealed that
most papers did not explicitly recognize the Lean-Green link and only a small
percentage (7%) report a relation among Lean, eco-efficiency and sustainability
The Lean-Green BOPSE Indicator to Assess Efficiency … 261
(Alves et al. 2016). The consequence is that a small number of researchers study
this link and design appropriate models. Even a special volume of the Journal of
Cleaner Production dedicated to this theme, identified only nine papers, from the
43 analyzed that contained models, frameworks and methodologies (Dhingra et al.
2014). Moreover, a recent systematic literature review of Tasdemir and Gazo (2018)
identifies 15 research opportunities, within the sustainability and Lean, linked field.
Still today, companies are concerned with waste reduction without considering
all benefits that the Lean-Green approach might convey. For instances, if a company
is concerned in reducing transports, one of the seven Lean wastes according to Ohno
(1978), it reduces simultaneously the energy consumption and emissions, which
are environmental wastes (U.S. EPA 2007). According to Moreira et al. (2010), all
production wastes induce a weak environmental performance, therefore reducing
these wastes, put the companies in the eco-efficiency pathway, even if most of the
time they are unaware of that.
Environmental and social concerns have turned out to be increasingly vital within
societies and economies. The sustainable development concept (WCED 1987) has
triggered growing interest, since the end of the Eighties. The concept was explicitly
defined as the “development that meets the needs of the present generation without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. As stated
by Elkington (1998), a sustainable company is the one that contributes to sustainable
development through the simultaneous delivery of economic, social and environmen-
tal benefits, the known “triple bottom line” (Elkington 1998). The major concerns
carried out by the sustainability movement are the unbearable effects of environ-
mental pollution, which have set many organizations and communities on alert. For
this reason, the green paradigm arose as a philosophical and operational approach
for reducing the ecological impact of products and services, as well as improving
both the efficiency and impacts of the operations, while accomplishing the financial
goals (Garza-Reyes 2015). Nevertheless, a difficulty (among others) highlighted as
a research opportunity, has been the lack of a tool to measure the systems efficiency
and sustainability within organizations (Tasdemir and Gazo 2018).
Attending to the above-mentioned motivation, this chapter intends to present a
Lean-Green indicator that aims to measure the companies’ Lean-Green compliance.
This indicator is an integrated metric on companies’ operational efficiency and sus-
tainability conformity, thus exploiting the Lean-Green production synergies.
This chapter is structured in five main sections. After the introduction, Sect. 2
presents the literature review on Lean Production, Sustainability, Eco-efficiency and
Lean-Green. Section 3 describes the research methodology and Sect. 4 presents the
Lean-Green indicator developed, i.e. the Business Overall Performance and Sustain-
ability Effectiveness (BOPSE) indicator. Lastly, the conclusions are drawn.
2 Literature Review
This section presents a brief literature review on the concepts and rationales that
supported the design of the BOPSE indicator.
2.1 Lean Production
The Lean Production concept has evolved into a much broader strategy of action,
since it was first used up to today (Womack et al. 1990). Lean production is usually
defined from two viewpoints, there are studies that consider Lean from a philosophic
perspective related to guiding principles and overarching goals (Womack and Jones
1996; Spear and Bowen 1999) and studies that reflect Lean from a practical per-
spective, considering it as a management practice (tools or techniques) set (Shah and
Ward 2003; Liker 2004; De Treville and Antonakis 2006).
Shah and Ward (2003) defined Lean Production as a multi-dimensional approach
that encompasses a wide variety of management practices (including just-in-time,
quality systems, work teams, cell production, supplier management, etc.), that can
work in synergy to create a simplified system to produce high quality finished prod-
ucts to the pace of customer demand with little or no waste (Shah and Ward 2003).
Therefore, Lean Production is a strategy that promotes the use of practices, such as
Kanban, total quality management (TQM) and just-in-time (JIT), to minimize waste
and enhance firm performance (Womack et al. 1990). Thus, the implementation of
Lean Production practices is expected to result in improved operational outcomes,
such as lower inventories, higher quality, and shorter throughput times, which, in
turn, should improve financial performance. This description of Lean Production
clearly indicates a number of mediating factors between Lean Production and finan-
cial performance (Hofer et al. 2012).
Moreover, Lean as a philosophic perspective, considers the interrelationship and
synergistic effect of these practices to increase global productivity levels and product
quality, waste reduction, to improve integration and collaboration across departments,
and employees autonomy. As Liker (2004) stated: “To be a lean manufacturer requires
a way of thinking that focuses on making the product flow through value-adding
processes without interruption (one-piece flow), a “pull” system that cascades back
from customer demand by replenishing only what the next operation takes away at
short intervals, and a culture in which everyone is striving continuously to improve”
(Liker 2004).
Womack and Jones (1996), based on Lean Production, defined Lean Thinking as
a set of five principles as the key principles to guide the journey of becoming Lean,
which are: “precisely specify value by specific product, identify the value stream
for each product, make value flow without interruptions, let the customer pull value
from the producer, and pursue perfection.” Lean thinking is Lean since it provides
a method to do more with less: “less human effort, less equipment, less time, and
less space”, and at the same time, provide customers with precisely what they need
(Womack and Jones 1996). Lean Production is a customer-focused methodology
that seeks to eliminate waste and increase value to deliver timely quality products, at
competitive prices and, at the same time, respecting people. The main goals of Lean
Production are: to achieve high productivity while simultaneously synchronizing
production with demand variety, improve quality and reduce the production cost and
delivery time, by way of an intense involvement of the operators’ (Lewis 2000).
Nevertheless, despite the good results achieved by Lean companies around the
world, some remain unconvinced or even skeptical. Cowger (2016) is one of the
authors that think that it is taking a long time for manufacturers to implement Lean
(especially SME). He suggests that a number of features does not help on gaining
such recognition, among them, the existence of different definitions of Lean, many
information and lack of human resources, time and money to promote the adoption
of Lean (Cowger 2016). Donofrio and Whitefoot (2015) think that it is only a matter
of time for a wider adoption of Lean, because of the growing number of studies and
reports that address the Lean benefits, and state that Lean implementation enable the
return of manufacturing operations from overseas and stay competitive (Donofrio
and Whitefoot 2015).
In 2015, Jasti and Kodali performed a literature review on lean production and
its trends. Their findings comprise the following points: it is essential to focus on
empirical research to build and validate theory; companies and organizations need
to apply lean principles in the product development field and enterprise level and
it is essential to have more interregional research collaborations; it is crucial to
apply lean elements as a group, instead of individual elements. Also crucial is the
necessity of avoiding the full set of the seven lean wastes instead of only specific
ones. They also pointed out that researchers need to test and validate the proposed
frameworks/models (Jasti and Kodali 2015).
Mourtzis et al. (2017) proposed a methodology for improving the leanness of
Product-Service System design, via the combined application of lean principles and
practices with that of monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in real-time.
The lean rules extraction methodology (LeanREM) establish a schedule of the lean
philosophy in the factory, causing the progressive avoidance of wasteful activities
and therefore increasing efficiency. The rationale for that being the industry’s trans-
formation towards the production of leaner Product-Service System through gradual
improvements at process and factory levels (Mourtzis et al. 2017).
In 2017, Soliman and Saurin made a systematic literature review about the way
lean production deals with complexity, in theory and in practice, from a complexity
science perspective. The review showed that the association between lean and
complexity is synergetic, that is, each has influence on the other. Lean influences
complexity either by increasing some of its dimensions or by decreasing others.
Complexity also influences lean, through constraints in the application of some
principles and practices (Soliman and Saurin 2017). In a more recent publication,
the authors presented an investigation, based on a survey, about the lean impacts on
the complex socio-technical systems attributes (Soliman et al. 2018). The outcomes
reveal that the lean impacts on complexity are not fully understandable, which
results from the complexity multidimensional nature. The findings suggest that
successful lean implementations are linked to being able to deal with the increased
complexity and taking advantage of it, in opposition to simply trying to reduce it.
The authors think that lean production appears to balance complexity attributes,
because it reduces the process variety, and increases, as well, the controller variety
to some extent (Soliman et al. 2018).
Pearce et al. (2018) identified the critical success factors in lean implementation.
They concluded that the real problem for achieving lean success was in fact a knowl-
edge problem, related to management, and not that of commitment. They pointed out
the importance of identifying what management commits to, when they engage with
lean, namely the learning and knowledge on lean, and not only on the imposition
of process improvement and lean methods, particularly in companies with limited
resources.
More recently, Abreu-Ledón et al. (2018) studied the impact of lean production on
business performance. They considered two different performance outcomes (finan-
cial and market) and six lean production practices (Process Control & Improvements;
Just-in-time Flow; Workforce Development; Maintenance Management; Customer
Focus and Supplier Relationship). The results showed a positive and moderate rela-
tionship amongst aggregate levels of lean production and business performance. A
positive relationship also exists with market performance, but not with the financial
performance. Just three individual lean practices are statistically related with busi-
ness performance, i.e. Process Control and Improvement, Workforce Development
and Customer Focus.
2.2 Sustainability
In 1987, the Bruntland Commission defined sustainable development as “develop-

ment that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs” (WCED 1987). However, as pointed out by
several authors this definition is too general for companies to follow (Gimenez et al.
2012; Wu and Wu 2012; Zhang et al. 2017). Moreover, there is a lack on guidance
regarding how companies should identify present and future needs, how technologies
and resources should be defined to meet those needs and, furthermore, how should the
companies balance their responsibilities among all stakeholders (Hart 1995; Gimenez
et al. 2012). The sustainability agenda is a result of the raised awareness that nature
(mineral, vegetable and animal) provisions on resources and services are scarce and
finite, thus requiring conservation actions and knowledge on both resilience and
ecosystems dynamics and interrelations. A similar definition was given by the Envi-
ronmental Protection Agency (EPA): “sustainability means to create and maintain
conditions, under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that
permit fulfilling the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future
generations” (U.S. EPA 2003). Based on the view of Sachs (1986), Colombo (2004)
defined sustainability as the idea of reducing the irreversible changes, leaving open
possibilities for the present and the future, in a very wide time scale.
As stated by Costanza, “Sustainability is a relationship between dynamic human
economic systems and larger dynamic, but normally slower-changing ecological
systems, in which (1) human life can continue indefinitely, (2) human individuals
can flourish, and (3) human cultures can develop; but in which effects of human
activities remain within bounds, so as not to destroy the diversity, complexity, and
function of the ecological life support system” (Costanza 1991).
While the perceived need to stay within bounds of natures’ recovery capacity is
rather essential, it is necessary to expand the spectrum of what needs to be done and
preserved. Then sustainability is not limited to nature, it also encompasses other
dimensions. Numerous sustainability dimensions can be found in distinct authors
(Diegues 1992; Sachs 1993; Munasinghe 1993; Pelizzoli 1999; Ultramari 2001;
Colombo 2004; Pappas 2012) such as: economic or financial; ecological or envi-
ronmental; individual; cultural; etc. Some authors present combined dimensions,
such as socio-cultural (Munasinghe 1993) or spatial-political and political-temporal
(Sachs 1998).
Pappas (2012) extended the WCED definition, and defined sustainable society as
“a society possessing the ability to continue to survive and prosper, not just with
respect to environmental resources and economic development, but also with respect
to quality of life as it pertains to conditions that promote sustainable human activity
and growth (…). A sustainable society meets these needs simultaneously, and in
the context of human respect and the ability to negotiate differences without vio-
lence” (Pappas 2012). The author considered that sustainability goes far beyond the
treatment of environmental resources and waste. After its five sustainability dimen-
sions: Social/Cultural, Economic, Environmental, Technical, and Individual (Pappas
2012; Pappas et al. 2015), other authors added three more dimensions: Relational or
Convivial, Territorial or Geographical and Epistemological (Colombo et al. 2017).
The business and industrial fields have given special attention to the so-called
“triple bottom line” (3BL), namely the economic, environmental and social sus-
tainability. Elkington (1998) developed this concept, which balances simultaneously
these “three pillars” of sustainability from a microeconomic viewpoint. This concept
implies that all three pillars are essential and equally important. Economically, com-
panies must grow without compromising their integrity. The environment should be
a concern of the daily activity of the companies, by seeking forms of reduction on
impacts, from a cradle to grave perspective. On the social side, the companies have to
respect human rights, promote equity and make social investments. The 3BL is also
called “planet, people, and profit”, nevertheless their relationships with each other is
a controversial subject.
Economic development depends on both environmental and social capital, while
both social and economic processes affect environmental conditions (Wu and Wu
2012). The environmental dimension is regarded as a fundamental basis for sustain-
ability, due to the natural resources scarcity and the environmental pressures imposed
by a growing human population. The argument for this is that, without an acceptable
level of biodiversity, and without a suitable provision of functions and services by

the ecosystems, no long-lasting economic and social development is made possible.
A fundamental debate on sustainability is whether its adoption should be based on
a “strong” or a “weak” concept. Strong sustainability implies that the environment
provides natural resources and ecosystem services needed for economic and social
development, and that simultaneous progress on all three dimensions is expected. In
turn, weak sustainability allows for what is known as mutual substitutability among
the three dimensions, i.e. a given dimension might be sacrificed if the aggregated
outcome of the others would be beneficial. Consequently, the later would allow, for
instance, in declining natural capital (e.g. ecosystems) in favor of economic and
social development. This line of reasoning is undoubtedly controversial, given that,
in the long run, it could impact back (negatively) the others (Ayres et al. 1998; Bergh
and Gowdy 2000; Wilkinson et al. 2001; Kuhlman and Farrington 2010; Wu and Wu
2012). The foregoing is crucial for establishing the right set of sustainability indi-
cators, that predictably might promote truly sustainable approaches and operational
actions. On the other hand, Edwards (2009) discuss a meta-theoretical approach to
learning and sustainability to tackle some fundamental paradoxes that companies
face. Thus, opening new conceptualized ways for radical transformation needs to
meet the current sustainability challenges. The radical changes needed for sustain-
able forms of global ecology and economy will likely require paradigmatic shifts
(Bradbury 2003).
Edwards (2009) presents seven stages of organizational sustainability as the
transformation spectrum that is, hypothetically, available to companies. These are:
subsistence organization, avoidant organization, compliant organization, efficient
organization, committed organization, sustaining organization I (local) and sus-
taining organization II (local and global). Each stage is related to certain internal
quality types and environmental conditions. Companies face several choices in their
way through the challenges of environmental crises, regulatory environments and
higher community expectations, whereas simultaneously, are trying to persist in the
competitive global market. The author meta-theorizes the sustainability paradoxes:
the growth, the learning and the sustainability (Edwards 2009). He theorizes that
companies, as well as national and international economies, have to struggle in the
paradoxical status quo of the increasing pressure to generate economic growth, which
in turn is triggering the environmental disorder and causing social displacement.
This sustainability paradox strives on this ever-standing problem of balancing
sustainable change with sustainable stability. This paradox is also acknowledge by
Stacey (2005) that states that the growth-sustainability paradox will only be resolved
at a dialectical level that acknowledges the need for both development and stability
(Stacey 2005). For Rotmans (2006) the paradox is: “the unsustainability problems
humankind is faced cannot be solved with current tools and methods that were
applied - or seemed to work - in the past. Obviously, the paradox is that we cannot
wait for the next generation of tools and methods (and minds)” (Rotmans 2006).
In 2011, the United States Department of Commerce defined sustainable manu-
facturing as “the creation of manufactured products that use processes that minimize
negative environmental impacts, conserve energy and natural resources, are safe
for employees, communities, and consumers and are economically sound” (US
Department of Commerce 2011). Roberts and Ball (2014) added to the proposed
definition of sustainable manufacturing practices the use of: “the techniques, policies
and procedures a firm uses to create manufactured products, …” (Roberts and Ball
2014) to the exact same end. According to Faulkner and Badurdeen (2014), to reach
sustainability in manufacturing involves a whole view, covering the product and the
processes themselves, as well as the overall supply chain.
Over time, sustainability has been studied in many perspectives and viewpoints,
for instance reporting its practical application (Qu et al. 2015; Sengupta et al. 2015;
Wagner 2015; Luqmani et al. 2017; Weissbrod and Bocken 2017), presenting indexes
and frameworks (Harik et al. 2015; Kim et al. 2015; Vimal et al. 2015; Helleno et al.
2017). Also, presenting reports (Chen et al. 2015; Greco et al. 2015), focusing on
corporate social responsibility (Lai et al. 2015) and reviews (Zaman et al. 2015;
Cherrafi et al. 2016; Caldera et al. 2017).
Cherrafi et al. (2016) conducted a literature review on the integration of Lean, Six
Sigma and sustainability and identified several major gaps in the existing literature.
One of these gaps was the absence of a specific integrated model, thus the authors
proposed a model for the integration of these three management systems with three
constructs: drivers and barriers; synergies, conflicts and compatibility; and criti-
cal success factors, that are linked to benefits of the integration and to tools and
techniques. These elements work together to support an organization in identifying
improvement opportunities and in assessing sustainability performance (Cherrafi
et al. 2016).
More recently, through a systematic literature review, Caldera et al. (2017) inves-
tigated how the Lean and Green implementation could drive to sustainable business
practice. The authors highlighted the lean thinking restricted use within corporate
sustainability, and defined a “lean and green matrix” to identify opportunities to
embed Lean and Green practices into five workflows: waste, energy, emissions,
water and chemical management (Caldera et al. 2017). Moldavska and Welo (2017)
performed a literature review by analyzing different definitions of sustainable
manufacturing, and identified the contemporary understanding on the concept. This
year, Ruben et al. (2018) presented their systematic review on Lean Six Sigma in
the manufacturing sector and designed a generic framework, which incorporates
environmental focus into the Lean Six Sigma framework.
Another systematic literature review was most recently published to assess the
present state-of-the art in the topic of lean-driven sustainability (Tasdemir and Gazo
2018). The authors concluded that attention in lean-driven sustainability has gained
momentum lately, particularly by researchers from Europe, USA and Asia. This
study concluded that synergies between Lean and sustainability are stronger than their
divergences, that Lean could be used to set the basis for sustainability frameworks and
that they both could provide true sustainability. They also stated that there are some
internal and external obstacles related with integration of Lean and TBL philosophies.
The authors argue that, as part of a future research agenda should be the investigation
of ways to control divergences and weaknesses of Lean and sustainability. Finally,
they consider that lean-driven sustainability still has a countless deal of unexploited
potential that has to be discovered (Tasdemir and Gazo 2018).
One might say that sustainability is on the World agenda. This evidence is cor-
roborated by the growing number of papers published recently (Boggia et al. 2018;
Ciccullo et al. 2018; Ramos et al. 2018; Souza and Alves 2018; Soytas and Atik
2018). This concern is also felt at the business level where progress and development
must be aligned with sustainability. Therefore, at the businesses level, companies
and organizations have to analyze and assess their actions in order to delineate their
own path to sustainable development. The sustainable development pathways lead
to numerous ecological and social challenges, due to the growing populations and
the increasing individual consumption. As stated by the Global Footprint Network,
the global economy, driven by consumption, presently uses natural resources that
are equivalent to over 1.5 planets earth (called the global ecological footprint of
humanity) (Munasinghe 2012). Thus, societies are under severe pressures, given the
global scenario for natural resources depletion, environmental degradation and social
tensions. To face those pressures, on the 25th September 2015, a historic global polit-
ical agreement was made, when 193 countries signed the United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals for 2030, known as SDGs or “Global Goals” (Pedersen 2018).
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and their 169 targets, demonstrate the scale
and ambition of this new Agenda—“Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development” (UN 2015). The SDGs seek to build upon the success of
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). SDGs pursue the realization of human
rights for all, gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. The
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were launched, in 2000, by the United
Nations member states as an agreement for global development, with the aim of
driving the global development agenda for the 2000–2015 period. The target strate-
gic areas were poverty, education, gender equality, child mortality, maternal health,
disease, the environment and global partnership.
The development process of the SDGs had a kick off at the RIO + 20 UN Earth
Summit, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 2012. The intention was to set the creation of
global goals to address the increasing challenges of sustainable development, and to
carry on the journey started with the MDGs (Pedersen 2018).
The 17 United Nations SDGs are UN (2015, p. 14):
• Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
• Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote
sustainable agriculture
• Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
• Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong
learning opportunities for all
• Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
• Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation
for all
• Goal 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
• Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and
productive employment and decent work for all
• Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industri-
alization and foster innovation
• Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries
• Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and
sustainable
• Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
• Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
• Goal 14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for
sustainable development
• Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems,
sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land
degradation and halt biodiversity loss
• Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development,
provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive
institutions at all levels
• Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global
Partnership for Sustainable Development.
The SDGs and respective targets, are integrated and indivisible, and also global
in nature and with universal applicability, considering the diverse national realities,
capacities and development levels and respecting the national policies and priorities.
Ambitious targets were defined globally and each country defined their own national
targets according to their conditions. Each country decides how these targets should
be included into the national plans, policies and strategies. Countries should be aware
of the link between sustainable development and other pertinent ongoing processes
in the economic, social and environmental fields (UN 2015).
At the same time, in this sustainability discussion, one cannot forget the ones in
the “Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP)”, as Prahalad (2005) identified in his book called
“The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid”. Although a strong progress has been
observed during the MDG mandate (till 2015), i.e. the world attained the first MDG
target five years ahead of schedule, i.e. to cut the 1990 poverty rate in half by 2015,
reducing to about 10% the number of people living daily with less than $1.9, which
still represents an hefty volume of 736 million human beings, with progress being
rather uneven among the regions of the world. Prahalad (2005) argues that the focus
should be on the underserved consumers (and not “the poor”) and their potential for
global growth, as they become part of an inclusive capitalism system. He states that
the process should start with respect for Bottom of Pyramid consumers as individuals
and that the BOP is an opportunity to boost the process of change in the traditional
relationship among the company and the consumer. He also argues that recognizing
the BOP as an active market is a development activity. The challenge will be to
encounter new and creative approaches to convert poverty into an opportunity for all
involved (Prahalad 2005).
Related to this subject and the consumption quest, Lean consumption, as pointed
out by Womack and Jones (2005a), has to be considered. Nowadays, a huge discon-
nect exists between consumers and providers. Consumers have a larger selection of
higher quality goods to choose from and can get these items from a growing number
of sources. So why aren’t consumers happier? Because all around the process of
obtaining and using the products generates consumers’ frustration and disappoint-
ment. For these authors, Lean consumption is “about providing the full value that
consumers desire from their goods and services, with the greatest efficiency and least
pain” (Womack and Jones 2005a). The book “Lean Solutions” illustrates the compet-
itive advantages of extending Lean Thinking far downstream from the organization’
walls (Womack and Jones 2005b). The authors describe, through cases studies two
all-embracing business processes beyond production: provision and consumption.
The authors are seeking solutions for the consumption problems that involve
the life cycle of obtaining, integrating, maintaining, upgrading, and recycling, and
the decisions and tradeoffs entailed throughout. They acknowledge that the most
problematic nodes in provision and consumption are the ones at which the two
processes communicate with each other, that is, where consumers and providers meet.
Therefore, they focus on process, as an end-to-end view that always takes into account
the value as defined by the customer, identifying this as a requirement to propose
Lean solutions, and to sustain them (Womack and Jones 2005b). Moreover, the way
to do this is to integrate and streamline the provision and consumption processes.
Lean consumption needs a major change in the way retailers, service providers,
manufacturers, and suppliers reflect about the relationship amongst provision and
consumption, as well as the role customers play in these processes. Consumers
have to change their relationship with the companies they support. Customers and
providers have to collaborate to minimize total costs and time wasted on creating
new value (Womack and Jones 2005a). The “Companies must provide the goods
and services consumers actually want, when and where they are wanted, without
burdening the consumer”. The Lean provision encompasses all the steps required
to deliver the wanted value from producer to customer, frequently going through a
number of organizations (Womack and Jones 2005b).
In this ever-standing question of the sustainability paradox, companies and
economies have to balance the pressures, to generate economic growth with those
of the global consumption and environmental burdens associated in a desired equi-
librium. This will be the perfect setting for companies to embark in Lean-Green
implementations, as a prompt answer to this challenging world. The synergies that
accrue from both initiatives might well lead the way to growth, reduce environmental
impacts, conserve energy and natural resources, while being safe for their employees,
communities and final consumers.
2.3 Eco-Efficiency
The Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD) defined eco-efficiency

as: “The delivery of competitively priced goods and services that satisfy human needs
and bring quality of life, while progressively reducing ecological impact and resource
intensity throughout the life cycle, to a level at least in line with the Earth’s estimated
carrying capacity” (BCSD 1993). Stephan Schmidheiny and the BCSD introduced
this concept in the 1990s and it intended to promote a new kind of development.
This was targeted at making an effective contribution to a better world, by promoting
human and nature well being. The Eco-efficiency concept, along with others alike,
represent a dynamic set of conceptual and operational assets that can be applied at
distinct stages of product and services provision, to prevent and mitigate effects of its
massive materialization and servitization. It specifically stimulates the aggregation
of more and more value while progressively, or more deeply, reducing the required
production factors, such as energy, effort, and raw materials, and preventing and
reducing wastes and emissions.
Based on the preservation of nature while hunting for economic value, grounded
on more intelligent and bio-inspired solutions, the eco-efficiency concept generally
proposes (WBCSD/UNEP 1998):
(1) reduction on materials intensity;
(2) reduction on energy intensity;
(3) reduction on the quantity and level of toxicity of substances;
(4) promotion of closed cycles and use of meaningful end-of-life strategies;
(5) promotion of renewables, abundant and local resources;
(6) improvement of the durability of the products;
(7) intensifying the use of services.
To provide more value with less impact, companies need innovation efforts, both
at the product and production processes, as well as a different perception on the
assessment of products’ environmental performance. To avoid unintended armful
relocations among lifecycle stages, a system strategy is particularly advised, because
the products worst impacts may occur on any of the full lifecycle stages. Simultane-
ously, this system strategy will allow identifying gains opportunities that would be
hard to devise otherwise. A continuous improvement process may be used to achieve
successive marginal gains, along with more substantial gains, normally attained by
way of radical innovation, which may include as well, green logistics and alternative
ownership models, among others.
Only a year after the spread of the concept of eco-efficiency (in 1992), many
organizations and authors started investigating the relationship between Lean and
environmental performance. Moreira et al. (2010), through a literature review, stud-
ied Lean’s contribution on production systems’ better environmental performance.
This is known as the Lean-Green approach, or link (Moreira et al. 2010). Fernández-
Viñé et al. (2010, 2013) studied the eco-efficiency in the SMEs of Venezuela. First,
they presented a comparison analysis of eco-efficiency in the SMEs, by means of a
survey (Fernández-Viñé et al. 2010) and then the assessment of public administra-
tion tools for the eco-efficiency improvement (Fernández-Viñé et al. 2013). In the
first study, they concluded that Venezuelan SMEs understand the legal environmental
regulations, however, they did not recognize the external driving forces influence like
institutional incentives and customers demand for green products. The eco-efficiency
practices were not perceived as a mean to improve competitiveness. and the environ-
mental strategies adopted were mostly aimed at reducing costs or avoid sanctions and
negative effects on the company image. The only tools used were related to materials
recycling and reuse, more specifically packaging materials. From the eight industrial
sectors analyzed, food and chemical industries had the higher performance on eco-
efficiency practices, while plastic and wood industries the lower (Fernández-Viñé
et al. 2010). In the second study, the assessment was based on the following criteria:
“market influence, public administration capability for controlling results, tool costs,
impact on public administration image, timespan to get results, etc.”. They concluded
that the public administration tools best mix comprised essentially “command and
control” tools. The tools mix also included advertising about responsible consump-
tion and eco-efficient products, or education/training in environmental responsibility
(Fernández-Viñé et al. 2013).
Borchardt et al. (2011) presented a longitudinal study in a footwear industry to
investigate eco-design application to redesign a shoe component. The factors that
influence its use, benefits, and difficulties were also analyzed. Environmental impact
and cost reductions were observed (Borchardt et al. 2011). Koskela and Vehmas
(2012) investigated the eco-efficiency definition in order to produce a comprehen-
sive definition of it. Additionally, they presented a conceptual framework of the
relationship between environmental and economic performance in the companies.
They concluded that resource intensity, environmental intensity, average resource
price, resource productivity and eco-efficiency can be identified and defined. The
case study companies belonged to the Finnish forest industry (Koskela and Vehmas
2012). Another paper describes the traps of green technology promotion (Bréchet
and Ly 2013). The authors provide a framework to understand the effects of techno-
logical greening on the firm’s profit, emissions, and on the eco-efficiency indicator.
They highlighted that technological greening may raise conflicting effects and that
eco-efficiency cannot be reliable as an indicator for decision-making (Bréchet and
Ly 2013).
More recently, Wakeford et al. (2017) studied the role that innovation plays in
the pathway to greener industrialization. Innovation appears as an industrialization
critical driver and as a way to deliver green innovations, in order to improve resource
productivity and reduce pollution. They investigated the relationship between green
innovation and industrialization in Ethiopia’s cement, leather and textile sectors.
They concluded that interactions between firms, government and other actors encour-
age innovation, therefore they suggest enhancing coordination between key actors,
providing financial incentives for firms, and enforcing environmental regulations
(Wakeford et al. 2017).
2.4 Lean-Green
A number of concepts exist that relate to Eco-efficiency and to its effort on providing
more value with lower overall impacts, namely: Cleaner Production, Industrial Ecol-
ogy, Cradle-to-Grave, Design for the Environment (DfE), Green Production. Some
concepts focus on specific features and stages (e.g. design stage), while others take
broader perspectives. In 1989, the UNEP/UNIDO (UN Environment Programme and
UN Industrial Development Organization, respectively) launched the Green Cleaner
Production Programme (CP), targeting “the continuous application of an integrated
preventive environmental strategy applied to processes, products and services to
reduce risks to humans and the environment” (UNEP 1996). The WBCSD and the
UNEP acknowledge the importance of Cleaner Production and the Eco-Efficiency
contributions to promote and strengthen the sustainability effort (WBCSD/UNEP
1998). The Green (Production) concept broadly encloses the rationale beyond most
of the above listed concepts.
The link between Lean Manufacturing and Green (Production) has been investi-
gated since the 1990s onwards (Maxwell et al. 1993, 1998; Larson and Greenwood
2004; Pojasek 2008). Regardless of the fact that Lean was not specifically developed
to tackle the sustainability issue (U.S. EPA 2003; Moreira et al. 2010), some authors
believe that its practices result in genuine environmental benefits (Klassen 2000;
Rothenberg et al. 2001; Found 2009). Some, not so positive issues, might also occur,
namely the ones related to more frequent trips within JIT deliveries (Mollenkopf
et al. 2010; Dues et al. 2013), which should be subject to further investigated.
Some authors began to wonder: Could the Lean approach cope with the Green
constraints? Could it be redesigned to tackle in a more fundamental way the key
challenges endorsed by Green? Since Lean places an emphasis on adding value to
its operations, supported by a culture of successive removal of all wastes, some
authors think it embeds well the ancestral belief that in nature, nothing is lost, all is
transformed, which portrays that, in nature, the waste concept does not exist. Hence,
the Lean-Green approach may offer the right structure, with the right processes, for
delivering valuable and cleaner products.
Many organizations are moving forward on the need to synergistically integrate
the Lean-Green concepts. As an illustration, the U.S. EPA has been undertaking quite
a lot of work to develop countless toolkits, among which “The Lean and Environment
Toolkit” (U.S. EPA 2007). The environmental waste was defined as “any unneces-
sary use of resources or a substance released into the air, water, or land that could
harm human health or the environment”. The Lean tools can be applied to reduce the
environmental wastes. These wastes might appear when companies use resources to
deliver products or services to customers, and when customers use or dispose prod-
ucts (U.S. EPA 2007). There are initiatives in progress to reduce them, for instance
in the textile and Clothing industries (Maia et al. 2013). Unexpectedly, reports like
“Vision 2050 - The New agenda for business” (WBCSD 2010), totally omit Lean.
Several authors like, Yang et al. (2011) underlined the convergence between the
Lean and Green concepts. They pointed out that the Lean orientation may also help
companies to adopt environmental management practices to reduce waste and pollu-

tant emissions (Yang et al. 2011). Moreover, Hajmohammad et al. (2013), argue that
the creation of an adequate operating context, grounded on Lean management prin-
ciples, will facilitate the adoption and implementation of environmental practices,
while improving the plant’s environmental performance (Hajmohammad et al. 2013).
In 2014, Galeazzo et al. stated the importance of the collaboration between the
different actors (environmental managers, operations managers, suppliers, etc.) in
a Lean-Green program implementation (Galeazzo et al. 2014). Furthermore, Tseng
et al. (2013) considered the Lean supply chain management a key component to
promote large-scale sustainable production. In their opinion, generally, researchers
converge on the mutual and reciprocal benefits derived from Lean and Green strate-
gies combination (Tseng et al. 2013). Mollenkopf et al. (2010) argue that Lean and
Green strategies are perceived as compatible initiatives since both focus on waste
reduction (Mollenkopf et al. 2010). Dües et al. (2013) agree, nonetheless display that
the overlapping of Lean and Green paradigms embraces additional common features
(besides waste and waste reduction techniques), like people and organization, lead
time reduction, supply chain relationship and Key Performance Indicators supported
around service level attributes (Dues et al. 2013).
The recent state-of-art papers from Martínez-Jurado and Moyano-Fuentes
(2014) and from Garza-Reyes (2015) corroborate the interest in the “Lean and
Green” strategy (Martínez-Jurado and Moyano-Fuentes 2014; Garza-Reyes 2015).
Recognizing that the application scope for the Lean-Green approach is frequently
the supply chain or its parts, Garza-Reyes state that there is a lack of research on
Lean and Green focused on the company level and specially, a lack “on developing
measurement methods or models for specific processes and industries” (Garza-Reyes
2015). Another work from Verrier et al. (2016) present a Lean and Green House
framework grounded on the Toyota Production System “Lean house” and embedded
environmental concerns. This framework aims to facilitate equally the awareness
and practical implementation of an effective and sustainable Lean and Green way
of thinking by means of thorough best practices.
Furthermore, a Lean and Green maturity model, similar to Capability Maturity
Model Integration (CMMI), was developed to optimize the assessment and deploy-
ment in a global approach (Verrier et al. 2016). Fercoq et al. (2016) describe a
quantitative study on Lean/Green integration focused on waste reduction techniques
in the manufacturing processes. First, using the Design of Experiments tool to
measure the influence of the seven Lean wastes and the 3R hierarchy—Reduc-
tion/Reuse/Recovery, which derived from the Lean and Green approaches, on solid
waste management performance. Then, demonstrating that the integration of both
methods in a Lean/Green matrix strengthens the performance of a solid waste
progress plan (Fercoq et al. 2016).
Salvador et al. (2017) presented a debate on the probable two-way influence
between Lean and Green Manufacturing and its connection to related organizational
areas. They pointed out that Lean practices seem more probably to deploy into green
effects, although the other way around may also happen. The joint adoption of both
approaches may result in benefits and impacts on several areas from an organization,
occurring either simultaneously or sequentially. Some authors suggest that there is

some cloudiness on both themes integration, nevertheless is unquestionable that a
certain synergy exists. The authors argue that further research is required to unveil
the real bonds, overlaps and gaps among these approaches (Salvador et al., 2017).
In the same way, Ruiz-Benitez et al. (2017) investigated the environmental ben-
efits of Lean, Green and resilient supply chain management in a case study on
the aerospace sector. They used a combined methodology (importance-performance
analysis technique and interpretative structural modelling approach) to identify the
relationships’ map among practices and performance measures. Authors concluded
that Lean supply chain practices emerge as drivers for green and resilient supply
chain practices and that their influence on environmental performance is greater than
the one of the resilient supply chain practices (Ruiz-Benitez et al. 2017).
The work of Martínez León and Calvo-Amodio (2017) is a literature review
that expands previous literature reviews, through analyzing Lean and sustainability
from a systems thinking lens. They identified and analyzed Lean and sustainability
interrelationships and their influence on performance form several viewpoints: the
operational, the financial, the societal, and the environmental one. A building block
set for developing a lean-sustainable integration framework was identified, with the
purpose of promoting discussion on how companies can embed sustainability into
their operations. In general, the authors found lack of consensus on Lean and sus-
tainability definitions, which in their opinion reflect how the distinct perspectives are
significantly influenced by the context in which they emerged (Martínez León and
Calvo-Amodio 2017).
More recently, several papers described studies on the Lean-Green integration
(Chaplin and O’Rourke 2018; Gandhi et al. 2018; Gupta et al. 2018; Reis et al.
2018). The first one argue that Lean and Green agenda can drive the integration of
any continuous improvement activity (the example is the Lean Six Sigma) through
the organization, by placing continuous improvement and the Lean Six Sigma
within the corporate social responsibility mission (Chaplin and O’Rourke 2018).
The second one identifies the drivers for lean-green manufacturing in small and
medium size enterprises (Gandhi et al. 2018). The third one presents an approach
for wastes assessment, using a system dynamics model and testing it in a radial tire
manufacturing organization (Gupta et al. 2018). The last one develops a model for
assessing the Lean and Green integration (called the Lean Green Synergy model).
The case study was carried out in the coffee sector (Reis et al. 2018).
In their panel data study, Sartal et al. (2018) investigate the environmental impact
of three Lean Manufacturing pillars: Just-in-Time, Jidoka and Respect for Peo-
ple, from a shop-floor perspective. Their results shown that the final environmental
impacts were determined by the leanness level reached by each plant, as well as,
by the Lean pillar in question: though Jidoka and Respect for People had a positive
effect on environmental performance, they found a major trade-off among Just-in-
Time activities and the green goals (Sartal et al. 2018).
Ultimately, Lean-Green initiatives could directly, or more indirectly, drive the
companies in their path to meet the SDGs.
The research methodology is grounded on a literature review regarding Lean-Green

and sustainability, and is driven by the authors’ previous literature reviews (Alves
et al. 2016; Abreu et al. 2017). The first one was a systematic literature review on the
Lean-Green link, whose aim was to investigate the relationship between the Lean and
the Sustainability concepts (Alves et al. 2016). It was identified a positive correlation
among the concepts, requiring however further investigation. The second one was
intended to expand the literature review, to highlight the different models for the
Lean-Green integration, and finally, to compare and analyze the models, through
displaying its relevant features (Abreu et al. 2017). These literature reviews were
conducted over the 2001–2016 time frame period, within the field of Production and
Operations Management. The current paper draws on a literature search until 2018,
with a different purpose: to search for lean-green indicators, frameworks, companies’
sustainability reports, projects and initiatives, and other documents, of national and
international origin.
Then, the conceptual indicator is presented, the Business Overall Performance
and Sustainability Effectiveness (BOPSE) indicator. This indicator is an integrated
metric developed to assess the companies’ effectiveness grounded on operational
performance and sustainability compliance. It exploits the Lean-Green production
synergies and is operationalized by means of an indicator that aggregates and com-
bines Lean production and Green production features.
4 Lean-Green Business Overall Performance

and Sustainability Effectiveness (BOPSE) Indicator
In order to develop the Business Overall Performance and Sustainability Effective-

ness (BOPSE) Indicator, the authors present the background associated to its design,
followed by the indicator description and its validation.
4.1 Indicator Background
In order to design the indicator, several were the frameworks for sustainability that
were considered:
• Sustainable Development Indicators System (SIDS), Portugal, national strategic
document;
• Business Sustainability Index (ISE), from Business Sustainability Observatory
(OSE), for the Business Council for Sustainable development (BCSD) Portugal;
• MAESTRI Total Efficiency Framework, European partnership;
• Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), internationally.
Sustainable Development Indicators System (SIDS), Portugal (DGA 2000) was

developed to assess the country’s progress relative to sustainability, allowing strategic
decisions—policies, plans and programs—either at national, regional and sectorial
levels. Therefore, in 2000 the first edition of the national SIDS “Proposal for Sustain-
able Development Indicators System” was published, as the result of the work that
begun in 1997 (APA 2007). Hence, alongside the main international initiatives in the
field, Portugal presented a platform of environmental, social, economic and institu-
tional indicators, based on the Pressure-State-Response model. In 2005, was initiated
a SIDS review, focused fundamentally on the methodology analysis and consolida-
tion, and on the indicators assessment that integrate the system. SIDS Portugal main
aim is to evaluate and report the evolution of the country’s sustainability levels. It
also seeks to improve the environmental, economic and social management, as well
as the institutional performance. It aims to make the systematization and exchange of
information processes on environment and sustainable development more efficient.
Among the SIDS specific objectives listed, it is important to enumerate the fol-
lowings: developing a broad base of sustainable development indicators, promoting
SIDS as a decision support tool and assessing environmental integration in various
economic activity sectors. The SIDS comprises four indicators groups: (1) Base
indicators; (2) Key indicators; (3) Regional indicators; and (4) Sectorial indicators
(APA 2007).
The Business Sustainability Observatory (OSE) presents the Business Sustain-
ability Index (ISE) as its main measurement and communication instrument. It
aims to promote and publicly disclose the importance and the economic, social and
environmental impacts, of the members of the BCSD Portugal in the sustainable
development of the country (IST 2013). The ISE is an integrated metric of the
companies’ performance in a sustainability perspective, surpassing the concept
proposed by the Triple Bottom Line (TBL), already referred in Sect. 2.2. That is,
the ISE relies on already integrated indicators, each with the TBL dimensions, not
distinguishing environmental, social or economic levels.
The ISE uses top indicators and descriptive indicators to assess the companies’
practices and performance. It comprises five top indicators, which are: (1) energy
and climate; (2) biodiversity and ecosystem services; (3) sustainable production and
consumption; (4) strategic leadership and (5) human capital. The ISE value is the
arithmetic mean of the top five indicators. The sixteen descriptive indicators are
calculated based on the weighted sum of the scores obtained through the answers of
a survey carried out by companies (IST 2013).
MAESTRI Total Efficiency Framework (MAESTRI 2015), is a project of an Euro-
pean partnership that aims to advance the sustainability of European manufacturing
and process industries. MAESTRI is a total resource and energy efficiency manage-
ment system for process industries. The project intends to provide a management
system in the form of a flexible and scalable platform, through the implementation
of the Total Efficiency Framework. The general aim is to encourage an improvement
culture within process industries by supporting the decision-making process,
supporting improvement strategies, and assisting in the definition of priorities to
improve the company’s environmental and economic performance. Its validation

will be made in four real industrial companies from different activity sectors.
The Total Efficiency Framework is based on four key pillars, which are: (a) an
effective management system targeting the processes and continuous improvement;
(b) efficiency assessment tools to define improvement and optimization strategies
and support decision-making processes; (c) integration with a toolkit for Industrial
Symbiosis with a focus on material and energy exchange; (d) a software Platform,
founded in the Internet of Thing (IoT). It intends to simplify the implementation and
guarantee an integrated improvement process control. In practical terms, the goal of
MAESTRI is to build concepts and tools in order to achieve resource efficiency in
production system of any company, regardless of its dimension (MAESTRI 2015).
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is an independent international organiza-
tion that initiated sustainability reporting in 1997 (GRI 2016). GRI is a wide-ranging
system that comprises 91 indicators (the specific standard disclosures), structured in
three main categories (the three sustainability dimensions): the economic, environ-
mental and social aspects. The last one being subdivided in four social subcategories:
Labor practices and decent work, human rights, society and product responsibility.
They feature a modular, interrelated structure for reporting on a range of economic,
environmental and social impacts. Any company, or organization, willing to report
about its impacts, or display its contribution towards sustainable development, can
use them altogether. Sustainability reporting enables companies or organizations to
acknowledge their standing based on a wide range of sustainability issues, allowing
them to be more transparent about the risks and opportunities they face. A sus-
tainability report is a published report where a company or organization states the
economic, environmental and social impacts triggered by its daily activities. It also
describes the company’s or organization’s values and governance model, as well as,
the link between the strategy and the commitment to a sustainable global economy
(GRI 2016). GRI is a key platform to communicate the sustainability performance
and impacts, either positive or negative, and lead the companies and organizations
in their way to set goals and manage change effectively.
After a careful and thoughtful study and analysis of these frameworks, the authors
selected the GRI as the inspiring framework to support the BOPSE indicator design.
This selection is based on the fact that GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards are
the most widely adopted global standards for sustainability reporting.
4.2 Indicator Description
The Business Overall Performance and Sustainability Effectiveness (BOPSE)

indicator was designed with inspiration on the existing frameworks and indicators,
as presented in the previous section (Sect. 4.1). BOPSE is an integrated metric of
companies’ performance from a sustainability perspective. It intends to measure
the companies’ Lean-Green compliance, thus, exploits the Lean-Green production
synergies and is operationalized through an indicator that aggregates and combines
Economic (%) X Environmental (%) X Social (%) Availability (%) X Performance (%) X Quality (%)
5 16 13
Economic Performance Materials Employment
Net profit margin Materials used Effective contracted employees
Research, Development/Innova on Recycled input materials us ed Female employees
Reclaimed products Women in management
Market Presence Energy Employee turnover
Standard entry level wage Us eful Energy Occupa onal Health and Safety
Local senior management Renew able energy Abs enteeis m
Procurement Water Accidents
Spending on local suppliers Water us ed Fatalities
Recycled and reused water Training and Development
Biodiversity Budget in training and development
Biodiversity inves tment Training and development
Emissions Employees engagement
Direct GHG emissions (Scope 1) Local Communi es
Indirect GHG emissions (Scope 2) Employees engaged in volunteering
GHG emissions reduction Donations
Effluents and Waste Socioeconomic Compliance
Water dis charge Socioeconomic Compliance
Spills
Hazardous Industrial residues
Recycled residues
Environmental Compliance
Environmental Compliance
Sustainability (%) OEE (%)
BOPSE (%)
Fig. 1 BOPSE indicator general scheme with the main strands
Lean production and Green production features. This indicator weaves a number of
sustainability issues, spread over its three dimensions, with those embraced by the
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) indicator (Jonsson and Lesshammar 1999).
Therefore, the BOPSE indicator purpose is to evaluate the businesses effectiveness,
grounded on operational performance and sustainability compliance. It also aims
to identify both specific limitations and broader opportunities for the companies’
global improvement.
The BOPSE indicator is calculated by the arithmetic mean of the sustainability
and OEE strands:
BOPSE (Sustainability + OEE)/2
The BOPSE indicator general scheme is presented in Fig. 1, in order to under-

stand its constructs. The sustainability strand is supported by the Triple Bottom Line
(3BL) concept, considering the sustainability economic, environmental and social
dimensions.
Within each dimension, key indicators were identified, and within each key indi-
cator, descriptive indicators were defined (see Table 1). Overall, 15 key indicators
and 34 descriptive ones compose the BOPSE indicator.
The sustainability strand interconnects the three sustainability dimensions: Eco-
nomic, environmental and social and, is calculated as a product of each individual
dimension:
Sustainability (%) Economic (%) × Environmental (%) × Social (%)
Each sustainability dimension have the same degree of importance, i.e. the same
weight, within the sustainability strand. Key indicators were identified to describe
Table 1 Key indicators and descriptive indicators of sustainability strand

Sustainability Key indicators Descriptive indicators
dimension
Economic (Eco): 5 Economic performance Eco 1.1 Net profit margin
(Eco 1) Eco 1.2 Research, development/innovation
Market presence (Eco Eco 2.1 Standard entry level wage
2) Eco 2.2 Local senior management
Procurement (Eco 3) Eco 3.1 Spending on local suppliers
Environmental Materials (Env 1) Env 1.1 Materials used
(Env): 16 Env 1.2 Recycled input materials used
Env 1.3 Reclaimed products
Energy (Env 2) Env 2.1 Useful energy
Env 2.2 Renewable energy
Water (Env 3) Env 3.1 Water used
Env 3.2 Recycled and reused water
Biodiversity (Env 4) Env 4.1 Biodiversity investment
Emissions (Env 5) Env 5.1 Direct GHGemissions (Scope 1 )
Env 5.2 Indirect GHGemissions (Scope 2)
Env 5.3 GHG emissions reduction
Effluents and waste Env 6.1 Water discharge
(Env 6) Env 6.2 Spills
Env 6.3 Hazardous industria residues
Env 6.4 Recycled residues
Environmental Env 7.1 Environmental compliance
compliance (Env 7)
Soca (SDc): 13 Employment (Soc 1) Soc 1.1 Effective contracted employees
Soc 1.2 Female employees
Soc 1.3 Wómen in management
Soc 1.4 Employee turnover
Occupational heath Soc 2.1 Absenteeism
and safety (Soc 2) Soc 2.2 Accidents
Soc 2.3 Fatalities
Training and Soc 3.1 Budget in training and development
development (Soc 3) Soc 3.2 Training and development
Soc 3.3 Employees engagement
Local communities Soc 4.1 Employees engaged in volunteering
(Soc 4) Soc 4.2 Donations
Socioeconomic Soc 5.1 Socioeconomic compliance
compliance (Soc 5)
each dimension (see Table 1). Each dimension is calculated by the simple arith-
metic mean of the results obtained in the key indicators that compose it. Thus, the
calculation will be as:
Economic (Eco 1 + Eco 2 + Eco 3)/3
Environmental (Env 1 + Env 2 + Env 3 + Env 4 + Env 5 + Env 6 + Env 7)/7
Social (Soc 1 + Soc 2 + Soc 3 + Soc 4 + Soc 5)/5
For each key indicator, descriptive indicators have been selected (see Table 1),
as the most relevant and representative of each key indicator, according to authors.
Thus, each key indicator is calculated by the simple arithmetic mean of the results
obtained in the descriptive indicators that compose it or, in some cases, by a single
descriptive indicator. Each descriptive indicator result from the aggregation of essen-
tial information about the practices in sustainability terms and companies’ corporate
responsibility. The Key indicators are calculated as:
Eco 1 (Eco 1.1 + Eco 1.2)/2
Eco 2 (Eco 2.1 + Eco 2.2)/2
Eco 3 Eco 3.1
Env 1 (Env 1.1 + Env 1.2 + Env 1.3)/3
Env 2 (Env 2.1 + Env 2.2)/2
Env 3 (Env 3.1 + Env 3.2)/2
Env 4 Env 4.1
Env 5 (Env 5.1 + Env 5.2 + Env 5.3)/3
Env 6 (Env 6.1 + Env 6.2 + Env 6.3 + Env 6.4)/4
Env 7 Env 7.1
Soc 1 (Soc 1.1 + Soc 1.2 + Soc 1.3 + Soc 1.4)/4
Soc 2 (Soc 2.1 + Soc 2.2 + Soc 2.3)/3
Soc 3 (Soc 3.1 + Soc 3.2 + Soc 3.3)/3

Soc 4 (Soc 4.1 + Soc 4.2)/2
Soc 5 Soc 5.1
The Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) strand is calculated as a product of

the availability, performance and quality (Jonsson and Lesshammar 1999; Bamber
et al. 2003; Muchiri and Pintelon 2008; Almeanazel 2010; Gola and Nieoczym 2017).
OEE (%) Availability (%) × Performance (%) × Quality (%)
The BOPSE indicator is grounded on the OEE, as the OEE is a Lean tool
that considers the most important sources of manufacturing productivity losses and
places them into three categories: availability, performance and quality. This type of
calculation makes OEE a severe test. Availability measures the effective time avail-
able for production (the operating time), accounting the down time losses. Perfor-
mance measures the net operating time for producing, considering the speed losses
that cause the process to operate at less than the maximum possible speed. Quality
measures the produced pieces that meet the quality requirements (the fully productive
time), accounting for all quality losses, the ones that do not meet the requirements,
as well as, the ones that require rework. The goal is to maximize this fully productive
time.
One might say that the OEE is an indicator that measures the performance in a
three-dimensional way, because it reflects:
• the time the equipment has to run/produce;
• the established efficiency during operation, i.e. the ability to produce at nominal
rate;
• the product quality obtained by the process.
So, besides being a performance indicator, the OEE is also used for capacity
planning, process control, process improvement and calculation of production losses
costs, highlighting the seven Lean wastes (Ohno 1988). Therefore, the OEE was
selected for being considered a good Lean indicator, since it is an appropriate measure
for manufacturing organizations. Also, because it aims to identify the six big losses
within manufacturing systems and can be used either at machine, process line or
factory levels (Bamber et al. 2003). According to Zackrisson et al. (2017) the OEE,
and specially its constituent parts, are examples of indicators related to sustainability,
which may be valuable at the shop floor level (Zackrisson et al. 2017).
As already mentioned, for the sustainability strand calculation, each dimension
and key indicators were defined to have the exact same weight. However, the authors
consider that for some of the descriptive indicators, a distinct weighing system
might be put in place, if justified. For instance, in a specific sector of activity, it
might make sense to make partial adjustments to the way the descriptive indicators,
or even the key indicators, are reflected on the sustainability strand. For the same
reason, the authors also consider that particular descriptive indicators might be
omitted (or otherwise replaced with a more meaningful one) in the final calculation
of the indicator, given that the decision is grounded on sectorial consensus. In any
case, particular instantiations of the BOPSE model require wise judgment so as to
maintain temporal validity and sector wide comparability. The authors will likely
propose sector-related enhancements to the base BOPSE indicator in the future, in
order to be more feasibly applied to highly distinctive sectors of activity. It is also
envisaged that future work might include the dissemination of reference figures for
the BOPSE indicators, e.g. world class level, so that the companies might easily
position themselves on the Lean-Green lather.
In conclusion, the BOPSE indicator aims to measure the Lean-Green synergies,
by combining the OEE indicator, which mirrors the operations effectiveness, with
that of a Sustainability indicator, which breeds from the existing frameworks and
indicators, and, in turn, reflects the sustainable development compliance and effec-
tiveness. It is the authors’ intents that the BOPSE indicator will be universally applied
to companies and organizations. By the aforementioned, the authors consider that
the BOPSE indicator will guide companies to meet some of the SDGs, specifically
the 8th goal—“Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full
and productive employment and decent work for all” and the 12th goal—“Ensure
sustainable consumption and production patterns”.
4.3 Indicator Validation
The BOPSE validation will be made through two approaches: specialists’ valida-
tion and its application in real cases. The specialists’ validations have partly been
conducted. These were made through several meetings, to discuss and analyze the
relevance of the key indicators and descriptive indicators. The specialists belong to
the economic and the social, health and safety areas. A second stage of consultation
will be required when the application to real cases is performed. Applications to real
cases are also underway, with the aim of assessment of its relevance, conciseness
and simplicity of instantiation and application. This approach will likely allow the
consolidation of the BOPSE indicator.
5 Conclusion
This chapter follows the authors’ previous work in the investigation of the Lean-
Green integration (Moreira et al. 2010; Alves et al. 2016; Abreu et al. 2017). Apart
its intrinsic aptitude to improve the operations effectiveness, by resiliently removing
all waste forms at the shop floor level, Lean production holds a great potential
to make a positive contribution towards sustainability within the manufacturing
activity. At the same time, Lean production could actually benefit from a more
clear endorsement of the sustainability issues, given that, at least partly, some of
the environmental wastes (e.g. product emissions at use stage, pollutants release
at end-of-life, or simply energy related GHG emissions at the source) are outside
the daily concerns of the manufacturing activity, and for all purposes are hidden
wastes. Lean techniques have the potential to contribute to greener practices, thus
the synergetic relationship between Lean and Eco-efficiency, the Lean-Green link,
entails a possible contribution to the increasing challenges of modern societies.
This chapter reports on the design of the Business Overall Performance and
Sustainability Effectiveness indicator—the BOPSE indicator. The all new BOPSE
indicator is a Lean-Green indicator, meaning it encompasses Lean production
and Green production landscapes. It intends to assess the business effectiveness
by means of operational performance (through the Overall Equipment Effective-
ness) and sustainability compliance (through fifteen key indicators spread out by
thirty-four descriptive indicators). After a literature review in the Lean-Green and
sustainability approaches, the authors presented the background, context and critical
thinking, that mediated the setting, investigation and development of the BOPSE
indicator. The authors intent was to provide a practical mean, targeting companies
and organizations, to assess their Lean-Green compliance and effectiveness, which
should be regarded has a cornerstone to develop improved operations and strategies.
As future work, the BOPSE indicator will be validated in the manufacturing
context, in three distinct companies. Testing the indicator in varied manufacturing
contexts will allow to improve its practicality and, simultaneously, evaluate its con-
structs to consolidate the overall indicator, as well as evaluate the key and descriptive
indicators. The authors expect that this testing in a real setting will corroborate that
the BOPSE indicator aids the companies on steering their journey on the road to
Sustainable Development. Additional future work relates the need to research ways
to establish sector-wide reference levels, in a foreseeable rump-up use stage, so that
the companies can understand their Lean-Green rank and act accordingly.

UID/CEC/00319/2013.
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Using Lean and Green Indexes
to Measure Companies’ Performance
Helena Carvalho, Virgínia Helena Machado, Ana Paula Barroso,

Diana de Almeida and Virgílio Cruz-Machado
Abstract Companies are looking for innovative management paradigms to support

their cost and time reduction efforts to increase the efficiency of their processes.
The Lean paradigm has great relevance in the companies’ need to reduce waste,
particularly in manufacturing companies. On the other hand, waste reduction in
companies has gained a new dimension not only at the economic level but also
at the environmental level with the introduction of the Green paradigm. As such,
manufacturing companies have been adopting management practices to reduce the
impact of their activities on the environment and/or increase the efficiency of their
processes. The present chapter proposes two indexes, the Lean Index and the Green
Index, to enable the measurement of the performance of Portuguese manufacturing
companies relating to the implementation of Lean and Green practices. The data used
to create the Lean and Green indexes were obtained from the implementation of the
European Manufacturing Survey 2012 in Portugal. The survey questions related to the
implementation of Lean and Green practices are used as variables in the development
of the model for the two indexes. For the construction of representative expressions
of Lean Index and Green Indexes, factorial analysis was applied for assigning the
variables, weights and aggregation.
1 Introduction
To attain sustainable business development, companies are seeking manufacturing

technologies and manufacturing processes which have the potential to improve pro-
ductivity and/or to improve waste and pollution management in a life-cycle per-
spective (Kurdve et al. 2014). In this context, the non-technological innovations
play an essential complementary role namely in the design and management of pro-
cesses towards clean manufacturing and also enable more efficient manufacturing
processes. There is a particular concern with regard to the selection of the best set of
management practices used by manufacturing companies to increase their efficiency,
H. Carvalho (B) · V. H. Machado · A. P. Barroso · D. de Almeida · V. Cruz-Machado

UNIDEMI, Departamento de Engenharia Mecânica e Industrial, FCT/UNL, Caparica, Portugal
e-mail: hmlc@fct.unl.pt

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13515-7_10
294 H. Carvalho et al.
but at the same time, to fulfill the environmental goals. Lean and Green practices
have been adopted, at manufacturing and supply chain level, by companies world-
wide to improve their triple bottom line performance (Garza-Reyes 2015; Piercy and
Rich 2015; Govindan et al. 2014; Dües et al. 2013; Azevedo et al. 2012). The Lean
paradigm in manufacturing stipulates the attainment of continuous improvement of
the wastes’ elimination. Companies also have recognized the Green paradigm to
induce the reduction of companies’ costs through the more efficient use of resources
such as water, energy or raw materials. Lean and Green paradigm share a multiplic-
ity of common attributes (Dües et al. 2013): waste and waste reduction techniques,
people and organization, lead time reduction, supply chain relationship, key per-
formance indicators: service level improvement, a set of common implementation
practices and tools.
Despite the extensive research on the Lean management paradigm, studies have
not been developed that measure and evaluate the companies’ performance based on
the degree of implementation of the Lean practices they are adopting. In addition,
measuring the degree of implementation of Green practices in companies is a way of
companies to perceive the environmental impact of their activities, but few studies
focus on this subject. The present chapter analyzes Lean and Green practices adop-
tion in the context of Portuguese manufacturing companies. The main objective is
to propose Lean and Green composite indexes that will be used to measure the Por-
tuguese manufacturing companies’ performance in the implementation of practices
related to Lean and Green paradigms.
The indexes could be used by companies which need to benchmark their level of
implementation of Lean and Green practices with similar companies, and to define
improvement strategies to meet the challenges and constant changes in competitive
markets. The chapter is divided into two parts, one theoretical, presented in Sect. 2,
which addresses the topic of Lean and Green Manufacturing and provides the theo-
retical foundations for the construction of the indexes. The other, more practical, is
presented from Sect. 3 and aim at the construction of the Lean and Green indexes.
Section 3 begins with a brief description of the methodology used in the construction
of the indexes that is based on Lau (2011). The indexes are constructed using the data
obtained from the European Manufacturing Survey (EMS) in Portuguese companies,
whose characterization is performed in Sect. 4. In Sect. 5, for each paradigm, a com-
posite index is proposed. For each index, relevant practices representative of Lean
and Green paradigms in Portuguese companies are used. For assigning the practices
weights and following the proposed methodology the statistical technique Factorial
Analysis (FA) is applied using the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method to
extract the factors. Finally, in Sect. 6, the main conclusions are drawn.
Using Lean and Green Indexes to Measure Companies’ Performance 295
2 Background
2.1 Lean Manufacturing
Efficiency is a major goal of the manufacturing companies. The Lean paradigm

helps companies to achieve a high level of efficiency. It focuses on the systematic
disposal of companies’ operations through a set of practices of cooperative work,
fulfilling the purpose of producing goods and services according to the demand
rate (Yang et al. 2011). Lean is a set of useful tools (practices) in identifying and
constant elimination of waste (Kumar and Abuthakeer 2012). The application of Lean
in business considers the demand for increasing value-added activities, by waste
reduction to maintaining profitability and satisfying customer’s needs. The Lean
manufacturing can be explained briefly as a set of concepts such as Just-In-Time (JIT),
Total Quality Management (TQM), Total Preventive Maintenance (TPM), Value
Stream Mapping (VSM), Human Resource Management, Pull production, Takt time,
or Productive Maintenance with objective of reducing waste and non-value added
activities.
Despite the fact that Lean has been studied by several authors as Lewis (2000)
and Hines et al. (2004), its definition still generates some disagreement and confu-
sion (Pettersen 2009). These lead to difficulties in assessing the effectiveness of the
implementation of the concept itself in companies. Dennis (2007) refers to Lean as
being responsible for doing more with less. In other words, Lean allows producing
more using fewer resources, meaning less time, space, human effort, machinery,
and materials, not forgetting the importance of meeting customer requirements. Feld
(2001) states that Lean is based on five key elements: Manufacturing Flow, Organi-
zation, Process control, Metrics, and Logistics. Dennis (2007) used a Lean house as
an analogy to illustrate this integration between Lean Manufacturing and its related
practices (Fig. 1). The Lean house could be described as follows:
• Lean Manufacturing system basis. Stability and standardization are the basis of
Lean System Construction. There is no improvement without stabilizing the 4 M’s,
i.e., Man/woman, Machine, Materials and the Method. 5S system is a concept
related to the development of a clean, well-ordered workplace and comprises
the following actions: 1. Sort out what isn’t necessary (for example parts, work
in progress, scrap, storage shelves, documents); 2. Set in order the remaining
materials, minimizing the waste motion; 3. Shine (and inspect). This item also
includes the inspection; 4. Sustain the 5S practices developed. 5. Standardize the
work.
• Lean Manufacturing system walls. JIT means producing the right item at the
right time, in the right quantity. This principle is based on specific rules: i. Produce
just what the customer ordered; ii. Placement of demand for that work can progress
smoothly by the plant; iii. Link all processes to customer demand using simple
visual tools (Kanbans); and iv. Maximize the people and machinery flexibility.
Jidoka is the other pillar of the Lean system. Toyota coined this as “automation
Fig. 1 The lean manufacturing system. Adapted from Dennis (2007)
with a human mind”. It provides to the operator or the machine, autonomy to be

able to stop the process when an abnormality is detected. The main idea is to
prevent the generation and propagation of defects, eliminating any anomalies in
processing and production flow.
• Lean Manufacturing system core. It is based on the involvement of team mem-
bers. Supervisors and managers have essential roles in its implementation, must
underpin and support the development and participation of all workers.
• Lean Manufacturing roof. The last module of the Lean house, the roof, is related
to customer focus, which means delivering high-quality products at the lowest
possible cost and following a short lead time.
Marodin and Saurin (2013) identified factors that influence the implementation of
37 Lean practices and presented them in four subcategories: work organization, exter-
nal environment, technology, and human factors. Sundar et al. (2014) also provide
an overview of 19 Lean manufacturing implementation elements. Table 1 provides a
list of Lean manufacturing practices compiled from Marodin and Saurin (2013) and
Sundar et al. (2014) works.
2.2 Green Manufacturing
Companies have increasingly taken into account the concerns of its customers with
the environment. Asefeso (2013) states that the customer requirements for environ-
mental information about the products they buy forced companies to make efforts
Table 1 Lean practices

Lean manufacturing practices
Ability and responsiveness to Flow Manufacturing Quick changeover/Single
product mix variability Focused factory group minute exchange of die
Autonomation (Jidoka) technology (SMED)
Bottleneck process/constrain Housekeeping (5S) Smoothed (leveled)
management Kanban production/Heijunka
Cellular manufacturing (CM) Line balancing Standardized work
Commercial actions to stabilize Lot size reduction Statistical process control
demand Multifunctional product (SPC)
Concurrent engineering development teams Suppliers delivery JIT
Customer involvement Multi-functionality and Suppliers involvement in
Continuous improvement cross-training the long-term
(CI)/Six Sigma/Kaizen One-piece-flow (continuous Takt time
Departments working integrated flow) Team leader
Design for manufacturability Parts standardiza- Teamwork
Employee perception (feedback tion/modularization Total production
of performance metrics, e.g., Process standardization maintenance (TPM)
productivity, quality) Pull production/Takt time U-line manufacturing
Feedback to suppliers Quality at the source/total system
quality management (TQM) Value stream mapping
Root cause analysis for (VSM)
problem-solving Visual management
Safety at work Workforce
Scheduling autonomy/empowerment
Setup reduction Workforce involvement in
solving problems
Workforce recognition and
reward
to meet the concerns of customers. Also, there are apprehensions related to the
availability of natural resources, energy cost, cost of product disposal, waste man-
agement, among other, which brings economic consequences for companies. Green
manufacturing can be effective to achieve resource efficiency but also cost reduc-
tion. Although the benefits achieved with the implementation of Green practices are
already quite widespread (Paul et al. 2014), there are still companies who are unaware
of its potential benefits (Asefeso 2013).
To define what represents the Green manufacturing it is important to understand
what refers to the Green concept. Dornfeld et al. (2013) defined Green as a concern
with environmentalism, caring for the preservation of environmental quality and, as
such, the approach to issues such as recycling or the ability of the materials used
to be biodegradable and non-polluting. The Green manufacturing covers a group of
strategies or techniques related to the environment that is integrated into management
(Deif 2011). It is regarded as a management policy in a company which can be
implemented using the following principles (Asefeso 2013):
• The use of raw ingredients “which can and does include organic ingredients if
pricing is reasonable as much as possible if the finished product is biodegradable”.
• Does not use hazardous chemical conditioners, chemical anti-bacterial or chemical

preservatives if any of the products that might end up in the waste system (landfills)
or in the environment.
• Provide a cleaner source of energy through new technology. “This will decrease
energy consumption”.
• Conversion of pollutants and wastes into by-products and promotion of their use.
• Use of process improvements to maximize the yield and the minimization of
produced waste.
The Green manufacturing employs various objectives, principles, and techniques,
innovations and technologies (e.g., production with lower consumption of materi-
als and energy, or the replacement of raw materials for non-toxic and recyclable
products) (Deif 2011). Since manufacturing activities represent a significant share
of total energy expenditure, the Green manufacturing plays a crucial role in reducing
atmospheric emissions enhancing not only the rapid growth of renewable energy and
clean technologies but also assumes a beneficial role at economic and social level
(Li et al. 2013). Green manufacturing embraces a wide range of productive activities
that range from the development of Green technology products, the implementation
of advanced manufacturing and production technologies, the introduction of energy
efficient technologies, to the design of environmentally friendly manufacturing pro-
cesses and systems (Shrivastava and Shrivastava 2017).
Pampanelli et al. (2014) suggest three central practices associated with the Green
paradigm:
• Cleaner production: it is characterized as a preventive initiative and is designed
to minimize waste and emissions and maximize productive output. Strategies to
reduce emissions and waste in the process are outlined by analyzing the flow of
materials and energy. With these actions can be avoided large waste in materials,
water, gases or heat.
• Eco-efficiency: it focuses on increasing productivity using fewer resources, so
less waste and pollution. This is a comprehensive concept and is related with other
critical factors such as the reduction of the intensity and toxicity of material for
goods and services, increased use of recyclable materials, reducing energy costs
and maximizing the utilization of resources.
• Life cycle analysis (LCA): it captures the complex interaction between a product
and the environment from cradle to cradle, providing in-depth data on environ-
mental impacts. It supports the identification of which activities, processes, and
materials create higher negative the environmental impacts.
Energy consumption management is a major concern of Green manufacturing.
Li et al. (2013) reported the innovations in automation for startup and shutdown of
machines as an element of great importance with the Green manufacturing; they
allow programmed controlling and reducing of energy consumption. The ISO 50001
marks the worldwide introduction of the Energy Management System (ENMs). ISO
14031 standards refer to Environmental Performance Evaluation (EPE), a continu-
ous process of collecting and evaluating data and information to provide a current
Table 2 Green manufacturing practices

Green practices
Eco-design/Green product design Minimize heating rate in the process
Emissions reduction Use pollution control technologies
Energy saving/management Product life-cycle value design
Environment protection Quality control
Green operations Recycle/reuse of process of waste raw
Green supply chain materials
ISO 14000 Reduce, reuse, remanufacturing, recycle
ISO 50001 Research/innovation raw materials
Leadership in energy and environmental design Waste utilization/minimization
(LEED)
assessment of the performance as well as performance trends over time. It helps

companies to determinate the subjects to be treated as significant or establish the
criteria for their environmental performance and use it to assess their performance.
Chuang and Yang (2014) provide an overview of Green manufacturing dimen-
sions—green design, green process and green packing—cand respective factors (i.e.
manufacturing practices), as well as the 64 assessment factors. Paul et al. (2014) pro-
vide a comprehensive review of Green manufacturing highlighting Environmental
Management Tools, Sustainable Manufacturing, Sustainable Green Operations and
Green Supply Chain Management as important pillars for the implementation of this
paradigm. Table 2 provides an overview of Green manufacturing practices.
2.3 Performance Measurement
Relative performance evaluation is important to help the companies to be able to

monitor their performance. Feeny and Rogers (2003) suggest that the comparative
analysis of the group may involve a comparative process between companies’ effort
in relation to their results. On the other hand, it may also be interesting to do this
by analyzing the relative comparison between business parameters. Finally, it may
also be interesting to assess which company has a superior performance compared
to some established limit for best practices.
Some studies have been undertaken regarding the measurement of corporate per-
formance for some management practices. The Lean practices mentioned in Table 1,
focus on areas and particular aspects of the production process with the objective
of eliminating waste while increasing quality levels and reducing the costs and time
associated with the process (Kumar and Abuthakeer 2012). So, it is relevant a study
about the quantification of the application of practices associated with the Lean,
which considers all the tools/practices considered to be significant for this purpose.
Similarly, to the Lean paradigm, it is also essential to identify the practices that
allow the definition of the Green paradigm application in a company. The practices
listed in Table 2, are a way for application, analysis, and expansion, of the Green
manufacturing paradigm itself through the company.
Lau (2011) and Azevedo et al. (2013) had developed indexes to assess the com-
panies’ performance in the Lean and Green practices implementation: Next, a brief
review of each model will be presented:
• Lau (2011)—Green Logistics Performance Index (GLPI):
– Objective: compare the Green Logistic Performance of two countries (China, a
developing country, and Japan, a developed country).
– Data: data from a survey of Green Logistics Performance practices of home
electronic appliance (HEA) was used. The major research focus is placed on
three major areas of logistics in the HEA supply chain, i.e., purchases, packag-
ing, and transport, where the Green activities can bring meaningful benefits.
– Methodology: The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to obtain the
weights to develop the GLPI (Green Logistics Performance Index). It comprises
15 GL activities represented by A1, …, A15, the variables can take values from a
five-point scale. The performance scores for activities A1–A15 were aggregated
in a total performance Score (S) as presented in Eq. (1):
S 0,924 A1 + 0,979 A2 + 0,951 A3 + 0,688 A4 + 0,862 A5 + 0,912 A6

+ 0,922 A7 + 0,842 A8 + 0,765 A9 + 0,649 A10 + 0,777 A11 + 0,974 A12
+ 0,949 A13 + 0,864 A14 + 0,880 A15 (1)
In a subsequent step, the Smin and Smax , respectively the minimum and maximum
values that S can achieve were computed, and expression of GLPI obtained according
to Eq. (2):
(S − Smin ) × 100
GLPI (2)
Smax − Smin
• Azevedo et al. (2013)—Ecosilient Index

– Objective: assess the greenness and resilience of automotive companies and the
associated supply chain.
– Data: data related to the importance of Green and Resilience supply chain prac-
tices were collected using the Delphi technique. Data related to the practices’
implementation level was collected in a case study setting.
– Methodology: The Delphi technique in order to obtain the weights for the Green
and Resilience paradigms of the supply chain. A composite indicator is proposed
as described in Eq. (3):
Ecosilient j f [w R × (B R ) j , wG × (BG ) j ] (3)
where:
(Bx )j represents the company j behavior related to the paradigm x (x G or x R).

wR and wG symbolize the weight of green and resilient paradigms. The weight
values represent the significance of each paradigm for supply chain competitiveness.
3 Composite Index Construction
In this section, the basis of composite indexes is presented, and the advantages and
disadvantages of the use of them are identified. Next, the methodology for construct-
ing the Lean and Green composite indexes is presented and briefly explained.
3.1 The Basis of Composite Indexes
In general, an indicator is a quantitative or qualitative measure of an observed fact. If

in each area the fact is measured across several companies, it can be used to rank them
or define relative positions. When the measuring is performed at regular intervals, it
is possible to observe the evolutionary trends of the fact associated with the indicator
through the time.
Composite indexes can be obtained from aggregate indicators that comprise indi-
vidual indicators and respective weights (Nardo et al. 2008). A composite index is
defined by weighted elements and does not suffer from disorders, which means that
the composite index is an exact linear combination of composite variables indicators.
In the context of this chapter, Lean and Green practices are those that have relevance
to the construction of the composite indexes.
Composite indexes can be useful in politics and benchmark or performance monitor-
ing priorities. A composite index is designed by compiling individual indicators into
a single index based on a mathematical model. The composite index shall measure
multidimensional concepts, such as competitiveness, industrialization, and sustain-
ability, which cannot be achieved with a simple indicator analysis (Nardo et al. 2008).
Composite indexes have been used in comparative analyses of countries on a wide
range of topics, because of their easy interpretation. Among the more recently studied
topics, stand out those related to social, human, environmental and safety aspects, as
well as those related to globalization.
Several institutions, such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) and European Commission (Nardo et al. 2008), and aca-
demics, such as Lau (2011), have been developing methodologies for constructing
composite indexes and applying them. The developed indexes are based on several
indicators and sub-index that when aggregated according to an analytical methodol-
ogy aim to score the companies involved. The scores derived from these composite
indexes when applied to a company in several moments of time can be used to ana-
lyze/evaluate their evolution/involution within the scope of what is measured by each
composite index.
Table 3 Advantages and disadvantages of composite indexes. Adapted from Saisana and Tarantola
(2002)
Advantages Disadvantages
Can summarize complex and multi-dimensional Can lead to misleading messages about the
realities with a view to supporting decision results or position of the company, if
makers misinterpreted
Easy to interpret than a battery of many separate Can lead simplistic policies
indicators May be misused, e.g., to support the desired
Can assess the progress of companies over time policy, if the construction process is not
Reduce the size of a set of indicators without transparent and/or lacks sound statistical or
dropping the underlying information base conceptual principles
Make it possible to include more information May disguise serious failings in some
within the existing size limit dimensions and increase the difficulty of
Facilitate communication through companies’ identifying proper remedial action if the
hierarchy and promote accountability construction process is not transparent
Enable users to compare complex dimensions Can lead to inadequate management policies
effectively if dimensions of performance that are
difficult to measure are ignored
There are some advantages in the use of composite indexes (Nardo et al. 2008).
When using composite indexes, it is possible to synthesize complex and multidimen-
sional situations, allowing to help in decision making. They are easy to interpret,
especially when compared with many indicators that need to be analyzed separately.
With its implementation, it is possible to reduce the size of the initial set of indica-
tors without losing the basic underlying information. The possibility of measuring
progress over time is another advantage. However, it can be stated that one of the
major advantages of using them is that they can provide users with the ability to
compare complex dimensions adequately. Advantages and disadvantages of creat-
ing and using composite indexes for comparisons and country rank performance in
areas such as industrial competitiveness, sustainable development, globalization, and
innovation are summarized in Saisana and Tarantola (2002). These advantages and
disadvantages adapted to the business context can be found in Table 3.
3.2 A Composite Index Construction Methodology
The methodology of index construction and especially the quality of the structure
and the data used will influence the quality and robustness of the index construction
and analysis.
Composite indexes are typically mathematical models which are highly dependent
on the method used in their development rather than by universal scientific guiding
rules. Thus, existing models are justified by their ability to fulfill the intended purpose
and by their accreditation by the scientific community through peer acceptance. To
start the development of a composite index, it is necessary that the issues related to the
Fig. 2 Methodology for developing the lean and green composite indexes. Adapted from Lau
(2011)
methodology are clearly comprehensive and well defined to avoid data manipulation
in the analysis.
In this chapter, composite indexes will be developed following the methodology
for the construction of the indexes presented in Fig. 2, which is based on the one
proposed by Lau (2011). Both the Lean and Green practices that served as the basis
for the indexes’ development as well as the data for each practice were derived from
the implementation of the European Manufacturing Survey (EMS 2012) in Portugal
in 2012.
(a) Selection of management practices (variables)
To assist in the selection of the practices to be included in the composite indexes’ con-
struction, the EMS questionnaire used in 2012 was analyzed. This analysis provides
an overview of the relevant management practices in the European manufacturing
context, with respect to Lean and Green paradigms. Thus, for each paradigm, the
relevant management practices adopted by the companies are selected, which will
be designated by variables from now on.
(b) Data collection
After selecting the variables, the data must be collected. The results of the survey
applied in Portugal in 2012 were used.
(c) Analysis of the variables regarding the use of PCA
Principal Component Analysis (PCA) technique, reported as a special case of Factor

Analysis (FA), aims to assign weights to each variable, which will be used to construct
the Lean and Green composite indexes. However, a robust application of PCA/FA
techniques involves some conditions concerning the number of cases under study for
each variable. To obtain reliable results, there must be for each variable a minimal
number of cases providing usable data for the analysis, although methodologists’
opinions differ on this minimal number. Alternative arbitrary rules of thumb are
used to assure the conditions of the PCA/FA application to the data set. The rules
are not mutually exclusive and different authors apply them in different ways. The
following rules of thumb from Nardo et al. (2008) were used:
• Rule of 10. There should be at least 10 cases for each variable.
• 3:1 ratio. The cases-to-variables ratio should be no lower than 3.
• Rule of 100: The number of cases should be the larger of “5 × number of variables”
and 100.
If all the assumptions are not valid, it will be necessary to find another technique
for constructing the composite index; otherwise, it will then be constructed based on
the sample resulting from the manufacturing sector of Portugal and applying PCA
technique.
(d) Determine weights of variables
When there are some of the variables correlated with one another PCA technique
as a variable reduction procedure is useful. In PCA technique the total number of
variables in the model is reduced to a lower set of uncorrelated principal components.
So, it is useful in indexes construction since it can be used to determine the weights
for each variable under study, which are believed to be correlated. According to Lau
(2011), PCA technique provides an approach for defining weights less biased than
other subjective weighting methods, such as opinion polls. Moreover, the author
states that the PCA technique is also able to point out the amount of variation in the
data explained by the resulting composite index indicating how representative it is.
In general, the four main objectives for applying the PCA technique are as follows
(Abdi and Williams 2010):
1. Extract the most important information from the data set;
2. Compress the size of the data set by keeping only the important information;
3. Simplify the dataset description; and
4. Analyze the observations and the variables structure.
To determine the variable weights, a set of four steps is necessary.
In the first step is determined the degree of correlation of the variables. The
correlation matrix among all them is calculated (Petroni and Braglia 2000).
In the second step, the Bartlett’s sphericity test and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure
of sampling adequacy (KMO) are calculated. Bartlett’s sphericity test and KMO
are two statistical procedures for assessing the quality of the correlation between
variables (Pestana and Gageiro 2005).
Table 4 Classification for Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure. Adapted from Pestana and Gageiro (2005)
and Field (2009)
KMO >0.9 0.8–0.9 0.7–0.8 0.6–0.7 0.5–0.6 <0.5
measure
Classification Very Good Median Reasonable Bad Unacceptable
good
The Bartlett’s sphericity test allows testing if the correlation matrix is an identity
matrix, i.e., all variables are uncorrelated. It can be interpreted from the significance
value (Sig) determined by the statistical packages. If the Sig value provided is less
than 0.001 (Petroni and Braglia 2000), there are correlations between variables.
The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure allows to confirm whether the data set is suit-
able to be analyzed by FA techniques. This statistic ranges from zero to one (Pestana
and Gageiro 2005). When it is close to 1 partial correlation coefficients are small,
and FA is suitable. Values of KMO are appointed by categories according to Pestana
and Gageiro (2005), and they will be used in this study (Table 4).
In the third step, the principal components are determined. The first principal com-
ponent has the largest variance of the data. The first principal component represents
the maximum possible proportion of the variance. The second principal component
represents the maximum possible variation of the remaining, and so on, until the last
principal component which absorbs all the remaining variance (Nardo et al. 2008).
The principal components that represent the maximum variation are considered in the
next step while the others are discarded. To decide how many principal components
should be extracted from data, there are many criteria, the Latent Root criterion or
Kaiser’s Rule, and the Scree test, among others. Based on Kaiser’s Rule, significant
principal components are those having latent roots or eigenvalues greater than 1 (Hair
et al. 1990). The Scree test criterion is based on a graph in which are plotting the
eigenvalues as a function of the number of components in their order of extraction.
Typically, the graph curve has a strong initial slope and then slowly becomes an
approximately horizontal line (Jolliffe 2002). The point at which the curve begins to
straighten out is considered as the last of the principal components to be extracted.
There is no consensus on the percentage of total variance that the extracted prin-
cipal components should retain. While in the natural sciences at least 95% of the
total variance should be achieved, in the social sciences the results that account for
about 60% of the total variance, or sometimes even less, are very satisfactory (Hair
et al. 1990).
After deciding how many principal components should be retained, the compo-
nent loadings that are the correlation coefficients between the variables (rows) and
components (columns) are determined.
To make the output easier to analyze, some statistical packages allow removing
the low correlation values, which can be considered unimportant and a source of
entropy in the analysis. In this case, correlation values equal to or less than a specific
value that is probably not significant are not presented.
In the fourth step, the principal components are rotated to make them easier to
interpret. There are two types of rotation, the oblique rotation when there is no need
for orthogonality and the orthogonal rotation when the new axes are orthogonal (Abdi
and Williams 2010).
In the oblique rotation, the components are correlated and to interpret them it
is necessary to consider both the correlation matrix and the loadings, which makes
interpretation difficult. Thus, the orthogonal rotation is the most popular rotation
method, giving rise to uncorrelated components. Each component is interpreted from
their loadings, which take values between −1 and +1. Varimax, Quartimax, and
Equamax are examples of orthogonal rotation methods, with Varimax rotation being
the most common (Nardo et al. 2008).
The Varimax rotation tends to drive at least some of the loadings in each component
towards zero. After rotation, it is possible to get some high loadings, close to −1
or +1, which means that negative or positive associations between variables and
components exist. Loadings near to 0 indicate clearly that there is no association,
pointing out a clear distinction between them.
From the rotated component matrix, the largest load of each variable identifies
the principal component to which the variable is most associated with and therefore
helps to cluster the variables by component. The joint analysis of all the variables that
are associated to each component may allow in a later stage to understand how these
variables interact and condition the behavior of the composite index they originated,
and thus help in decision making.
The largest load of each variable from the rotated component matrix is the weight
that will be associated with each and used to define the Total Performance Score.
(e) Define expression of total performance score
The weight of each variable, as previously determined, is used to calculate the Total
Performance Score (S), which is defined by the weighted sum of all variables using
the weight associated with each one. Thus, in the context under study, the Total
Performance Score for Lean or Total Lean Performance Score (SL) and the Total
Performance Score for Green or Total Green Performance Score (SG), when deter-
mined, provide the assessed company with the corresponding performance value
related to the level of implementation of the Lean and Green practices, respectively.
(f) Determine the maximum and minimum values of total performance score
The overall score of S depends on the variables values, and it varies from the absolute
minimum (Smin) and maximum (Smax) values, when all variables take the minimum
value and the maximum value, respectively.
(g) Define expression of the composite index
To make the S for a company easily interpretable, it must be converted in such a
way that it ranges between a minimum value (m) and a maximum value (M). The
composite index (I) is the value of S converted in the interval [m, M]. Considering
the interval [0, 10], i.e., a ranging from 0 to 10, the index is determined using Eq. 4.
(S − Smin ) × 10
I (4)
Smax − Smin
The value of the index I score the company in a range from 0 to 10 points, where
the value 10 corresponds to the highest level of implementation of the practices
underlying the index and the value 0 means that the company does not implement
any of these practices.
4 Dataset
To construct the Green and Lean indexes will be used a data set obtained from the
implementation of the EMS (2012) in Portugal.
4.1 The European Manufacturing Survey
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation (ISI) had created
the Modernization of Production survey in 2001. To complement it in some areas
that were previously not considered in innovation surveys, they gave it a higher
level of detail by internationalizing research by creating a European-wide survey,
the European Manufacturing Survey (EMS). Currently, the EMS is managed by a
consortium of research institutes and universities in countries across Europe and also
China and Brazil. The Competence Center Industry and service innovations at the
Fraunhofer coordinate this group.
The purpose of the EMS is to obtain internationally comparable data through
a questionnaire, translated into the official language of each participating country,
using a standardized method of information processing. The EMS survey focuses
on a wide range of indicators, such as new products, services, processes and techni-
cal concepts and organizational processes. The questions about these indicators are
measured and standardized in all participating countries, which aims to contribute
to the standardization of the use of information on organizational and technological
subjects. Thus, the EMS provides a global view of the adoption of technologies in
the European manufacturing sector, as reliable, comprehensive and compatible data
is continuously obtained by maintaining a common set of questions in the question-
naires implemented in all participating countries (Zimper 2013).
Since 2012 Portugal became a member of the EMS multinational consortium
country by joining the UNIDEMI—Unit for Research and Development in Mechan-
ical and Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Science and Technology, New University
of Lisbon.
Table 5 Number of
Number of employees 2011 Turnover (106 e)
companies by number of
employees and 2011 turnover [20–50] ]50–250] >250 ≤10 ]10–50] >50
40% 48% 11% 60% 24% 16%
4.2 The European Manufacturing Survey 2012 in Portugal
The dataset used in this study comes from the EMS (2012), applied for the first time
to manufacturing companies in Portugal. The data collected are related to the imple-
mentation of innovative technologies in production, organizational concepts, and
services in products that impact on the modernization of Portuguese manufacturing
companies.
The survey was sent via the Internet to 2370 Portuguese companies with 20 or
more employees, and 62 valid responses were obtained, corresponding to a response
rate of 2.6%. Approximately 60% of survey respondents have the position of General
Director or Production Manager, and about 16% of the companies produce products
for both industrial and business customers. In 2011, the respondent companies had
a turnover of between 0.7 and 3500 million euros, with an average of 83.7 and a
standard deviation of 445.5 million euros.
The distribution of respondent companies concerning the number of employees
and their amounts of business in 2011 are presented in Table 5.
5 Lean and Green Composite Indexes
In this section, Lean and Green composite indexes will be constructed using the
methodology presented in Sect. 3.2 and the data set collected from the implementation
of the EMS 2012 in Portugal.
Data analysis was conducted using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences
20 (SPSS) software.
5.1 Selection of the Lean and Green Practices
To model Lean and Green indexes only the relevant EMS (2012) issues to the two
paradigms were considered. Thus, for the Lean manufacturing paradigm nine prac-
tices were selected as variables, as follows: Value Stream Mapping/Design (LP1),
Production controlling by pull principles (LP2), Methods for optimizing of change
over time (LP3), Total Preventive Maintenance (LP4), Total Quality Management
(LP5), Method of 5S (LP6), Standardized and detailed work instruction (LP7), Meth-
ods for continuous process improvement (LP8), and Six Sigma (LP9) (Table 6).
Table 6 Lean and green variables used in the composite indexes

Lean variable Green variable
LP1 Value stream mapping/design GP1 Control system for shutdown of
machines in off-peak periods
LP2 Production controlling by pull GP2 Recuperation of kinetic and process
principles energy
LP3 Methods for optimizing of change GP3 Combined cold, heat, and power
over time
LP4 Total preventive maintenance GP4 ISO 14031 certification
LP5 Total quality management GP5 ISO 50001:2011 certification
LP6 Method of 5S
LP7 Standardized and detailed work
instruction
LP8 Methods for continuous process
improvement
LP9 Six Sigma
Table 7 Rules of thumb applied to the dataset

Rule Variable
Lean Fulfills Green Fulfills
√
Rule of C/V ≥ 10 (62/9 ) 6.9 < × (62/5 ) 12.4 >
10 10 10
√ √
3:1 ratio C/V ≥ 3 6.9 > 3 12.4 > 3
Rule of C > 5 V and C > 62 > 45 and × 62 > 25 and 62 < ×
100 100 62 < 100 100
Number
√ of cases (C): 62; Number of variables (V): Lean—9; Green—5
Notes —Fulfills; ×—No fulfills
For characterizing the Green Manufacturing paradigm five practices or variables

were selected, namely: Control system for shutdown of machines in off-peak peri-
ods (GP1), Recuperation of kinetic and process energy (GP2), Combined cold,
heat and power (Bi-/Tri-generation) (GP3), ISO 14031 certification (GP4), and ISO
50001:2011 certification (GP5).
5.2 Dataset and Rules of Thumb
Considering the sixty-two EMS (2012) answers, which will be the cases under study,
the nine Lean variables and the five Green variables under analysis, it can be noted
that data meet some of the rules of thumb (Nardo et al. 2008) guaranteeing the
existence of enough cases to apply the FA method (Table 7).
Table 8 Lean variables correlation matrix

LP1 LP2 LP3 LP4 LP5 LP6 LP7 LP8 LP9
LP1 1.000 0.270 0.312 0.225 0.349 0.129 0.127 0.238 0.352
LP2 1.000 0.430 0.439 0.511 0.285 0.363 0.259 0.332
LP3 1.000 0.594 0.567 0.542 0.336 0.415 0.415
LP4 1.000 0.559 0.354 0.498 0.380 0.303
LP5 1.000 0.348 0.319 0.389 0.533
LP6 1.000 0.468 0.445 0.465
LP7 1.000 0.358 0.353
LP8 1.000 0.419
LP9 1.000
Table 9 Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin 0.832
and Bartlett’s tests results for
measure
lean practices
Bartlett’s test of Approx. Chi-Square 183.669
sphericity
Degrees of freedom 36
Sig 0.000
5.3 Lean Index
The analysis of the Lean variables regarding the use of PCA begins with the corre-
lation matrix of them (Table 8).
In case the variables are measured at very different scales, to prevent a variable
having undue influence on the principal components, the variables must be standard-
ized at the beginning of the analysis.
The Bartlett’s sphericity test is significant (Sig < 0.001) suggesting that the corre-
lation matrix is an identity matrix. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure (0.832)
suggests good adequacy of the sample for PCA application (Table 9). As the sig-
nificance level is less than 0.001 and the KMO measure of sampling adequacy is
greater than 0.8, the data set is considered suitable to be analyzed by PCA technique
to determine the weights of the variable.
To determine the principal components of the data set the eigenvalue and the
variance of each component are calculated (Table 10).
Based on the Latent Root criterion or Kaiser criterion, the first two principal com-
ponents (principal component L1 and principal component L2) can be observed, as
they have an eigenvalue higher than 1. Using a criterion that selects the principal
components based on the cumulative percentage of the variance, these two compo-
nents also appear to be satisfactory since they account for around 60% of the total
variance explained. The analysis of the Scree plot (Fig. 3) also defends the selection
of principal component L1 and principal component L2.
Table 10 Total variance

Principal component Eigenvalue Variance (%)
explained by principal
components of lean variables Relative Cumulative
L1 4.103 45.588 45.588
L2 1.030 11.447 57.035
L3 0.890 9.886 66.921
L4 0.666 7.399 74.320
L5 0.631 7.016 81.336
L6 0.574 6.374 87.710
L7 0.522 5.798 93.508
L8 0.311 3.450 96.958
L9 0.274 3.042 100.000
Fig. 3 Eigenvalue versus 4,5

principal components of lean 4,0
variables 3,5
3,0
Eigenvalue
2,5
2,0
1,5
1,0
0,5
0,0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Component
Table 11 presents the component loadings of Lean variables. High and moder-
ate component loadings (>0.50) indicate how the Lean variables are related to the
principal components. SPSS has the option of not present any of the component
loadings that are equal or less to a specific value, meaning there is no correlation.
Thus, component loadings equal or less to 0.3 were removed from the matrix.
For easy interpretation of the components a rotation method, the Varimax with
Kaiser normalization, is applied to the matrix. From the matrix after the Varimax
rotation, the largest load found for each variable identifies the principal component
to which the variable is most associated with.
The variables (or Lean practices—from LP1 to LP9) related to each principal
component (principal component L1 and principal component L2) are identified in
Table 12.
Representing the components after rotation can also be intuitive support for the
allocation of variables to components. The interpretation is simple when there are
only two components being analyzed. Representing the component 2 versus the
component 1 for interpretation only is necessary to consider those variables that are
Table 11 Component loadings of lean variables

Lean variable Principal component Rotated component
L1 L2 L1 L2
LP1 0.456 0.696 0.826
LP2 0.642 0.365 0.562
LP3 0.780 0.588 0.513
LP4 0.736 0.616 0.411
LP5 0.771 0.414 0.705
LP6 0.675 −0.430 0.793
LP7 0.630 −0.445 0.768
LP8 0.642 0.603
LP9 0.689 0.447 0.538
Table 12 Lean practices associated to each Lean principal component

Principal component L1 Principal component L2
Methods for optimizing of change over time Value stream mapping/design
Total preventive maintenance Production controlling by pull principles
Method of 5S Total quality management
Standardized and detailed work instruction Six Sigma
Methods for continuous process improvement
near to the horizontal line to identify the variables that belong to the component 1.
On the other hand, those who are near to the vertical axis belong to component 2.
Concerning the nine Lean practices, the Total Lean Performance Score (SL ) of
a company is determined based on the largest rotated component of each variable
(Eq. 5).
SL 0.826LP1 + 0.562LP2 + 0.588LP3 + 0.616LP4 + 0.705LP5

+ 0.793LP6 + 0.768LP7 + 0.603LP8 + 0.538L9 (5)
According to the approach followed by Lau (2011), the construction of the Lean
index requires the extreme values of SL . Once all variables were classified using
scales ranging from 0 to 3, the minimum value of SL is 0 (S Lmin 0), and the
maximum is 17.997 (S Lmax 17.997). The maximum value of S Lmax is the sum of
the products of each variable score by the maximum value (3). For example, the
maximum contribution of LP1 is 2.478, since its weight is 0.826 and its maximum
value is 3.
The Lean Index (LI) is derived from the normalization of the Total Lean Perfor-
mance Score (S L ) to a 10-point scale (Eq. 6).
Table 13 Kaiser-Meyer-
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure 0.555
Olkin measure and Bartlett’s
tests results for green Bartlett’s test of Approx. Chi-Square 33.758
practices sphericity Degrees of freedom 10
Sig. 0.000
Table 14 Total variance

Principal component Eigenvalue Variance (%)
explained by principal
components of Green Relative Cumulative
variables G1 1.760 35.197 35.197
G2 1.284 25.675 60.872
G3 0.898 17.958 78.830
G4 0.587 11.732 90.562
G5 0.472 9.438 100.000
(SL − SLmin ) × 10
LI SL × 0.556 (6)
SLmax − SLmin
The value of LI expresses a company performance concerning the implementation

of the Lean practices. The value obtained ranks the company on a scale of 0–10
points, where 0 means that the company does not implement the Lean practices and
10 corresponds to the highest level of the practices implementation.
5.4 Green Index
To construct the Green composite index the procedure used in the Lean composite
index and described in Sect. 5.2 was taken.
The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy is 0.555.
Although the value is reduced, it exceeds the recommended acceptance value of
0.5 (Kaiser 1974) suggesting that PCA can be applied (Table 13). The Bartlett’s
sphericity test is significant (Sig 0.000) suggesting that there are relationships
between variables providing no evidence for refusal of the PCA method to perform
the analysis.
Based on any of the three criteria (Latent Root criterion or Kaiser criterion, the
cumulative percentage of the variance account for around 60% of the total variance
explained, and Scree plot) that were previously used in the selection of the principal
components for the Lean variables, two significant principal components must be
considered (Table 14).
The analysis of rotated component loadings (Table 15) suggests that Control variables
for system shutdown of machines in off-peak periods (GP1), ISO 14031 certification
(GP4) and ISO 50001: 2011 certification (GP5) are related to principal component
Table 15 Component loadings of green variables

Green variable Principal component Rotated component
G1 G2 G1 G2
GP1 0.725 0.325 0.596 0.525
GP2 – 0.557 – 0.582
GP3 – 0.823 – 0.837
GP4 0.796 – 0.847 –
GP5 0.737 – 0.321 0.799 –
Table 16 Number of companies distributed by index score category

Category [0; 2[ [2; 4[ [4; 6[ [6; 8[ [8; 10[
Lean Index (LI) 23 (37%) 20 (32%) 11 (18%) 5 (8%) 3 (5%)
Green Index (GI) 47 (76%) 11 (18%) 2 (3%) 2 (3%) 0 (0%)
G1 while Recuperation of kinetic energy and process (GP2) and Combined cold, heat
and power (Bi-/Tri-generation) (GP3) are related to principal component G2. To con-
clude, the first component includes practices concerning ISO standards certification
and the second component relates to energy-saving practices.
With respect to the five Green practices, the Total Green Performance Score (SG )
of a company can be calculated using Eq. (7).
SG 0.596GP1 + 0.582GP2 + 0.837GP3 + 0.847GP4 + 0.799GP5 (7)
The Green Index (GI), which derived from the normalization of the Total Green
Performance Score to a 10-point scale, is defined by Eq. (8).
(SG − SGmin ) × 10
GI SG × 0.910 (8)
SGmax − SGmin
5.5 Lean and Green Indexes of the Analyzed Companies
The data set used to construct the composite Lean and Green indexes (LI and GI) were
retrieved from sixty-two valid answers to the EMS from Portuguese manufacturing
companies, as described in Sect. 4.2.
As the results of the composite indexes can range from 0 to 10, for the analysis of
the Lean and Green index scores of the Portuguese companies included in this study,
five equally spaced categories were defined (Table 16 and Fig. 4).
Companies included in this study have on average a level of implementation of
Lean practices greater than Green practices.
Legend:
Lean Index Green Index
Fig. 4 Number of companies distributed by index score category
Regarding the implementation of Lean practices, it is visible that 31% of the

companies whose answers were considered in the study achieved a score greater
than 4, in which 5% are qualified with 8 or more points (where 10 would be the best
possible outcome).
Regarding the implementation of the Green practices, about 6% of companies
achieved a score greater than 4. Also noteworthy is that no company got a score
above 8 points.
6 Conclusion
The adoption of Lean practices has come over the years to play a key role in the
growth of companies, assisting them in establishing a leading position in increas-
ingly competitive markets. The measurement of performance in the application of
Lean practices provides to companies the ability to understand if their management
policies are being effective. It is vital for the successful implementation of Lean
practices in companies that they have a sense of their performance. With this type of
information, companies can make reasoned decisions about changes in their man-
agement strategies, to have the opportunity to improve their performance.
This chapter aimed to propose two composite indexes, Lean and Green indexes,
which allow measuring the performance of Portuguese manufacturing companies
concerning the Lean and Green manufacturing paradigms from the assessing of the
implementation level of practices relating to each paradigm. The indexes are useful
tools in developing metrics, and they are simple to develop and implement.
Using data obtained by the implementation of the EMS (2012) in sixty-two Por-
tuguese manufacturing companies, it was possible to obtain data about the imple-
mentation level of several important practices of the Lean and Green paradigms.
Following the methodology proposed in Sect. 3.2 based on Lau (2011), the Lean
and Green indexes for the Portuguese manufacturing companies were constructed.
Each index was based on weights assigned to each paradigm practice. For each man-
ufacturing paradigm, the Total Performance Score was calculated by the weighted
sum of all practices using the weight associated with each one. To make the Total
Performance Score for a company easily interpretable a composite index was defined
converting the Total Performance Score in a scale ranging from 0 to 10, where 10
corresponds to the highest level of implementation of the practices underlying the
index and 0 means that the company does not implement any of these practices.
Thus, the constructed Lean and Green indexes allow assessing the implementation
level of practices relating to each paradigm on manufacturing companies. Applying
them to the sixty-two Portuguese manufacturing companies, the level of implemen-
tation of Lean practices is on average greater than that of Green practices. It should
be noted that since the European Manufacturing Survey (2012) was applied in the
context of Portuguese manufacturing companies, it constitutes one of the major lim-
itations of this work because of it is not possible to state that these composite indexes
are valid and therefore likely to be used in other contexts. In other words, it is not
possible to say that the proposed Lean and Green Indexes are suitable for measuring
the Lean and Green performance of companies that do not operate in the manufac-
turing sector and do not operate in Portugal since the proposed indexes reflect the
context of the data used.
Lean and Green indexes can be important for sustainable development. The five
practices used in the Green index contribute to improving energy efficiency, which
is regarded as one of the most important options for reducing greenhouse gas emis-
sions and countries’ dependence on energy imports (Neelis et al. 2007). Considering
the Sustainable Development Goals (UN General Assembly 2015), these practices
contribute to Goal 13, which aims to take action to combat climate change and its
impact.
The nine practices used in the Lean index work according to the motto “doing
more with less”, so it meets Goal 12, which aims at “doing more and better with less”,
i.e., net welfare gains from economic activities can increase by reducing resource
use (UN General Assembly 2015).
Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the Unidade de Investigação e Desenvolvi-
mento em Engenharia Mecânica e Industrial for its support (UNIDEMI—UID/EMS/0067/2019).
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Implementing Lean Production
to Promote Textile and Clothing Industry
Sustainability
Laura Costa Maia, Anabela Carvalho Alves and Celina Pinto Leão
Abstract Traditionally, Textile and Clothing industry (TCI) is an industry that nat-
urally consumes large amounts of natural resources (e.g. natural fibers, natural dyes,
water and energy) and release chemicals into the atmosphere, water and soil. Lean
Production (LP) is an organizational methodology which main key idea is “doing
more with less”. A fundamental difficulty faced by the TCI stakeholders has been in
finding out how to implement this methodology efficiently in a sustainable way. Con-
cerned about this problem, a methodology to support the implementation of LP in the
TCI, named PESO was developed. This methodology is based on four dimensions:
People, Ergonomics, Sustainability and Operational performance (PESO). By includ-
ing sustainability as a dimension to be taken into account, it is expected to develop
and create a natural awareness to consume less. Today in TCI there is a growing con-
cern with sustainability, as shown by the increase in the number of research projects
related with this issue. This chapter aims to highlight these developed and develop-
ing projects to the light of the Sustainability dimension of the PESO methodology.
These were analyzed and discussed to illustrate that though these do not directly
address Lean, allied with it could enable sustainability of their production system
and processes. This is embedded in the synergy between LP and sustainability, also
entitled Lean-Green. By doing this, TCI is on the road to achieve the sustainable
development goals, directly, the goal 12, responsible consumption and production.
L. C. Maia (B) · A. C. Alves (B) · C. P. Leão (B)

Department of Production and Systems, School of Engineering, ALGORITMI R&D Center,
University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal
e-mail: lauracostamaia@gmail.com
A. C. Alves
C. P. Leão
e-mail: cpl@dps.uminho.pt

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13515-7_11
320 L. C. Maia et al.
1 Introduction
Textile and Clothing Industry (TCI) is an important sector in Portugal, contributing

to the growth of Portuguese socioeconomic. This role is maintained and insured by a
revitalized, and creative industry. Nevertheless, this industry consumes large volumes
of natural resources, produces pollutants with a high impact of particle emissions on
air, water and soil. Therefore, the investment in this industry is a fundamental require-
ment for sustainability. This investment is not necessarily capital intensive, but rather
requires only a better production organization to achieve operational performance
improvement.
This industry is in a fruitful period and has been growing, namely, in January
of 2018, Portugal exports reached 438 million euros, while in the same period last
year reached 443 million (INE 2018). France and Italy were the main drivers of the
great growth of Portuguese textile and clothing exports, which increased by 12.2%
in April compared to the same month in last year and 2.5% in the first four months
of 2017 compared to the same month of 2017 (Neves 2018).
Based on these figures and on the importance of this industry, investments that do
not require both capital investment and financial outlay are very welcome. Therefore,
the TCI is in an ideal and favorable context for the application of methodologies like
Lean Production that contribute to a sustainable and efficient working environment.
Lean Production (LP) (Womack et al. 1990) is considered a production model
following a set of principles that, when implemented, creates companies’ wealth by
eliminating any type of wastes (Womack and Jones 1996). Over the last 25 years, LP
was recognized by the practitioner and academic community (Samuel et al. 2015),
as testified by other and recent literature reviews (Bhamu and Sangwan 2014; Jasti
and Kodali 2015; Negrão et al. 2016; Panizzolo et al. 2012; Silva et al. 2010; Stone
2012; Wong et al. 2009).
To create wealth by eliminating wastes was the achievement of the Japanese
company Toyota by implementing Toyota Production System (TPS) during the hard
times of the post-war (Monden 1998; Ohno 1988; Shingo 1981). In this, the main
key idea was “doing more with less” (Krafcik 1988; Womack et al. 1990). Less
means less human effort, less development time for new products, less stocks, less
of everything.
Coincidentally or not, a similar concept emerged in the final of eighties in the
World Commission of Environment and Development (WCED) report (Brundtland
1987, p. 31) that appealed for “Industry: producing more with less”. This call was
in the context of the Sustainable Development (SD) concept and how industry could
achieve economic growth without putting in risk the needs of future generations
(Brundtland 1987, p. 207). To achieve SD, industry should implement eco-efficient
systems, a concept defined by Business Council of Sustainable Development (BCSD)
a few years later (WBCSD 1996) as “…the delivery of competitively priced goods
and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life, while progressively
reducing ecological impacts and resource intensity throughout the life cycle, to a
Implementing Lean Production to Promote Textile … 321
level at least in line with the earth´s estimated carrying capacity” (WBCSD 1996,
p. 4).
From the above, Lean Production is totally aligned and promotes eco-efficient
systems when properly implemented (Moreira et al. 2010). Nevertheless, there is
still low knowledge and awareness of Lean among TCI companies (Hodge et al.
2011), and particularly, about this relationship. For the ones that know and are aware
of the advantages that LP implementation can bring to the companies, there is still
many issues: resistance to change, financials issues, specialized expertise, among
others. Adding that LP implementation is a continuous process that requires a con-
tinued attention to sustain a healthy and sustainable working environment. In lieu of
this, a methodology that addressed four main dimensions of Lean production was
developed, being sustainability one of them.
The chapter’s objectives are to present the sustainability dimension of the method-
ology PESO (People, Ergonomics, Sustainability, Operational performance) for Lean
implementation in TCI and to demonstrate that some developed or developing
projects address sustainability concerns. Nevertheless, this seems like an isolated
and punctual approach, not linked to management initiatives. However, if they do
not address Lean strategy directly, this concern could be allied with it, promoting,
in this way, the economic growth of the companies without the fear for economic
losses and reduced profits.
This chapter is structured in six sections. A brief literature review is presented after
the objectives introduced in the section. Section 3 presents the research methodology.
The PESO methodology focusing the sustainability dimension is presented in Sect. 4.
National and international green projects are discussed in Sect. 5. Final remarks were
integrated in Sect. 6.
2 Brief Literature Review
The Sustainability concept is worked in a multiplicity of fields because of the

sociocultural complexity we live in. This, probably, is the main reason for the
lack of consensus about its concept and dimensions, assuming a polysemy and
multi-disciplinary sense applicable to different situations, contexts, and objectives.
Therefore, approaches vary according to different areas of knowledge and often
within the same area. In spite of these different approaches, the Sustainability
concept was related originally with nature. Sooner, it was clear that it could not
only remain within limits and concerns regarding the nature dimension (Alves and
Colombo 2017). The idea of sustainability, then, is not restricted to the beings of
nature, it also involves other dimensions (Colombo 2004). Addressing this need,
Pappas (2012) introduced five Sustainability dimensions (Economic/Financial, Eco-
logical/Environmental, Individual, Technical/Technological, Sociocultural) to which
three more dimensions have been added (Epistemological, Relational/Convivial, Ter-
ritorial/Geographic) (Colombo et al. 2017), as represented in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1 Sustainability dimensions
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA 2014) defined sus-
tainability by a simple principle: “… everything that we need for our survival and
well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment. To pur-
sue sustainability is to create and maintain the conditions under which humans and
nature can exist in productive harmony to support present and future generations.”
This principle is calling for conditions to support a development that balances
the equilibrium of humans and nature, i.e. a Sustainable Development. Concepts of
Sustainability and Sustainable Development (SD), are approached, sometimes, as
common concepts, albeit with differences between them. Chronologically, Sustain-
ability emerged first but meanwhile it has been walking into the direction of Sustain-
able Development. Consequently, SD was defined by Brundtland Report (Brundtland
1987), as “… development that meets the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland 1987). This
concept evolved, not only to harmonize but also to integrate development with the
environment when the concepts of Sustainability and SD emerged to translate this
integration. This concept is based on three pillars: (1) Economic, (2) Environmental
and (3) Social, that must be supported by business, civil society and government
(Fig. 2).
Nowadays, the image of a sustainable and socially responsible company is a brand
that sells and many companies make or promote sustainability campaigns to alert to
Fig. 2 Pillars of sustainable

development (Maia et al.
2013b)
saving water, energy, resources. They do this, not just to be “cool”, but because they
see economic gains. They can do this by introducing organizational methodologies
that improve their production system, processes and employees attitudes. When this
happen, even company employees promote solidarity campaigns, for example, clean-
ing beaches, planting trees, giving blood, helping health services, etc., campaigns
that usually improve the company’s sustainability reports (Verrier et al. 2014). One
such methodology is Lean Production (Womack et al. 1990).
Lean solutions bring benefits for companies (Alves et al. 2011, 2014; Negrão et al.
2016; Resende et al. 2014) and, consequently, to society. At the same time, instills
a creative spirit of all the people involved in a Lean work environment conducive to
developing and creating thinkers (Alves et al. 2012). By empowering people, through
their training and involvement, they will develop a greater awareness of Sustainable
Development searching and implementing environmentally friendly solutions and
behaviors. Exploiting the employees capabilities eliminates one of the considered
wastes in Lean context (Liker 2004; Liker and Meier 2007). Other wastes were iden-
tified by Ohno (1988) thirty years ago as overproduction, over-processing, transports,
motion, defects, inventory and waiting. This author and Toyota executive considered
overproduction one of the worst waste because this implies all the others and has
an enormous impact in the environment, retrieving from the planet more than the
necessary.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (U.S.-EPA 2007) added more wastes
and designated them as environmental wastes. Such wastes are the consumption of
materials, water, energy and emissions of more pollutants (for water, soil and air)
than is necessary. To produce, we must only consume what is strictly necessary.
Many authors have designated this Lean synergy related to sustainability as Lean-
Green, since the Lean appearance (Alves et al. 2016; Found 2009; Moreira et al.
2010; Rothenberg et al. 2001). These authors highlighted the Lean-Green syner-
gistic relationship by the reduction of the seven wastes. These wastes could leads,
directly or indirectly, to better environmental practices, where material and resource

requirements are reduced, taking less out of the planet that belongs to everyone.
However, there are many authors and researchers that do not fully recognize the
Lean-Green models for eco-efficient and sustainable production, as reviewed by
Abreu et al. (2018) and Abreu et al. (2016, 2017). Because many companies do
not evaluate or even do not know tools to measure sustainability or have lack of
performance measures that show the state of the company with respect to sustain-
ability, and this relationship is not evident for them. Thus, sustainability tools allow
evaluating their sustainability, or the contribution of the company to the Sustainable
Development. Example of tools that can be used in companies to measure sustain-
ability and to calculate the ecological footprint, are Life Cycle Management (LCM),
including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC), and AUDIO,
Upstream, Downstream, Issues, Opportunities) (Esty and Winston 2009). LCA can
ensure continuous improvement in obtaining a superior environmental performance.
Currently, there are already many standards for the implementation of Environ-
mental Management systems such as ISO 14000 (ISO 2015) and ISO 26000, as
well as, Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). The United Nations Envi-
ronment Program (UNEP 1996, 2007, 2009, 2011) to achieve clean, sustainable
and eco-efficient production and environmental improvement have launched some
sustainability guides. These guides can be adapted to the Portuguese reality and
promoted in all functions of the company, from product development to sale, in all
phases of the product life cycle, from creation to disposal (the perspectives from the
cradle to the grave and cradle-to-cradle) and throughout the value chain, suppliers
and consumers.
This, implicitly, implies a management of production systems that transform raw
materials, using a number of resources, such as machines, energy, people and infor-
mation, into products by minimizing all wastes and resource use, i.e. educating all
in Lean Thinking (Alves et al. 2014). These production system will be produc-
ing according to the “Sustainable manufacturing” concept that was defined (OECD
2011) as “The creation of manufactured products that use processes that minimize
negative environmental impacts, conserve energy and natural resources, are safe for
employees, communities, and consumers”. Such processes need to be cost effective
solutions, waste-free, eco-efficient, and integrated in a system that optimizes the
whole, not just a part.
Also, they must exploit full potential of products for them to reenter the economy
upon their end-of-life, following the European Commission directives of a circular
economy: “The European Commission aims to ensure coherence between industrial,
environmental, climate and energy policy to create an optimal business environment
for sustainable growth, job creation and innovation. To support this, the Commission
has established an ambitious agenda to transform EU economy into a circular one,
where the value of products and materials is maintained for as long as possible,
bringing major economic benefits” (European Commission 2018).
Additionally, techniques such as 8R (rethink, redesign, reduce, re-use, return,
repair, recycle/recovery and refuse) and techniques to develop more eco-efficient
products such as Design For Environment (DFE), Design For Manufacturability
and Assembly (DFMA) or Disassembly/Recycle, TRIZ methodology (Altshuller

1984), meet the reduction of waste because they promote Lean behavior, i.e., a lower
consumption thinking. These will help to accomplish the eco-efficiency measures
as defined by WBCSD (1996, 2000) to create more with less impact and to adopt
production and consumption patterns sustainable. It is not enough to have a Lean
Production, it is necessary to have a Lean consumption (Womack and Jones 2005a, b).
Other related concepts and tools are eco-design methods, green procurement,
including public procurement (European Commission 2016), eco-labeling and
energy, environmental product declarations, ecological and carbon footprint ana-
lyzes, key Environmental Performance Indicators (KEPI) (OECD 2011) as well as
assessments and approaches to social sustainability. Other tools involve the green-
house gas protocol (GHG), review of corporate ecosystem services, tool to assess
global water impact, measurement impact framework and guide to sustainable pur-
chases of wood-based products and paper. Tasdemir and Gazo (2018) developed
a systematic literature review presenting a list of papers proposing sustainability
assessment tools involving Lean tools.
To achieve this, people need to be expert users of tools but more importantly, global
thinkers customizing, as needed, local solutions. This line of thinking is needed for
all industries and services. Lean provides this and Industry 4.0 provides the dig-
ital technology leading to a better control of the entire textile fabrication process
(Weisenberger 2017; Chen and Xing 2015), bring producers and consumers together,
as Womack and Jones (2005a, b) previewed. Also, new solutions in the textile indus-
try need to be developed to monitor and conserve the natural resources (Hussain and
Wahab 2018). According to the CEO Agenda (2018) “Automation and new tech-
nology-driven production methods will inevitably transform the fashion value chain,
especially its manufacturing, processing and retail stages. However, the extent of
that transformation is currently unknown and hard to predict” (Chalmer et al. 2018,
p. 17).
Nevertheless, the knowledge and learning of these tools and technology are impor-
tant for achieving SD. As stated by The Millennium Project (2014), Sustainable
Development and climate change is the first of the 15 global challenges facing human-
ity and its achievement will greatly improve the lives of everyone on the planet. Con-
cerning SD, on 25 September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly formally
adopted the universal, integrated and transformative 2030 agenda for sustainable
development, along with a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The
adoption of the 2030 agenda and its SDG represent a change of paradigm of the
international policies on development cooperation.
All the industries have an impact on these SDG: a positive impact by contribut-
ing to reduce poverty, hunger, and to promote education, well-being, and economic
growth. On the other hand, it might also have a negative impact if they will pol-
lute the water, the oceans, the land and spend excessive resources such as natural
resources (e.g. raw-materials, water, energy). At the same time, if they provide work
conditions under non-ethical standards (employing child labor, being corrupt, favor-
ing inequalities and/or gender inequality or using low quality materials, or even,
toxic materials), they are not responsible in their production and they are violating
the SDG. So, first of all, industry role should be to ensure sustainable consumption
and production patterns (goal 12) in order to address all the other SDGs. Moreover,
government and society (all of us) should support them in these efforts.
Particularly, the fashion world is nowadays an unsustainable world because of the
high rate of consumption of clothes and shoes that are in the order of 100 billions
annually. (Supply Chain Magazine 2018). This demand, urgently, requires new solu-
tions, using recyclable materials and working in a circular economy. All the products
made must have the potential to reenter the economy upon their end-of-life, follow-
ing the European Commission directives that said: “The European Commission aims
to ensure coherence between industrial, environmental, climate and energy policy
to create an optimal business environment for sustainable growth, job creation and
innovation. To support this, the Commission has established an ambitious agenda to
transform EU economy into a circular one, where the value of products and materials
is maintained for as long as possible, bringing major economic benefits” (European
Commission 2018).
Fashion industry leaders are aware of this challenge and they created in 2016 a
leadership forum on fashion sustainability, named Global Fashion Agenda, to mobi-
lize the global fashion system to change the way they produce, market and consume
fashion, for a world beyond next season. They believe that the environmental, social
and ethical challenges brings unexplored opportunities for creating value, instead
of constitute a threat as reported in the Pulse of the Fashion Industry (Lehmann
et al. 2018). Based on this report, this forum defined a CEO Agenda (2018) where
they defined three core priorities for immediate implementation: (1) Supply chain
traceability; (2) Efficient use of water, energy and chemicals and (3) Respectful and
secure work environments.
Additionally, they defined four transformational priorities for fundamental
change: (1) Sustainable material mix by reducing the negative effects of existing
fibers and develop new, sustainable fibers; (2) Closed-loop fashion system by design-
ing products and invent novel collection and recycling systems that enable the reuse
and recycling of post-consumer textiles at scale; (3) Promotion of better wages sys-
tems by collaborate with industry stakeholders to explore opportunities to develop
and implement better wage systems, (4) Fourth Industrial Revolution by embrac-
ing the opportunities in the digitalization of the value chain and engage with others
brands, manufacturers and governments to prepare for the transition of workforces
(Chalmer et al. 2018, p. 6).
The research methodology used to highlight Lean-Green as an important promotion

agent for sustainability was an inductive approach: data was collected and analysed
to draw the necessary conclusions from it (Saunders et al. 2008). To have a better
understanding of this objective, the research was conducted based on a specific
context: Portuguese TCI.
The research makes use of secondary data: (1) national textile journals, (2) admin-
istrative records of main research centres in Portuguese TCI (e.g. CITEVE and Fibre-
namics) websites: symposiums and national conferences. Notice that some of the
projects developed under Textile Technological Centre (CITEVE) and Fibrenamics
organizations were identified in the textile journal. Some of the identified developed
and developing projects were known in national and international conferences in the
textile area, and then more information was obtained in the web site of the organiza-
tion. For the data collection, no special permission was needed since the information
is available online.
The first criteria to select data were projects that included or are related to sustain-
ability. In this first stage of research, around 75 projects were identified. This sample,
then, was reduced since opinion articles and interviews were not considered. Also,
projects related to the sustainability certification were also not considered. The final
sample includes 17 projects that will be presented in Sect. 5.
The data collected in this research have a qualitative nature as they were available
in written form (journals, reports). For the analysis, the data was grouped into cate-
gories as previously mentioned. Some of the categories were defined according to the
terms used (categories) in the documents analysed and in the course of trending, in
order to recognise relationships. The several categories used to classified data were:
date of publication, project area, type of fibre, and environmental impact.
4 Sustainability in the PESO Methodology
The PESO methodology was developed to help TCI companies to implement Lean
(Maia et al. 2012, 2017), according to four main dimensions of Lean: People,
Ergonomics, Sustainability and Operational performance (PESO). As presented in
Fig. 3 these dimensions are like parts on a puzzle that only makes sense (i.e. show
the picture on it) when the puzzle is complete. Few methodologies were found in
the literature that addressed Lean implementation in TCI companies, such as, for
example, in Hodge et al. (2011). Nevertheless, it focus was mainly the operational
performance dimension, not giving the whole perspective needed to implement Lean.
As defined above, Sustainability includes the Economic, Environmental and
Social responsibility aspect and seems repetitive to include more dimensions related
with people in the methodology. Nevertheless, by distinguishing in the PESO method-
ology “People” and “Ergonomics”, the authors intended to highlight the importance
of reducing two fundamental wastes: untapped human potential and overburden
(known as muri). Figure 4 shows some examples of overburden situations going
on this sector (people all day seated, carrying heavy loads…) which could jeopar-
dize people’s health.
Since the first moment, the TPS concern was with people as Sugimori et al. (1977)
discussed. As Krafcik (1988) described the Lean Production System, he lengthily
discussed how different was people’s role in this system when compared to Ford
system. Later, other authors, such as Liker (2004), continued to highlight the impor-
Fig. 3 Dimensions of PESO methodology
Fig. 4 Examples of overburden situations in TCI

Fig. 5 Phases of PESO methodology
tance of the people’s role by the 4P (Philosophy, Process, People and Partners and
Problem-Solving) model of the “Toyota Way”. Despite these facts, many initiatives
to implement TPS were focused only in the technical side (i.e., JIT and Jidoka imple-
mentations) and failed. As Takeuchi et al. (2008) presented “Emulating Toyota isn´t
about copying any one practice, is about creating a culture” and to create a culture
takes time, resources and it is not easy and companies need to be prepared for that.
Knowing that, in PESO methodology, the authors considered, in the first instance,
the current conditions of the companies, related with the satisfaction of employees
towards the company, their jobs and their ergonomic conditions. This was done
through interviews, questionnaires and checklists. The Fig. 5 shows the three phases
of the methodology.
After evaluating the initial conditions of the company, the methodology users
could conclude that company does not have conditions to implement LP. Some of
these conditions are openness to change, new learning and new practices, receptivity,
without fear to fail, able to work in teams, among others. Of course, the company
could obtain these conditions by preparation, training and goodwill. The success of
the following phases depends on how well the first was done providing a company
diagnostic which reflects its commitment. Two companies of the three cases studies
Fig. 6 Main materials needed to TCI industry: natural raw materials, energy, water, and dyes
that were used to validate the PESO methodology, showed a context situation not
favorable to LP implementation (Maia et al. 2017).
At the same time, the environmental side of Sustainability seems “hidden” when
implementing LP because even when anyone talk about lean benefits, the environ-
mental benefits are barely quantified or discussed so they are not presented, even
in papers of surveys or literature reviews where operational benefits are highlighted
(Bhamu and Sangwan 2014; Gupta and Jain 2013; Silva et al. 2010). This synergy
of Lean-Green is not recognized (Abreu et al. 2018).
So, in this methodology, it was included a dimension related with the sustainability
tools to assess the “current situation” of the company in terms of sustainability
focused in the environmental aspect. Some results of the sustainability dimension
evaluation of one company, a case study, indicated a low environmental performance
or lacking of knowledge of environmental labels (Maia et al. 2015). Traditionally, TCI
is very dependent on natural resources such as natural fibers, dyes, water, energy and
other resources, and, naturally, consumes many noble raw materials, water, energy
and release many pollutants (Maia et al. 2013a) (Fig. 6).
The dyeing and finishing processes, are heavy polluters of water, air and soil,
and these processes consume much water and energy, as reviewed in (Maia et al.
2013a). In this publication, the most frequent environmental wastes per TCI sector
were identified, since each one presents different risks and wastes (Table 1).
Based on the wastes identified in the different TCI sectors, Table 1, to reduce
the consumption of natural resources and pollutants, should be a constant concern
of TCI companies and individuals to achieve eco-efficient systems and sustainable
development (Maia et al. 2014). Additionally, to the already referred sustainability
Table 1 Environmental waste by TCI activity sectors

TCI sectors Identified risks and wastes
Spinning Biological contaminants (e.g., dust, dust mites…), high
consumption of energy
Weaving Contaminants hazardous chemicals irreplaceable, thermal
stress, high consumption of energy and water and air pollution
Knitting Biological contaminants and to inadequate lighting and
temperature and high consumption of energy
Dying, Stamping, Finishing Contaminants hazardous chemicals irreplaceable, biological,
gases, and vapours, high consumption of energy and water and
air pollution
Clothing High consumption of energy and raw materials
tools, the authors raise a set of eco-labels developed by CITEVE or developed in

partnership with this technology center, such as Green Target, STeP (STeP by OEKO-
TEX® Certification—Sustainable Textile Production), Ecolabel, Made in Green by
OEKO-TEX.
An LP implementation can and should contribute to this promotion by better
preparing the TCI to cope with the disappearance of the previously well-defined sea-
sons, accentuating less the seasonality due to global warming as a result of climate
change. LP could contribute for the fundamental change based on the seven sustain-
ability priorities highlighted by the Global Fashion Agenda (Chalmer et al. 2018),
as presented in the literature review section. At the same time, LP will contribute for
a line of thinking that goes towards a green concern, even, sometimes this is not yet
in companies minds, an ethical behavior and social expectations promoting health
work conditions (Arezes et al. 2015; Maia et al. 2015).
5 National and International Projects Focused

in Sustainability
The concern by sustainability is present in the more than 40 news published in the
past two years in the Journal T, a technical textile Portuguese journal. Such news were
about how sustainability is being achieved in national and international companies.
Table 2 presents some of most recent news that could be found in this journal. In this
table is highlighted the company and/or organization related and/or that promoted
the idea, the date, the idea behind, the environmental impact and the support and/or
partnership involved.
From Table 2, it is possible to see that most ideas are focused in using differ-
ent eco-friendly raw-materials (organic, recycled, among others). Some are already
projects with financing support, i.e. from the idea they become projects. The Table 3
presents more projects which main source was also the Journal T, distinguishing the
Table 2 Most recent news (2018) from the Journal T about sustainability
332
News Companies/Organiz. Date Idea Environmental impact Support/Partnership

After 2024 Adidas 2018.07.23 Use of recycled plastics in all your Decreased consumption of
ADIDAS will clothes or shoes polyester original and
only use decreased residues
recycled plastics
National Textile Albano Morgado, 2018.07.02 Organic and recycled knits; Mixtures Decreased consumption of The project is
show ecological Joaps, Lemar, based on organic, sustainable and fibers, polyester and others co-financed by
facet in Lurdes Sampaio, eco-friendly materials; Collection of noble materials and Portugal 2020,
Premiére Vision Otojal, Sidónios & sustainable fabrics produced with decreased residues within Compete
New York Texser recycled polyester yarns from bottles 2020
collected in the oceans, on land and other
plastic waste
Five Portuguese Estrilia Confecções 2018.07.16 Sustainability is an important part of how Decreased consumption of
companies help Lda, Fábrica de we create and obtain the raw material for raw-materials and increase
C&A to achieve Peúgas Remigio our collections by ensuring that they have of nylon recycled use and
sustainability Pereira Pinto & been supplied and produced in a way that organic cotton use; Cradle to
Filhos, Gonçalves & respects people, animals and the Cradle certification;
Matias SA, Poder de environment; through an online tool, Reduction of carbon
Criação LDA & each C&A customer can easily identify footprint and water
XHM Têxteis Lda the factories where C&A products are consumption
manufactured
BRIGHT Among TCI 2018.07.05 Provide “clean” energy, i.e. entirely from Decreased consumption of Partnership with
SUNDAY companies, 50 renewable sources at the same price of fossil fuels Textile Association
brings clean and Portuguese energy from fossil fuels; installation of and Clothing of
cheaper energy companies efficient LED lighting and storage Portugal (ATP)
to the supplying H&M systems (batteries); help to obtain the
Portuguese TCI sustainable seal
(continued)
L. C. Maia et al.
Table 2 (continued)
The seven steps 94 signatories 2018.05.14 Diagnosis and recommendations on Sustainable fashion Global Fashion
to make fashion companies investments to transform the way Agenda
sustainable clothing and footwear are produced,
comes under the Copenhagen Fashion
Summit, a global event on fashion
sustainability
There are the 2018.04.12 Project ECO-TEX intends to identify Increased training in Confederacion de la
sustainability training needs in the area of sustainability Industria Textil
technicians for Sustainability and Circular Economy; (Espanha);
TCI create a new vocational qualification of CITEVE; Sydesmos
“Sustainability Technician” according to Edpicheiriseon
the European Common Framework on Plektikis-etoimou
Vocation, Educational Training Endymatos kai
(ECVET); develop training content; Synafon
create and test a course in the e-learning kladonellados
Implementing Lean Production to Promote Textile …
mode; to make companies aware of the (Greece), Technical

need to develop a strategy based on University of IASI
sustainable production; and promote and (Romania) & Rigas
disseminate project results through Tehniska Universitat
digital platforms (European, national and (Latvia)
local) and networking between relevant
organizations and actors in this area
(continued)
333
Table 2 (continued)
334

Lacoste Lacoste 2018.03.02 Lacoste has launched a limited collection Save animal species from “Save Our Species”
exchanges in which the classic brand crocodile is extinction collection is a
crocodile for replaced by ten animals on the verge of partnership of the
endangered extinction. The number of copies of each French brand with
animals pole corresponds to the number of copies an association linked
still existing of each species. In all, only to nature
1775 pieces were produced, available for conservation, the
purchase online IUCN
Inovafil produce Inovafil 2018.01.19 Project NIDYARN—R & D center for Use of solar energy, use of Partnership with the
yarns that turn high performance functional yarns that eco-friendly fibers, improve Textile Science and
sunlight into result from the blend between body health conditions Technology Cen-
thermal energy eco-friendly fibers combined with ter—2C2T—and the
carbon-based fiber, capable of International
transforming sunlight into thermal Platform
energy, thereby increasing body Fibrenamics, both
temperature; yarns based on fiber with from the University
vitamin E release, skin aging retarders of Minho
and accelerating the healing process;
thermoregulatory wires, capable of
regulating body temperature, providing
excellent thermal comfort; and wires
with moisture management capability
resulting from a patented technology:
drirelease
(continued)
L. C. Maia et al.
Table 2 (continued)
BomDia makes BomDia & Pizarro 2018.01.15 A tablecloth that shines in the dim light Decrease energy
with PIZARRO creating an intimate atmosphere, is the consumption, more
towel that gives star of the 2018 collection that BomDia environment comfort
light presented in Heimtextil, subordinated to
the concept of “attracting the exterior to
the interior”
MoreTextile MoreTextile 2018.01.12 Three green products, environmentally Use of recycled materials;
wants to be the friendly: Refibra, Eco Heather and use of old fibers; reuse of
champion of Morecolorgreen; cotton and linen waste to
sustainability Certifications: Oeko-Tex standard 100, make new yarns in the
Supima, GOTS, ISO 9001, Global composition of which are
Recycled Standard, European Flax, further added 30% of
Faucet Cotton, BCI-Better Cotton polyester fibers recycled
Initiative, SMETA, CTPAT, from plastic bottles; increase
ContentClaim and Organic 100 (the last sustainability concern
three are still in progress)

335
Table 3 National and international green projects
336
Project name Company/Organz. Date Environmental impact Support/Partnership Project area

B. Cork TINTEX 2018.06.05 Decrease of others natural materials CITEVE, Sedacor e Têxteis Innovation
Penedo
Make Fashion TINTEX 2018.05.21 Decrease of the environmental impact Burberry, GAP, H&M e Nike Sustainability
Circular
EcoVero FILASA 2018.05.15 Decrease in water consumption and gas Lenzing Sustainability
emissions
Bluesign® LMA 2018.04.05 Decrease of the natural resources and – Sustainability
water consumption
“Wear Sustain” – 2017.12.05 Decrease of the environmental impact Textile industry Smart textiles
R4Textiles RIOPELE 2017.09.12 Decrease of the environmental impact CeNTI, CITEVE, ESB, Sustainability
COMPETE 2020, FEDER
Project 360 VALÉRIUS 2017.08.28 Decrease of the environmental impact Moschino, Cos e Max Mara Sustainability
PICASSo TINTEX 2017.07.04 Decrease of chemical dyes/pollution CITEVE, CeNTI Innovation
LEDinTEX TEXTEIS PENEDO 2017.06.29 Decrease the consume of energy CeNTI, CITEVE Technical textiles
(continued)
L. C. Maia et al.
Table 3 (continued)
Project name Company/Organz. Date Environmental impact Support/Partnership Project area
Eco heather Grupo Moretextile 2017.04.19 Decrease of cotton fibers and water Tearfil Product
Colorau TINTEX 2017.05.19 Decrease of the environmental impact CeNTI, CITEVE Sustainability
Cotton + Corn REEBOK 2017.05.17 Decrease of the environmental impact DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Sustainability
Inovafil MUNDIFIOS 2017.04.24 Decrease of the environmental impact CITEVE, Universidade do Innovation
Minho
Tencel—REFIBRALENZING 2017.03.13 Decrease of the environmental impact – Circular economy
Plastic meshes VILARTEX 2017.03.02 Decrease in water and energy – Sustainability
harvested from consumption and pollution
the sea
Waste and Adidas 2017.02.08 Decreased consumption of nylon, water, Aquafil Sustainability
fishing networks energy and pollution
in adidas beach
fashion
ecoTHREAD Emirates 2017.01.25 Decreased consumption of polyester, – Environment

water, energy and pollution
337
companies and countries involved, the project area as classified by the journal and the
environmental impact. These projects main aim is that of creating more ecological
and sustainable products, using environmentally friendly textile fibers or recycling.
It is amazing what these companies have been doing in improving the raw-
materials used in the production system to innovate the products offered. Never-
theless, more must be done relating with production system improvements and to
green production processes as well as recycling processes to reduce the consumption
of natural resources. It was possible to verify that there are less news related with
this focus. Maybe it did not have the importance compared with the new products
or just because companies did not invest on this. A survey developed by the authors
revealed less concern by TCI companies in promoting a different management (Maia
et al. 2018) and efforts to become more waste-free.
Adopting Lean management practices are not easy, particularly, in small and
medium-sized enterprises (SME) (Cowger 2016; Hu et al. 2015). Nevertheless, even
in large companies, particularly, in a sector like textile, it seems the knowledge about
Lean is not widespread. The reasons are not known or studied at the best knowledge
of the authors but probably could be in the historic industry where Lean had its
roots. For instance, the fashion industry leaders presented a project called “Clean by
Design”, according to them a “holistic efficiency program” with focuses on “ten best
practices for saving energy and water, all of which are easy to implement, involve
low initial investment, and yield relatively high financial returns, usually within a
year” (Lehmann et al. 2018, p. 41). This is, totally, aligned with Lean Production,
or with it counterparts, Lean-Green.
The Vision 2050 from the WBCSD predict a new radical landscape for busi-
ness very different from the business as usual (WBCSD 2010). According to this,
this vision involves an unprecedented transformational change for business lead-
ers to manage the companies and the working with government in promoting and
implementing the right policies and incentives. A systemic thinking is needed com-
promising all (business leaders, organizations, government and society) in order to
face the challenges and opportunities coming. The projects presented is part of the
solution but it is not enough, as the companies also need to be sustainable as well
their production system by implementing complementary methodologies such as
Lean production. So, these projects need to be integrated in a management initiative
of whole system-thinking.
6 Final Remarks
This chapter introduces projects developed and in progress in Portuguese TCI that
addresses the sustainability concern. Nevertheless, this concern should be aligned
with a smart and cleaner production. Lean Production provides this and too many
companies are still unware of this knowledge, continuing producing in the same old
and traditional way (Maia et al. 2018). Adopting a Lean Production System will also
contribute for the sustainable development goals impacting directly the SDG 12 as
this configuration is the most waste-free system (Alves et al. 2017).
The PESO methodology referred in this chapter introduced the sustainability
dimension, among others, to aid companies implementing Lean Production in all
activity sectors focusing the value streams in an holistically way. Promoting holistic
solutions in an experimentation and learning environment as LP is known by what
could be a suitable management approach to face the sustainability paradox referred
by Rotmans (2006, p. 2), i.e., the unsustainability problems humankind is facing
cannot be solved with current tools and methods that were applied—or seemed to
work—in the past. Otherwise, the companies of TCI will not be capable to sustain
the global fashion industry.
It seems there are a lot of knowledge and expertise, disperse and running in
parallel without never being connected or linked. It is important to link collaborative
initiatives and align everybody in what is most important: maintain our lives and our
next generations as well as other living beings in this unique planet.

UID/CEC/00319/2013.
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The Lean City: Citizen as Producer,
Consumer, Product
David Week
Abstract The world is urbanizing rapidly. In 1950 the urban population stood at 751
million. In 2018, it was 4.2 billion—55% of the world’s population. The Population
Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs predicts that by 2050,
2.5 billion people will have been added to the urban population, for a total of 6.7
billion, representing 68% of the world population. Sustainable development depends
increasingly on the successful management of this urban growth (World Urbanization
Prospects: The 2018 Revision [Key Facts], 2018). A complicating factor is that
urban structure is inelastic. Transport corridors, property lines, and buildings are
all long-lived objects. Urban development decisions made today will be felt for
decades. Lean thinking and lean production constitute a direction in thinking about
production. Lean is a focus on value as defined by the customer, not the producer. Lean
focuses on reducing waste, rather than maximizing utilization of labor capital. Lean
organization is oriented towards shop-floor continuous improvement, rather than
radical and risky global redesigns. Both objectives of better value for the new city-
dwellers, and reduced waste, seem well suited to the application of lean to the city.
The city is an urban form which produces value for the citizens who live there. Central
planning in which citizens are managed by experts are sometimes unpopular, and
plans are regularly overridden by politics. Funds are never available to meet demand,
and therefore wasted funds are a lost opportunity. Cities are being continuously rebuilt
and remodeled. But lean is as yet under applied to the production of cities. Applying
lean production and management can help move cities past apparently intractable
problems due to 19th century central planning and mass production. Lean offers the
potential to enable citizens and city managers to direct their energies in more valuable
and low-waste directions. This paper explores how lean provides new perspectives
by applying each of its five principles to management of city growth and operations.
D. Week (B)
Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning,
University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
e-mail: david.week@unimelb.edu.au; dew@assai.com.au

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13515-7_12
346 D. Week
1 Introduction
The world is urbanizing rapidly. In 1950 the urban population stood at 751 million.
In 2018, it was 4.2 billion—55% of the world’s population. The Population Division
of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs predicts that by 2050, 2.5
billion people will have been added to the urban population, for a total of 6.7 bil-
lion, representing 68% of the world population. Sustainable development depends
increasingly on the successful management of this urban growth (World Urbaniza-
tion Prospects: The 2018 Revision [Key Facts] 2018; Chatterjee 2009). Most of this
population growth will not be existing mega-cities, nor in the established cities of
the OECD. The growth will be in the growth of what are currently middle-sized
cities (Dobbs et al. 2011). This growth trend is depicted in Fig. 1: “Urban and rural
population in developed and less developed regions”. Of the 2050 urban population,
approximately 3 billion are expected to live in slums, which house the most vulner-
able populations, and operate outside centralized planning and service provision.
Cities are a primary producer of carbon emissions, and other older forms of
negative environmental impact such as degradation of farmland and air and water
pollution. As cities get larger, these impacts have the potential to become larger. It
is important that cities, as they grow, continue to provide value to their citizens, but
at the same time reduce waste (Hoornweg et al. 2010).
Fig. 1 Urban and rural population in developed and less developed regions (“Urban and rural
population in developed and less developed regions”, 2017)
The Lean City: Citizen as Producer, Consumer, Product 347
Lean is an approach to manufacturing which was developed at Toyota and is often

credited with the global success of Toyota Motor Corporation (Womack et al. 1990).
As a result, lean thinking (Womack and Jones 2003) has been taken up not only by
other manufacturing companies but has also been extended into other industries. One
can now find lean thinking applied to healthcare, services, administration, energy,
financial services, software engineering, consumption, maintenance, construction,
warehousing, project management, and public sector organizations (Sapountzis and
Kagioglou 2007; Leite and Vieria 2015; Sambinelli and Borges 2017; Locher 2008;
Hammer et al. 2014; Eustice 2009).
Despite the spread of lean thinking, there has been little application of the concepts
of lean to the city. The term “lean urbanism” has been appropriated by Andres Duany
to mean urban development with fewer regulations: which is not ipso facto lean,
even though many urban regulations may–under lean analysis—be found to add no
customer value. The google search term <“lean city”> gets less than 10,000 results,
as does <“lean urbanism”> . <“Lean cities”> gets only 2740, of which at least some
refer to cities with less obesity. Even <“urban complexity”>, which refers to an
urban attribute, rather than an approach to improving the urban condition, generates
40,000 hits. In comparison <“smart city”> on the other hand gets 20 million hits,
and <“smart cities”> 10.7 million, and the overall question of <“urban planning”>
gets 20 million hits.
The lean city is—as yet—under-explored territory.
There may be cognitive biases influencing this. Lean grew out of manufacturing.
It has since been applied extensively to health enterprises and to offices. Traditionally
the outputs of cities have been taken to mean the economic outputs of the private and
public enterprises which operate within it, and lean has been traditionally applied
to firms or public sector organizations. However, the city is itself neither firm nor
organization, and therefore might not be seen as a unit for lean analysis. Cities also
do not appear to be linear production assemblies with clear outputs such as document
processing of a large bureaucracy, or the production of Toyota cars. This non-linearity
(in the literal sense) might again deter people from subjecting cities to lean thinking.
Another possible reason lies in the fact that urban management has been histori-
cally the province of cities governments. City governments are traditionally limited
to investing in public infrastructure and regulating private sector investment. They
have limited ambit to actually manage the way that the city operates. Other impor-
tant aspects of the city are managed by private enterprise, statutory bodies, informal
settlement governance, or levels of government higher than the city.
The modern city is a product of the 19th century industrialization. The scale
and complexity created by industrialization gave rise to the need for urban planning
and management. The governance structures that were established were modelled
on the forms of early industrial management: bureaucratic and Taylorist. The way
in which cities now operate is such that one cannot change anything without first
completing a plethora of forms, and waiting months, if not years, for permission.
This seems archaic in comparison to contemporary standards of customer service.
(Here, Duany’s version of lean may be helpful: fewer regulations, more autonomy
for the workers). For example, near where I am writing this there is a tiny café on a
348 D. Week
traffic island, built into what used to be an electricity substation. From conception to
opening took them four and half years of city negotiations and approvals.
Most of society operates on the classical “rule of law”—in which there are general
laws which apply to everyone; and all is allowed as long as these laws are not violated,
and the government only interferes on the exception (Meyerson 2004). Cities still
operate (at least in theory) according to a different regime, similar to Soviet central
planning, in which almost any change to the built environment, even very minor
ones regarding signs, awnings and fencing—has to be approved in advance through
bureaucratic process.
There is widespread criticism of traditional planning and management as no longer
capable of keeping up with the requirements of the city. At the same time, we have
seen the emergence of a number of citizen-led initiatives, such as Tactical Urbanism
(Lydon and Garcia 2015), Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper (LQC) (“The lighter, quicker,
cheaper transformation of public spaces”, n.d.) and DIY Urbanism (Douglas 2018)
which aim to re-establish an active role of the local community and the citizen in
the production of the urban environment. New York City has led the way in the
establishment of Business Improvement Districts (BIDS), increasingly adopted by
other cities, in which small local retail businesses manage the expenditure of tax
money on their local public domain. These movements constitute citizen action to
improve the city where citizens have become weary (as consumers) of long delays
in city action.
Lean provides a new perspective on this kind of politics. Rather than see these
local movements as challenges to legitimate authority, we can see them as the answer
to the problems of cities hobbled by 19th century practices which is distant from its
clients, and crippled by a fragmented management structure which has no effective
control anyway.
Lean also shines a light on two competing forms of smart city: the smart city
which uses sensors and computers to magnify centralized control, and those that use
the same technologies to empower citizens to make better decisions. The latter is
more aligned with lean than the former.
This chapter looks at the application of lean to the city as a whole, through
the discussion of the application of particular lean concepts to city operations. It
structures the discussion in terms of the five principles of lean: value, value streams,
flow, pull, and perfection (Womack and Jones 2003). Looking at the city through the
lens of these five principles leads to both practical insights and political implications.
2 Value
The critical starting point for lean thinking is value. Value can only be defined by the ultimate
customer. And it’s only meaningful when expressed in terms of a specific product (a good
or a service, and often both at once) which meets the customer’s needs at a specific price at
a specific time. (Womack and Jones 2003, p. 16)
When we survey the infinite variety of productive activities that take place in a
city on any given day, it seems difficult to imagine that a city can be understood
in terms of a finite list of values which the city delivers to its citizens. The key to
understanding the value of the city is to distinguish what the city itself produces,
from the products of households, firms, civil society or public sector organizations
that operate within the city. For each of these, we might ask: what is the value added
to that unit by being in the city, as opposed to being outside it—in a rural town, or
in an open field. It is this difference which is the value added by the city.
2.1 The Value of the City
One clue comes from economists, who define cities as agglomeration economies.
Cities produce their core value by bringing people and firms close to each other. As
the urbanist Edward Glaeser puts it: “Agglomeration economies are the benefits that
come when firms and people locate near one another together in cities and industrial
clusters” (Glaeser 2010).
When people as workers are brought close to a large number of firms or organi-
zations, they have access to a variety of potential jobs. Their ability to choose, vary
and improve their work life increases.
When people as consumers are brought close to a large number of consumer
products and services, their ability to compare, choose, and select among options
is also improved. Cities produce value for consumers by increasing their proximity
to a range of consumer products: food, entertainment, leisure, parks, sports, dining,
shopping. In the district of Carlton in Melbourne, in which I live, I can walk to three
different shopping streets, a food district, the central produce markets, the CBD,
two cinemas, one museum, five theatres and two universities. The concentration of
markets and audiences allows such variety to co-exist in small areas, thus rendering
them easily accessible to the people that live there.
When firms and other organizations are close to each other, it makes it easier for
them to form supply chains and webs. Within cities, industries may group in industry
clusters, easing the flow of information within them. Silicon Valley is perhaps the
most famous industry cluster today; others include Wall Street, Shinjuku, the City
of London and Hollywood. Cities host clusters for fashion, pharmaceuticals, film-
making, insurance, education, food, tourism, artistic culture and ethnic culture.
These relationships work in reverse as well. When any firm is close to a large pool
of workers, it has greater chance of finding the best fits for its labor needs. When
retail outlets and services are in the midst of large consumer markets, their ability to
find customers and grow is expanded.
Glaeser again: “These benefits all ultimately come from transport costs savings:
the only real difference between a nearby firm and one across the continent is that it
is easier to connect with a neighbor” (Glaeser 2010). In considering this point, it’s
important to keep in mind the general concept of transport as movement—walking,
as well as vehicles.
350 D. Week
The power of the proximity in the city is exemplified in this story from the city
of Shenzhen in China.
In 2007, a little over a month before the iPhone was scheduled to appear in stores, Mr. Jobs
beckoned a handful of lieutenants into an office. For weeks, he had been carrying a prototype
of the device in his pocket. Mr. Jobs angrily held up his iPhone, angling it so everyone could
see the dozens of tiny scratches marring its plastic screen, according to someone who attended
the meeting. He then pulled his keys from his jeans.
People will carry this phone in their pocket, he said. People also carry their keys in their
pocket. “I won’t sell a product that gets scratched,” he said tensely. The only solution was
using unscratchable glass instead. “I want a glass screen, and I want it perfect in six weeks.”
Foxconn, in the city of Shenzhen, was able to respond to Apple Computer’s request to change
initial production of the first iPhone from a plastic screen to a glass screen within weeks,
because of the proximity of Corning Glass mega-factory just down the road. Apple had
redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul.
New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight. A foreman immediately roused 8000
workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was
given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a
12 h shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 h, the plant was producing
more than 10,000 iPhones a day.
“The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive.
“You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws?
That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three
hours.” (Duhigg and Bradsher 2012)
This concept of connection is not limited to economic production. The archi-

tectural theorist Christopher Alexander once defined a city as “a mechanism for
sustaining human contact” (Alexander 1967). He argued that the evidence showed
that human contact is necessary for human health, that lack of human contact is
associated with mental illness, and that a complex of urban factors can produce
mental and social breakdown when the city is not specifically designed to sustain
human contact. Again, the city produces individual and social health by bringing
people together—though it can fail to do so. And people move to the city not just for
economic reasons, but for social reasons as well: a large pool of possible partners,
and—simply because of their size—a more varied pool, in which people of different
sexualities, beliefs, tastes, ethnicities and culture find it easier to find others like
themselves (Glaeser 2010).
Alexander’s work points to the fact that to deliver on the value of contact requires
the right kind of urban structure. Of the millions of households and enterprises in a
city, each has their own requirements (which may shift over time) for access to other
parts of the city. It is this complexity that generates urban morphology: shopping
streets where buyers can find a variety of outlets in one place, leafy suburbs where
they can find quiet, a distribution of parks to provide access to green for every point
of the city, street traders that provide food and repair services outside and in addition
to fixed establishments, pharmaceutical or film production clusters and garment or
financial districts within which supply chains can form, a complex network of roads
of different sizes to connect more distant points. As the city grows, urban forms
attempt to adapt and morph to deliver this core value: proximity. It is the changing
flows of individual and enterprise desires (Purcell 2013), their competition with each
other for high-proximity locations, and the relatively inelastic form of the city itself
which makes cities complex.
The urbanist Oren Yiftachel (2016) has drawn attention to the Jorge Luis Borges
short story “The Aleph” as a metaphor for the city. In the story, the Aleph is “one of
the points in space that contains all other points.”
The cellar stairway is so steep that my aunt and uncle forbade my using it, but I’d heard
someone say there was a world down there. I found out later they meant an old-fashioned
globe of the world, but at the time I thought they were referring to the world itself. One day
when no one was home I started down in secret, but I stumbled and fell. When I opened my
eyes, I saw the Aleph.… the only place on earth where all places are — seen from every
angle, each standing clear, without any confusion or blending.
The Aleph is the epitome of what every city seeks to be: a point which affords all
other points in the world.
Cities produce economic value by increasing the access that producers have to
employees, suppliers, and markets; and produce social value by giving people access
to other people, both like and unlike themselves. The complexity of urban form comes
from the task of delivering the connectivity to millions of people and enterprises,
which cannot all occupy the same space but have to be distributed and arranged and
connected so as to deliver the requisite contact.
2.2 Learning to See
Lean emphasizes “learning to see”. Before one can improve anything, one has to
see value as defined by the customer. For the city, the customers are its citizens
and enterprises. In a city, citizens and enterprises want access to other citizens and
enterprises, for the companionship, culture, goods, services, jobs and entertainment.
The unique value that the city adds is to bring them all together in close proximity,
to allow them to connect, so that each has increased access to the goods and services
they desire.
This access is done by through three different mechanisms, which can be under-
stood through the urban theorist Kim Dovey’s concept of “DMA” (connoting bio-
logical DNA) which he suggests “make cities tick” (Dovey and Pafka 2016; Dovey
2016). DMA stands for density, mix and access—by which Dovey means transport
pathways. Each of these three are in fact a strategy for affording connection:
• Density brings all points together, and thus increases accessibility uniformly for
all the loci in the dense area. However, too dense, and people start losing access
to parks and sunlight which may be pushed out by density. Density may increase
traffic in a way that slows access.
• Mix is a way of ensuring that for any one point, there is easy access to a variety of
other places that any particular loci might desire. With the right mix, it’s possible
352 D. Week
to give every household a walkable distance to cinema, park, school, work oppor-
tunities, a variety of retail, as well as quiet. For a business, it might be access to
transport nodes for commuters, parking, a variety of business services, eateries,
suppliers and clients.
• Access—which for Dovey means pathways for physical transport—is what allows
locus A to connect to locus B by allowing physical transit on foot or by vehicle.
However, too much pathway can push things apart, by simply taking up too much
land; a big road can become a barrier between what’s on one side and what’s on
the other; a rail line can become difficult to cross, leading to the pattern of an
undesirable neighborhood being “on the wrong side of the tracks”—cut off from
what is desireable.
What the city actually delivers is a space of possibility. What makes a house or
business in a well-connected neighborhood valuable is independent of what that
home or business actually accesses—it’s the possibility of access that provides the
value. Within that space of possibility, citizens and enterprises make choices as
to what they actually access on any given day. We can conceive of this space of
possibility in three ways:
• Affordance: The perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson understood human percep-
tion of space as a perception of what space “affords”—the possibility of human
movement. For Gibson, “The affordances of the environment are what it offers
the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill” (Gibson 1979).
Thus, a house in a neighborhood with proximity to public transport, shops and
schools is generally more valuable than one without. This is because the neighbor-
hood affords connection to these resources, irrespective of whether any particular
household actually makes use of that access on any given day.
• Virtuality: The philosophers Deleuze and Guattari drew the distinction in their
concept of the virtual, as distinct from the actual, but also from the possible (Pear-
son 2005). A match has the virtual property of being able to start flame, a property
which is real, but not actual until such time as it is struck against the side of the
matchbox. The idea of the “possible”, on the other hand includes the possibility of
life on other planets, the possibility of water on Mars, the possibility of matches
that work underwater—things that might be real but might not. The potential of
the match, or of a tram taking me to a friend’s house is more than just possible: it is
also real to me as a citizen. Cities do not deliver actual contact with the schools or
shops. Actual contact is delivered by walking or vehicles. The city creates a virtual
space of many potentials only some of which are actualized at any one time.
• Utility: Mathematicians define a space as a set of points, with a function that defines
a relationship between any pair of those points (Marcolli 2009). We have defined
the value provided by the city as the measure of that function. In the Euclidean
space, which we learned in school, that function is defined by the measure of a ruler
between the two points: the “distance.” The value provided by the city is small
distances to your objects of desires. But the measure of distance here is not as
simple as the ruler-measure of Euclidean space. The distance between two points
in the virtual space is a complex function of the time it takes to travel, the money
Fig. 2 Isochronic map of Munich’s transit system—travel time to the center. Source https://
visualign.wordpress.com/2012/04/
it takes to travel, and positive value of the journey itself, and the positive value of
the connection made at the end. One aspect of this equation—time—is sometimes
mapped via isochrones—lines of equal travel time from a given point (see Fig. 2:
“Isochronic map of Munich’s transit system—travel time to the center”. The islands
of colour represent the areas around stations). These complex functions are used
by transport planners to attempt to calculate the “utility” for different modes of
travel for different purposes and customer segments, and thus calculate overall
demand for different transport modes. Recently, this model is being expanded
under the “new mobility paradigm” to allow for the fact that not all functions are
costs—or indeed mathematically comparable. A commuter may use her half-hour
of strap-hanging to meditate on the poetry she likes to write in the evening, the
man who cycles to work is getting his exercise as well connecting two points.
Actual access to valuable places in the city is made by moving. Cities afford
access through a variety of platforms including sidewalks, roadways for cars, taxis
and carshare, trams and rail. A special kind of network is the telecommunications
networks, discussed further below. We can understand these pathways, and the rela-
tive location of people and enterprises to each other, as the production of affordances
354 D. Week
for connection. They provide a virtual space of different potentials, of high-value

pathways to high-value resources. In terms of affordances above, it provides an
environment for humans with affordances to access the things they desire, often in
reciprocal relationship in which the humans desiring what’s at the end of the journey
are themselves desired by those at journey’s end.
2.3 Time and Money
Modern analyses of consumer behavior often involve forms of exchange theory: that
in making decisions, a person will exchange something of lesser value for that of
greater value. This involves both human relationships and market exchanges (Brin-
berg and Wood 1983; Yi and Gong 2009). From this perspective, both money and
time can be seen as currencies. One can also exchange money for time—for instance
by taking a car instead of a bus to work; or time for money—for instance by working
longer hours for overtime pay. But both time and money actualize their potential by
being put to use.
Both time and money are finite resources. Time is intrinsically finite. Money is
finite both in the sense of budget, but also in the sense that it can only be actualized
by applying to the purchase of the relatively finite (with some elasticity) quantum of
goods and services available in the economy at the time of purchase. Time has both
exchange and use value. In economic terms, money has only exchange value—but
also has certain use values: to allay anxiety, or to raise social status, without being
used.
Not far from where this paper is being written, in Melbourne, is a stone monument
to the eight-hour day movement, inscribed with the formula 8/8/8 (“Eight Hour Day
Monument”, n.d.). This formula relates to an ideal of the labour movement: that
every person should have the right to 8 h work, 8 h rest, and 8 h for recreation and
education. This points to the finitude of human time. A two hour commute every day
is not work, it’s not restful, and it’s not recreation, and making this choice as a way
of spending time and money means a detraction from time and money which could
have been applied otherwise (On the other hand, purveyors of audio education often
make the point that the average commute time is the same as the class time to attain
a BA degree: offering commuters to turn commute time into audio education time).
Generally, every hour spent here, is an hour not spent elsewhere.
To apply this to child-rearing: for a working parent, every hour spent commuting
has to come from somewhere. It can come by acquiring a sleep deficit; it can come by
cutting work hours if possible, and thus income, and all that a loss of income entails,
or by reducing time with family and children, to the detriment of those relationships.
Most of commute time is muda: waste. If we could do without it, we would. For
this reason, transport economists conceive all transport in terms of negative utility.
But this is not always the case.
2.4 The Complexity of Urban Affordance
Time and cash can be traded with each other. They may be spent on rest time,
recreation and education time, family time, self-time, work time. Negative value can
arise from both wasted time, and from the negative effects of stress, or boredom, or
the discomforts of strap-hanging or motion sickness. There are also possible positive
values for some forms of commute: chance to be alone, to drive a nice car, to work
uninterrupted. These are the exchange values that citizens and enterprises face in
making choices about how to actualize urban affordances.
As with any product or service, there is a cost to the customer. To understand the
value of actualizing a particular urban affordance, let’s look at the case of one of
the most common urban connections: the connection made between enterprise and
worker known as the “commute”, a connection made billions of times per year, in
cities through the world. Imagine here six different commuters:
• A is a traditional car commuter in Melbourne. She leaves her house slightly early
at 7 am in an attempt to beat rush hour, and it takes her an hour to get into the city
at 8 am—part of a phenomenon called “peak spreading” (Bolland and Ashmore
2002). The return commute is the same in reverse: leaving at 4 pm. For A, the
entire commute has no positive value. She finds the whole experience of traffic
stressful, and because of the need to pay attention while driving, can make no
other use of her time. None the less she prefers it to the bus because she saves time
at home and at work by being able to leave exactly when ready, not tied to a bus
schedule.
• B lives in the city of Canberra. He bikes to work. Biking to work means a thirty-
minute commute each way, but that thirty minutes counts as the exercise he reckons
he needs to do. Most of the commute is along bike paths, not roads, and so there
is little stress related to the danger posed by vehicles, little stopping and starting,
and most of the time he is among trees. His commute takes 40 min and generates
value during the commute, saving him time which he might otherwise have to spend
exercising during his “recreation” time. That time is not freed up for other purposes.
Plus, he is a bike aficionado, and enjoys the very act of cycling and supports it as an
act of environmental politics. For him, it’s both bodily and politically pleasurable.
• C is a highly paid stockbroker in New York City. She lives in Westchester County,
and takes a daily hire car to and from work. During the ride, she takes the oppor-
tunity to read the Wall Street Journal and catch up on her email. The car costs her
cash, of which she has plenty. But the cost of the driver and a large stable automo-
bile means that she can get work done during her commute. That adds value. She
also has chosen this form of transport because of what her peers do and might find
it difficult to share commute stories with other high-flying chauffeured masters
of the universe. She would find it hard to drive herself, or take a commuter train,
because of this alone.
356 D. Week
• D is a consultant living in the “stockbroker belt” outside of London. He takes a

Virgin business class train to work every day. Living an hour away allows him to
cut his housing cost in half. Virgin business class provides him with an assigned
seat, an internet connection, power and onboard cellular network, which in turn
makes it possible to turn the whole trip into billable time. In addition, he plans
his client site time so he only commutes 2–3 days a week, working the other days
from home. He also enjoys his time on the train, because it is his only alone-time,
free from the demands of family and clients.
• E chooses to live immediately adjacent to the city of Melbourne. As a result, she
is able to walk, bike or tram to all of that the city has to offer in terms of services,
jobs, education, culture, food and retail. Her apartment cost $200,000 more than
the equivalent in a middle ring suburb, but the saved time more than makes up for
the additional interest bill.
• F, who lives in the outer suburban belt in Sydney, has a job in another outer suburb.
Since the trains run mainly radially, and she can’t afford a car, she commutes by bus
which takes 90 min to traverse a distance which would take her 30 min to drive—if
she could afford a car. Worse, the bus is rarely on time (an endemic problem) which
means she spends additional time waiting at the stop. The swaying of the bus makes
it impossible for her to read without motion sickness, but she tries to use the time
productively by listening to audiobooks.
There are many variations: people who commute by ferry in Sydney or San Fran-
cisco, by regional train, by urban commuter train, on foot, bike, motorbike, carshare
or car. Some undertake a mix of physical commuting and telecommuting, the cost
of the latter being a loss of sociality and the richness of face-to-face and informal
“water cooler” communications. Each provides a different mix of values in terms of
cash cost, time cost, the chance to use the time productively. How people make these
choices depends on their income, and the value of their time if put to other purposes,
and most importantly the value of the trip—both the value of the destination, and the
positive value of the trip itself (as time alone, as exercise, as pleasure, or any other
of an open list of possible human evaluations). This mix also influences locational
choices: where to live and where to work, because being far from resources is cheaper
in housing costs, but more expensive in time and money to make the connection.
In a factory, the cost might be measured in money, but in the city, it is more often
measured by time. In general, citizens will pay more to reduce the amount of time
they spend in accessing what they desire. Public transport is nominally cheaper than
owning a car, but on average, 85% of trips are by car rather than public transport
because it is faster on a door-door basis, or even just “convenience”. Only the poor
take the most time-consuming forms of transport and are further disadvantaged by
being forced to so.
The city is made up of millions of stories like these, of people actualizing the
affordances of the city’s virtual space. These stories only look at commutes for
able-bodied working age people. In addition, there are the different connection
needs and desires of stay-at-home householders, of children, of parents, the aged,
the unemployed, the disabled. These are not only categories of population taken
synchronically, but diachronically also as stages of life that people will pass through
between birth and death.
∗ ∗ ∗
The value that customers seek in the city is the affordances it provides to its
citizens to work, services, and to other people both like themselves and different.
The city is a virtual space of affordances.
The major mechanisms which provide affordances are (a) density, which brings
all points closer to each other; (b) mix, which helps ensure a variety of affordances
for every point; and (c) access, which is the network of pathways along which trans-
port moves. Citizens actualize these affordances through complex decision-making,
involve time, money, and an indeterminate range of values of both the connection,
and the process involved in connecting. These actualizations can be very complex,
but they are the ways that citizens make use of the affordances offered. Density
and mix allow different citizens and enterprise to cluster. These clusters are a major
feature of urban structure.
Managing the city involves the affordances themselves, the varieties of mix and
density provided by clustering. The creation of affordance is complicated by the
constantly shifting patterns of demand from both citizens and enterprises, compli-
cated by the relative inelasticity of existing urban structure. Change thus necessarily
involves a mix of new structure, and repurposing of the historically given structure.
3 The Value Stream
The value stream is the set of all the specific actions required to bring a specific product
(whether a good, a service, or, increasingly, a combination of the two) through the three
critical management tasks of any business: the problem-solving task running from concept
through detailed design and engineering to production launch, the information management
task running from order-taking through detailed scheduling to delivery, and the physical
transformation task proceeding from raw materials to a finished product in the hands of the
customer. (Womack and Jones 2003, p. 19)
We can visualize “product” in terms of the production of an automobile, or even a

package of information such an architectural design or a stock analyst’s report. What
is the “product” of the city? Given the value is the affordance, we can understand
the city products which deliver this value in terms of the density and mix on the one
hand, and access on other.
Density and mix are the ways in which the city controls the way in which people
can locate households and enterprise within the city. This is done by the function of
city planning, and the product is the city plan which governs type and location of
uses.
358 D. Week
Access, on the other hand, is provided by the path network, subdivided into pedes-
trian, various kinds of vehicular path—from the smallest lane or bicycle path, to the
multi-lane boulevard or freeway—and specialized rail paths. Neither density, mix
or access of these products is ever “delivered” to the city-user. They exist as affor-
dances for the city users, the cost recovered through urban taxes, tolls, and develop-
ment application fees. These products are not “disposed of” but are rather used by a
variety of citizens and enterprises, and both plans and networks undergo continuous
transformation in response to the demand.
Actual delivery involves a complex mix of actors.
For access, the city provides the pathways, but the vehicles are provided some-
times by public authorities, sometimes by private enterprises, and often by people
driving their own vehicles—a case in which the worker such as a driver or cyclist is
also the product being transported, and also the owner of some of the capital means
of production: the vehicle. These modalities compete for the patronage of the cit-
izens, though they are not necessarily in direct economic competition. A rail line
that convinces a citizen to leave their car at home is in not direct competition with
automobile companies: they have not necessarily stolen a sale from them.
Different modalities also compete with each other for influence in the way that
the city builds future affordance—future roads, paths, and rail corridors. Conversion
of car lanes to bike lines reduces the number of car lanes—sometimes producing
political outrage among car commuters.
This complexity of value delivery makes it difficult to imagine one “value stream”.
There are millions, competing for the space of affordance, and competing to be chosen
by citizens and enterprises. In a single product factory, it is feasible to map the value
stream. In the city, a linear mapping of the stream is almost inconceivable. The
production of value is scattered throughout the city over a two-dimensional plane
of thousands of square kilometers, and the processes that produce that value—both
through the control of private investment through planning, and the provision of
public movement networks through path-building—are also scattered, and densely
overlapping (see Fig. 3: “A mesh of affordances and value streams, in Portland,
Oregon”).
This makes management of the city difficult. And one of the challenges of the lean
city is the fact that city management is highly fragmented from a lean perspective.
Roads and rail, for instance, usually come under a different authority. Trunk roads
may be managed by a highway authority, while local roads are managed by local
government. A person driving his or her car on the road is a customer of access,
but also—in driving—a producer. The route she takes, her destination, the time of
day she travels, all of these are not under a single management regime. She is a free
agent. There is no management control over when and where people drive or take
public transport. This is one of the in-built challenges of the city.
Managing a city can be like managing a factory in which one has set out many
intersecting value production lines, but where one has no direct say over the activ-
ities of the workers, or how they use their tools. There is no unified ownership, or
management. On the other hand, this very same fragmentation of ownership and
Fig. 3 A mesh of affordances and value streams, in Portland, Oregon. Source https://www.
citymetric.com/transport/why-do-so-many-public-transport-networks-use-grid-systems-955
management is part of what makes the city work: there is no monopoly on either
value delivery, or even affordance creation.
To add further complexity, for historical reasons different cities often have a
different type of mesh, and very frequently different mixes of mesh type, as different
parts of the city are built during different historical epochs when different national or
professional preferences for mesh predominate (see Fig. 4: “Different cities, different
mesh typologies”).
The most widely known of mesh types is the grid. Although the grid has a long
history—it was used for the colonial towns of the Roman Empire, for instance—it’s
greatest promoter has been the United States in which it found two-fold support: as
a very fast way of laying out urban streets, for a rapidly expanding nation; and as an
expression of the democratic ideal in which—unlike radial roads which privilege the
center, for instance—every point is equal to every other point, and there is no privilege
of either access or geometry (Ballon and Museum of the City of New York 2012).
360 D. Week
Fig. 4 Different cities, different mesh typologies (Boeing 2017)
3.1 The Value of Location
Land prices in the city reflect not just land area, but also the difference in affordance
between different locations. As described before, industries may choose to cluster in
certain areas because of the value of co-location in terms of forming value chains.
Historically, these were physical value chains which extended along the streets,
such as found in New York’s garment district, Amsterdam’s diamond district, or
the Victorian manufacturing districts of London, like the Clerkenwell watchmaking
district. Some of these still exist today. Others have declined due to computerization
and globalization.
The 20th century saw the rise of the industry clusters based on knowledge, rather
than material movements. Wall Street, Hollywood and Silicon Valley are all intra-
urban regions in which the value delivered is the opportunity to meet and exchange
ideas and information with what Robert Reich called “Symbolic Analysts”—a top tier
of global worker whose work involves the production and manipulation of informa-
tion alone. Though in principle this information can be communicated and transferred
electronically, in practice these industries also depend on face to face interactions.
Even in financial districts, the pinnacle of the electronic exchange, citizens value the
face-to-face meetings, the lunches, and the random street encounters that a cluster
affords.
Historically, cities have evolved different forms of clustering. Among these:
• The monocentric city: the oldest city form, with a single point of maximum land
value at the geographic center. In such cities, the highest value jobs and services
tend to cluster in the center, the most expensive homes are near the center, and
major roads and rail lines run to the center, greatly privileging the center of the
city. Often, the old center is high rise because of the need to capitalize on high
land values.
• The polycentric city: cities which for a variety of reasons have developed multiple
points of peak land value, sometimes because the city has become geographically
so large that it is not feasible for all citizens to access the original center. Polycentric
cities may have multiple high-rise areas.
• The edge city, a term coined by the geographer Joel Garreau, in which the old center
has fallen into decay, and industries have moved out into the suburbs (Garreau
1992). This results in a very car-dependent “ring” structure, with retail centers,
industries and suburbs intermixed. Often, the lack of any clear central structure
makes for a low-rise city, like Silicon Valley, or Orange County.
• Aeropolis, in which cities grow around airports, driven in the first instance by the
economic access that an airport affords to industries clustered around it, and then
secondarily the housing and services which can serve those industries (Aeroscape
2013).
Other forms of city form which aim to deal with the locational issue of getting
people close to what they want to be close to, include the urban corridor, which is
emerging as the most important form of conglomeration. The urban corridor grows
along a major path connecting to existing cities, providing locations along the corridor
ready access to both (Georg et al. 2016) (See Fig. 5: “Structure of urban centers”).
3.2 Demographics Versus Customer Experience
Lean practitioners are counselled to actually walk the value chain, actually see value
being created, and at the same time see waste. This is part of the lean focus on what’s
happening on the factory floor, as distinct from data collection.
It may seem impossible to “walk the line” of a city, though an American sociolo-
gist—William Helmreich—has done so for the five boroughs of New York City, and
has written insights into the life of those boroughs not available by any other method.
Doing so took him four years and involved walking 6000 miles along 40,000 blocks
(Helmreich 2018).
Researchers in the New Mobilities paradigm, who are pursuing a more holistic
examination of the human experience and motivations involved in transport have
also started creating richer pictures of the transport experience:
362 D. Week
Fig. 5 Structure of urban centers (Lang and Knox 2009)
All the events that we experience, all the environments that we move through, impress on us
and leave their mark. They might increase some capacities while depleting others. Even if
we are not conscious of how an event has affected us at the time, we might come to realize,
sometimes much later, how forceful that event was… (Bissell 2018)
In a recent course at the University of Melbourne, exploring urban loneliness,

and forms of urban design that might ameliorate loneliness, one student—an artist
by profession—chose trains as her object of study. She noticed that at the average
commuter spends seven minutes on the platform awaiting their train to the city. Even
more relevant was because commuting is time-bound routine, the same commuters
stand together on that platform for that seven minutes, every day. Those platforms
are currently empty expanses with a few benches. The question that then arose: How
might those platforms be designed differently, to ameliorate urban loneliness? For
instance, could a constantly renewed art exhibit on the platform not only improve
the value of the commute experience, but also provide opportunities the people who
now stand facing the track, waiting in their aloneness, to share an experience, and
start talking to each other.
In contrast, for instance, in the public documentation on the $11bn rail investment
in central Melbourne, the published cost benefit analysis mentioned only the numbers
of commuters who benefit, and where they worked. It did not even disaggregate the
data by gender or age: possibly because the data comes from transport studies which
count cars and rail passengers for which data is itself silent on such matters; possibly
for political reasons; possibly because in the ideal of democracy every citizen is
supposed to be treated as “equal”.
Clearly, no-one involved in managing a city can deal with every commuter, or
every citizen, as an individual. Nonetheless, this is the ideal towards which lean
strives, and the examples above show a vast gap between what is possible, and what
is practiced.
The HBS business theorist Clayton Christensen has put a theoretical framework
around the difference between customer experience and motivations, on the one hand,
and raw demographic data on the other: the theory of “jobs to be done”. Christensen
suggests that we should conceptualize a product as something that is “hired” by the
consumer to do a job, and unless we understand the “job to be done” for which
the product is hired, we can’t improve the product to make it do that job better.
Christensen points out that he reads the New York Times, and the Times collects
demographic information about his income, gender, profession, location, etc. But
that none of this will tell them why he reads the New York Times.
The theory of “jobs to be done” is also colloquially called “milkshake marketing”
after the original study that gave rise to the theory (Christensen et al. 2016). In
a study of why people buy milkshakes from a fast food outlet, Clayton found by
careful observation, followed up by interviews, that people bought milkshakes to
keep themselves occupied, and as a no-mess meal replacement, on long, otherwise
boring commutes. Hamburgers required two hands. Cokes weren’t filling enough.
Muffins dripped crumbs down their business shirts. The milkshake did the best job of
keeping a person occupied over a long commute. Improving the milkshake involved
making it better at doing this job. But this “job to be done” can never be deduced
from simple demographic data.
Insofar as we restrict our understanding of transport as being purely a matter
of time, cost and efficiency, without understanding what job citizens and firms are
trying to get done may tell us what is happening, but not why. This “why”, as the
profiles A through F above suggest, is more complex than just getting from one point
to another at minimum time-cost. But without this understanding, we can’t improve
the affordances of movement that the city provides.
∗ ∗ ∗
Attempting to picture the value streams of the city shows a complex mesh of affor-
dances, carrying an equally complex mesh of value streams. Within these streams,
people and good moves using a system which conflates citizen as owner of and worker
operating the means of production, citizen as customer being satisfied, and citizen
as product being carried. In shorter, producer, consumer and product become one.
The particular value propositions being enacted in these movements may be
equally complex, ranging from complex factors that can be captured in a utility func-
tion, to more subtle and subconscious “motivations” studied by the new mobilities
364 D. Week
paradigm, that cause people to actualize these affordances. Understanding these

movements is more complex and varied than the task of understanding why early
morning commuters tend to buy milkshakes.
This suggests that the creation and management of these affordances can only be
crudely represented in any kind of centralized master-planning model.
4 Flow
Once value has been precisely specified, the value stream for a specific product fully mapped
by the lean enterprise, and obviously wasteful steps eliminated, it’s time for the next step
in lean thinking—a truly breathtaking one: Make the remaining, value-creating steps flow.
(Womack and Jones 2003, p. 21)
On the one hand, the idea of flow is well understood by transport professionals.
This is because the anathema of road transport—the traffic jam—is not caused by too
many vehicles in too small a conduit. Rather, it’s caused by turbulence in the flow.
A lack of coordination in the braking and acceleration of individual vehicles in the
traffic flow set up a series of waves in the traffic, flowing in the direction opposite to
the flow of traffic. These waves constitute alternations of movement and standing still.
Turbulence in flow is also dealt with in Theory of Constraints, an approach to
production management developed by the Israeli physicist Eliyahu Goldratt, who
specifically looked at manufacturing flow as a physical flow, vulnerable to turbulence.
He first documented the idea in the book The Goal (Goldratt and Cox 2004)—itself
an interesting case of lean, in that it removed the usual friction between academic
researcher and the potential end-user by turning the research into a “business novel”:
easily found in major bookshops, and easy to read. As a result, The Goal and its
successor novels became a landmark success both in the annals of both business
books, and in self-publishing.
Goldratt asks us to imagine a factory as a series of machines, each with a slightly
different capacity, each of which takes an input from an earlier machine and delivers a
product to the next machine down the line. What is readily apparent is that the factory
as a whole in such a linear arrangement cannot produce faster than the machine with
the lowest throughput: the bottleneck. The tendency under mass production to attempt
to run each machine at its maximum throughput (in order to get the benefits of lowered
unit cost at that machine) leads to build up of work in process prior to the bottleneck.
This generates waste in the form of excess internal inventory. Goldratt’s prescription
is two-fold: first is to restrict the throughput of all machines to the capacity of the
bottleneck, either by (a) increasing the capacity of the bottleneck, or (b) unloading
the bottleneck, by transferring its work elsewhere. The first is the equivalent of setting
the lean task time.
In a city we see this during rush hour when commuters may rush down suburban
streets only to find themselves stuck on an onramp, because the freeway is a
bottleneck, which is itself overloaded by the rush of cars down suburban streets.
Increasing the capacity of the bottleneck might involve adding lanes to the freeway.
Offloading the bottleneck might involve improving bus and train schedules to take
cars out of the road system.
Currently, there is no way of implementing a true takt time, which we discuss in
the next section, to such a problem.
4.1 Takt Time in the City
Takt is the German word for the baton that an orchestra conductor uses to regulate the
tempo of the music. Takt time may be thought of as a measurable “beat time,” “rate time” or
“heartbeat.” In Lean, takt time is the rate at which a finished product needs to be completed
in order to meet customer demand. (“Takt Time”, 2018)
Takt is calculated as [available time for production]/[required units of production].

This gives a “beat” for the flow in terms of time unit per product. The purpose of
aligning all operations to the same beat is to create flow, by synchronizing their speed
with respect to each other. The opposite of flow is turbulence.
Traffic jams are an example of turbulence, and turbulence produces muda. This
is not only muda in terms of lost time for the customers, but starting and stopping
also produces more pollution, and uses more fuel. Turbulence also produces waste
from an environmental perspective.
Poets and novelists like to suggest that the city has its own takt time. They talk
about the beat of the city, or the pulse of the city. It seems unlikely that there is any
such beat that is universal across the city, but different pieces of the city will have
their own takt time. This is apparent in a variety of the approaches to eliminating
congestion.
Some cities synchronize their traffic lights so if each driver drives at the ideal
maximum speed set by the safety authorities, they will encounter no red lights. As they
approach an intersection the lights go green. Similarly, the movement of the traffic at
right angles is synchronized so that the traffic passes through the same intersection
when no one is approaching it from the first direction. Thus, the coordinated timing
of lights and speed in all directions aims to produce flow.
Another is a new method of regulating high flow by putting lights at the on-ramps,
so that cars are released into the flow at regular intervals, thus reducing the disruptive
effect of their entry to the flow. This is again an attempt at synchronizing flow through
the coordination of time and speed.
At the leading edge of such attempts is the realization that almost all congestion
could be eliminated by eliminating the “worker” role of the car-driver, by automating
that job. This would allow the managed coordination of the flow of all vehicles, to
minimize congestion by using different routes, but most important by coordinating
speeds so that cars flow smoothly despite being only a few meters apart. This elim-
ination of the human driver would eliminate the “unmanaged driver-worker” and
make the car occupants into pure customers. Once freed from the work of driving,
there are also proposals to make car-time into useful time—not waste at all. One will
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be able to sleep on long trips, eat, converse, do work, or watch a movie. This in turn
suggests changes in the vehicle to ameliorate motion-sickness.
The ideal takt time solution to the traffic flow problem would be to regulate all cars
to common drumbeat. So that cars would not leave home (or work) except as timed
in order to ensure flow entering freeways, and to control acceleration and braking
so as to maintain flow on the open road, without waves of congestion. This does not
require full automation: many of the automated features in current models—which
for instance, takes over driving on the freeway, as well, and can maintain constant
distance from drivers in front—critical for avoiding turbulence in the flow of traffic.
There are also the ubiquitous mapping apps, which now provide directions, and also
map traffic to be avoided. Could they also be employed in timing departures on a more
regular basis: if you wait five minutes to leave home, your trip will be four minutes
shorter? There are complexities here—there might be free-riding, for instance, by
people aiming to beat the system by leaving earlier anyway, creating a “tragedy of the
commons”. There’s also a mind-set to be changed, which we see in the experiment
by the London Underground to ask people on escalators to stand side by side, rather
than leaving a free side for people who are in a hurry to pass. By standing side by
side, no-one particular person could travel faster, but everyone got there sooner. This
is contrary to cultural norms in the West, as was evidenced at the upset the request
created.
The flow of traffic is a value-producing process in the city which is in certain ways
a direct analogue of a factory line. But it is still very different from a Toyota factory
in that on the road, work becomes automated to turn the workers into customers, and
the time spent in transit from muda into value.
4.2 Relocation and Construction
Though physical movement is the obvious application of “flow”, the concept of DMA
provides other avenues way of looking at concepts of flow. One of the manifestations
of “density” is the agglomeration of similar uses or related uses which constitute an
industry cluster, an arts precinct, or a financial or innovation district. Flow in this
case relates not to the short-term flow of people, but the much slower flow of people
and enterprises as they flow into or towards the district. That flow requires the ability
to relocate from one point in the city to another with as little turbulence as possible.
Yet these movements in a typical city are fraught with turbulence.
In the case of housing, the process of selling and buying are interrupted by some
of the following:
• The amount of labor and time involved in finding a new property, especially the
current requirement to see the property physically. Online inspections might help
cut that down to a short-list.
• Auctions, which introduce uncertainty in the buying process because one cannot
be sure whether a purchase will go through. Off-site auctions, such as tenders,
might make this a less laborious process.
• The existence in Australia of Stamp Duty—a form of sale tax—on property trans-
fers, which puts a financial impost on the purchase of a new house. Economists
continue to call for a land tax as an alternative.
• In the UK, the existence of chains, where Buyer A agrees to move to a house
belonging to B, the sale contingent on B’s purchase of house C, which is contingent
on C’s finalization of the purchase of house D, contingent in turn on E, F, G, H,
and I. If any one of these sales falls over because of finance or other reasons, the
whole chain collapses.
• Exclusionary zoning, which make it difficult to change use from warehouse to
house, house to office, office to production facility.
• Inequality between neighborhoods between quality of school, making people in
“good” school catchments reluctant to move to neighborhoods with poor catch-
ments.
These kinds of impediments make it difficult for a person or enterprise to move
closer to their chosen cluster by simply selling up and moving. The same kinds of
impediments make it difficult for renters to move. As a result, many don’t move,
tying up large houses with downsized families, or clogging transport paths with
unnecessary commutes. All of these impede the formation of clusters, of allowing
people to move to and live near work and good school, and thus increasing the
affordance of the city by allowing people and enterprises that are deeply involved
with each other to co-locate readily.
Related to the ease of relocation is the ease of creation of new locations. Under
most current planning regimes, it is not easy to make a new corner shop in a res-
idential area, thus improving mix. It is currently not easy to build new buildings
in areas of high demand, without lengthy processes of planning, publishing, con-
sultation, objections, approval, and legal contestation. Sidewalks Labs, the urban
venture by Alphabet (formerly Google), is currently experimenting with 16 ha of
land on Toronto’s river front, to create a new neighborhood which integrates best
of intelligent data use with the best of urban design principles. One of the ideas to
emerge early is the idea of very flexible, framed buildings, with spaces can be easily
converted from large and open to small and cellular, from accommodation to office
and production and back.
Tactical urbanism—which started as a citizen-driven “guerrilla” action to trans-
form environments without approval, has developed a suite of materials—includes
the idea of the “pop up” with the following potential: that instead of the plan-apply-
object-approve/reject-sue cycle of a typical change in use or construction, cities
might adopt more “try it and see” with projects, where LQC (light, quick and cheap)
prototypes of buildings, road-reconfigurations, shops, stalls, etc. are erected first,
community reaction sought on the basis of real experience, and approval given after
the fact. Though such an alternative pathway for regulation is not well developed,
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these more flexible, ostensibly short-term urban changes do give the idea that such
as possible.
Near where this written, on the corner of CBD laneway, an entrepreneur
approached the owner of an empty lot to set up a temporary bar. The servery was
in a shipping container; the yard is covered with beach umbrellas, and the tables
and chairs are cable spools and milk crates; the “walls” of the lot are chain-link and
shade-cloth. The bar gets a low-capital start. The owner gets an income from the
empty lot. The locals get a new bar to patronize. That’s win, win, win. And the city
is not concerned, because it is all “temporary.” That bar has now been in operation,
successfully, for six years.
∗ ∗ ∗
Urban flow is a complex property, difficult to capture in a single model. Takt time
is equally complex in cities. Different modes of transport, and different flows of
desire beat different drums. The question becomes not one of takt time in a particular
flow, but the coordination of the takt times of different flows. This might be done
through large transport interchanges, or at a more fine-grained level by more flexible
systems such as walking, cycling or Uber.
But flow and takt time cannot be applied just to transport. The processes which
create density and mix for instance, involve processes of construction and relocation.
Both are currently fraught with turbulence.
5 Pull
In fact, it is because the ability to design, schedule, and make exactly what the customer
wants just when the customer wants it means you can throw away the sales forecast and
simply make what customers actually tell you they need. That is, you can let the customer
pull the product from you as needed rather than pushing products, often unwanted, onto the
customer. (Womack and Jones 2003, p. 24)
The difference between push and pull systems, in an urban setting, is most evident
in the difference between a bus and an Uber. The bus arrives on a regular schedule
(ideally), and departs again whether or not its empty, whether or not a customer is
left behind because he or she was 60 s late, and now has to wait another half hour
for the next bus.
Uber waits for a passenger to signal the desire to travel, and then pulls an available
nearby car to reach them in a short period of time. The controversial “surge pricing”
pulls more cars onto the road when demand starts to exceed supply.
In Australia, the number of commutes by public transport, over many decades,
tends to stay constant, and public transport use remains low. This is despite the fact
that cars are more expensive, and in many ways more stressful, than the train. Part
of this can be accounted for by the “pull” structure of automobile transport: the car
is ready when you are. Public transport, on the other hand, is a push system, and
this is revealed in the term by which it is still sometimes called: “mass transit”—the
transport equivalent of mass production.
There are places where public transport does achieve pull. In Port Vila, the capital
of Vanuatu, for instance, there are not large public buses—just small vans that run
along the main roads, but without fixed routes. There are sufficient vans running that
one comes along every few minutes. Once in, there is no worrying about routes: the
driver will make sure you get there. This is possible because Port Vila is a small
town, stretched more or less linearly along the coast, so most of the runs are along
the length of the town, with an occasional diversion up the hill.
Trams in the center of Melbourne also run this way. They run only along a few
tracks, and they run every few minutes, so catching a tram is just a matter of walking
to a tram stop, getting on the first tram, and getting off elsewhere. For movements
within the city, there is no concern about getting on the “wrong” tram. Nor is there
significant wait.
The third example is the newly installed aerial cable car in Medellin. The cars are
small—12 passengers—and a new arrives every ten seconds. The cars do not stop.
Passengers alight and get off while it is still moving. It functions the same way that a
ski-lift functions. The key here is to ensure that overall capacity is greater than high
demand, so that there is no wait time: no queues.
In these transport examples, in the minibus and the aerial cable car, flow and pull
become fused. On the one hand, pull demands that there is nothing produced unless
there is demand. In the minibus and aerial examples, there are empty seats, which is
muda: underused driver time, oversupplied capital, overused fuel and wear and tear.
But the continuity and small batch size help ensure that customer value is delivered
without wait time.
The question is: are the operators who are in charge of reducing waste in mass
transit systems in fact doing so, by minimizing operations which deliver no customer
value? Readings of transport literature suggest that many transport operators are
still in the realm of mass production, thinking of maximizing the utilization of the
expensive assets they have put in place.
5.1 Visual Control
In the use of visual controls, the city has deployed a lean technique long in advance
of the formal advent of lean. We are all familiar with stop signs, yield signs, and
traffic lights. Exit signs on freeways are also examples of visual controls. These,
together with visual contact with other vehicles, curbs, lane markers, direction signs,
and street names allow a worker (the driver) to control the machine (the vehicle) to
take the customers (the passengers, sometimes including the driver) from origin to
destination.
The same set of visual controls also informs the work of the walker to transport
themselves.
The pedestrian does have, in fact, a number of lean advantages:
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• low muda: nothing gets transported except the pedestrian themselves,

• highly amenable to visual controls,
• perfection of pull: the pedestrian can respond immediately to his own demand,
• flow: the pedestrian finds it relatively easy to maintain flow, and even interrup-
tions like traffic lights can be avoided by turning in another grid direction (when
travelling diagonally), or jaywalking,
• to a point, a range of available positive values of the journey itself that counter the
costs: view, exercise, freedom of movement, flexibility of pace, ease of starting
and stopping on an ad hoc basis—for coffee, friends, a breather, to smell a flower,
no motion sickness, no confinement, views of other pedestrians, low risk of death
by collision, freedom of attention…
These advantages of walking have led many urbanists to advocate walkable neigh-
borhoods: which include ease of walking coupled with a mix that ensures that most
major destinations are within walking distance. The limit of walkability is that by
itself it does not allow for full affordance of the power of the city, especially with
regards to work. Firms want access to a larger pool of workers than just those within
walking distance; workers want access to a larger pool of jobs than is available
within walking distance. The consulting. firm SGS has prepared maps which show
the variability of access to work within Melbourne and Sydney (SGS 2015). These
show enormous variation in the number of jobs available for citizens living at various
points in the city, by car, or by public transport. The reason is simple: people are
spread over the whole of Melbourne, but most of the jobs (including the best-paying
jobs) are concentrated in the center).
What walkability does address is affordance to points of daily consumption—-
park, supermarket, café, some retail—and the workplace of children: the school.
But access to more specialist and products services with a larger catch-basin—Tae
Kwan Do, classical guitar training, badminton, a vinyl store, specialist kitchen goods,
IKEA—require systems beyond one’s legs.
5.2 Smart Citizens
The ubiquity of smart phones and data access has given rise to a new form of visual
control: the smart phone. In terms of the classic image of a factory Kanban as made
out of physical elements (Fig. 6), the smart phone may seem like a dubious kind of
“visual”, but it fulfills the same function as a Kanban: to allow a worker access to real-
time information about the state of supply and thus to make immediate decisions to
produce in response to pull signals—his or her own desires (Capdevila and Zarlenga
2015). Thus, location aware smart phones allow a citizen to make on the spot decisions
about shopping, walking path, transport availability, traffic (go now, or shop now and
go later, or relax now and go later). They free the citizen to make these decisions
on the spot, rather than be trapped by fixed schedules, or prior knowledge about
availability, in the same way that visual signals provide timely information—not
Fig. 6 Typical Kanban board. Photo Credit http://ixd.prattsi.org/2015/04/the-kanban-method-in-

lean-ux/
instructions—about the state of production around them, so that they can respond
accordingly.
The smart citizen paradigm envisages informationally enabled citizens better able
to navigate the existing systems of unresponsive infrastructure. What is still missing
from the smart citizen discourse is an analysis of what infrastructure spending and
technology would look like, if it were targeted at providing affordances for the smart
citizen.
The “smart city” concept has been promoted heavily by large IT firms, which
focus on selling systems to government or transit authorities to better automate
city functions. Counterpoised to this is the proposal that the smart city should be
built around smart citizens—technology which provides citizens (and by extension
individual enterprises) with better information on how to use the city.
∗ ∗ ∗
Pull involves matching supply with demand, in order to avoid overproduction.

Both public transport and private transport, when they match demand, involve over-
production—either excessive capital in the car, or spare seats on train and cars.
A primary mechanism for managing flow is visual signalling. The city is rich
in visual signalling, but most of the signalling mechanisms are long-standing ones.
The smart phone offers a rich new medium for accomplishing the same as thing as a
Kanban board—the state of supply around you, allowing the citizen or enterprise to
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make decisions in real time. However, the current picture of the smart citizen is of a
person better enabled to cope with the poor services of non-lean transport.
6 Perfection
As organizations begin to accurately specify value, identify the entire value stream, make
the value-creating steps for specific products flow continuously, and let customers pull value
from the enterprise, something very odd begins to happen. It dawns on those involved that
there is no end to the process of reducing effort, time, space, cost, and mistakes while offering
a product which is ever more nearly what the customer actually wants. Suddenly perfection,
the fifth and final principle of lean thinking, doesn’t seem like a crazy idea. (Womack and
Jones 2003, p. 25)
The activity of perfection is defined as the continuous identification and elimina-

tion of muda. At this stage of considering the Lean City we make an important shift
from lean as a different way of evaluating city operations, to a lean as a perspective
with important political implications.
6.1 Kaizen
In those enterprises that have adopted lean, the principle of perfection has resulted
in the empowerment of ordinary workers to alter the production process. Muda is
everywhere, and muda has to be identified and eliminated by frontline production
workers who can see it and change it. During the ebb and flow of pull, workers
are either busy producing, or they stop producing in order to avoid overproduction.
During this “down” time, they turn to kaizen—continuous improvement—within
their cell.
Another way in which workers are empowered is through the system of visual
signalling. Rather than reporting the state of production to a central authority—-
sometimes a computer—lean workers coordinate directly with workers upstream
and downstream from them. This is seen as important to keep the work aligned with
the actual flow of value, rather than some idealized plan or computer model in an
office away from production.
As discussed above, the city is unusual in that each customer is also a producer.
Even the person walking to work is producing access, while consuming it. This
creates problem when some kind of control is required. However, it also creates
opportunities for shop-floor continuous improvement.
Near where I live there is a small bookshop, set among houses, and near the
bookshop is a bus-stop. The shop owner noticed that there is no bench, and people
waiting have to stand while waiting, which is difficult for some. So, he dragged
out a bench and put it against the front of his shop and put a couple of flower pots
on either side. He set out his remainders (unsold books at cut price) to complete
the arrangement. This creates a picture of seating that we most associate with the
rural village, rather than the industrialized city. However, as a worker, he saw a form
of muda (waiting) and turned it into value (resting, reading) directly, for both the
citizens, and himself as bookseller. The formal planning system is too gross in its
grain to deal with improvement processes such as these.
In modern city management, to accomplish this through the normal means would
have involved submitting a request, perhaps backed with some letter-writing and
petitioning—all very expensive. And there is no certainty that this piece of muda—the
waiting—would ever be addressed. From a lean perspective, the worker did the
right thing. However, according to normal city governance, this is not allowed. The
sidewalk belongs to the city, and nothing may be done to alter the sidewalk without
prior permission from the city bureaucracy.
6.2 Muda
Muda is waste. Lean defines waste as operations which cost money (or in the case of
the city, time and money) but which add no value to the customer. Lean categorises
muda into seven types. We see all types in the city. These seven are: overproduction,
transporting, inappropriate processing, unnecessary inventory, unnecessary/excess
motion, defects.
Examples of urban muda, and ways it might be eliminated, include:
Overproduction
• Trains travelling empty, are an example of transport being overproduced.
• Unused lanes in one direction, while the other direction is jammed, is an example
of overproduced affordance: too available one side, not available enough on the
other.
• In bicycle cities, such as Hanoi in the 1990s, it was not uncommon for bicycle
traffic during rush hour to swell out into the oncoming lanes, in order to expand
capacity. Such informal solutions are possible with bicycles. On certain bridges,
dynamic lane changing equipment changes the number of lanes in each direction
according to demand.
Waiting
• Waiting for the train. Waiting for the bus. Waiting to cross the street.
• When the author visited Hanoi in the 1990s, he had to be taught how to cross
the road, which was full of bicycles in continuous flow. The method is to launch
yourself without fear from one curb, and walk straight across at a continuous pace,
allowing bicycles to flow around you. Any sudden moves can cause an accident,
as confused cyclists collide with each other.
• On one of the Hanoi trips, in the company of some traffic planners, the planners
disappeared for several hours. Later they explained their absence: they had been
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on top of a building at an intersection, looking down, trying to figure out how two
streams of bicycle traffic could flow across each other without stopping.
Transporting
• The classic case of excess transporting is the unnecessary commute.
• Though companies require some face to face interaction, they don’t require it
every day. Studies on teleworking suggest that a work pattern that works for most
firms is 50% home-based, and 50% at home. Yet many companies have yet to
adopt teleworking, even where their production process allows it. This generates
an enormous amount of excess transport, with lost time and increased pollution.
This highlights the impact of the fragmentation of city management across a range
of city institutions and private enterprises.
• In Japan, companies have to pay the direct commute costs of their employees,
providing some incentive to change. Mandating that the employee timeclock starts
ticking the moment the employee leaves home might motivate companies to take
charge of the value of commuting time.
Inappropriate processing
• Town planning approvals for fencing, awnings, street signs.
• In Hong Kong, commercial signage is governed by the building code (to ensure it
doesn’t fall on anyone) but no planning approval is necessary (“Signage Control
System”, n.d.) The result not only reflects the economic focus of Hong Kong as a
city but creates a unique streetscape with its own cultural aesthetic (see Fig. 7).
Unnecessary inventory
• Developer stock: empty lots or buildings held by developers.
• In order to ensure flow of development projects, developers buy and hold empty lots
and buildings, to cover the gap between when they become available, and the time
the developer is ready for development. During this time, they are waste—even
dangerous waste.
• In Collingwood in Melbourne, a group started a “People’s Market” on an empty
lot. The market was built out of shipping containers and remained in operation for
over a year until the developer was ready to build.
• On a similar note, school yards and parking are often used for markets on weekends,
when the schools are closed. This converts the muda of the empty lot, to value.
Unnecessary/Excess Motion
• High rise parking lots in which one arrives at one destination, but then has to drive
up four or five levels to park.
• Cars “trawling” streets looking for a parking space.
• Any queuing for public transport, in that moving in the queue does not get one
closer to the destination.
• The need to lock your bicycle in a rack before proceeding to your destination.
Fig. 7 Hong Kong signage. Photo Credit https://www.pexels.com/photo/adult-architecture-bar-

buildings-373290/
Defects
• The most commonly perceived defects are in public transport times.
• In Melbourne, late trains cause outrage. Even more outrage is when a train proceeds
through a station without stopping, because the operator is incentives to be “on
time”, and so misses a pick-up in order to get back on schedule. Citizen surveys
show that people are demotivated to take busses because of lack of timeliness.
• For several years, I have attempt to take trains from Melbourne to Canberra. There
is not a single time when a direct train is available—every train involves a bus
section because of “track work”. This is a defect.
• In contrast, a train operator in Japan was recently received international attention
for apologizing to the public for departing eight seconds early, thus acknowledging
that schedule variations are errors, not accidents or inevitabilities (BBC 2017).
6.3 Inequality
There has been a surge in recent years on the subject of inequality, and—perhaps
more important—the negative effects of inequality per se on all citizens, rich and
poor. Arguments against inequality range from idealist arguments based on concepts
376 D. Week
of rights or social justice, to more instrumental arguments as to the consequences of

inequality: rising social problems, political instability, economic stagnation.
Again, the lean city produces a complementary yet uniquely different perspective
on this charged political question. If we look at the Toyota motor car, we see a range
of options based on user desire and ability to pay. The Yaris is small and cheap. The
Land Cruiser is big and expensive. However, there is a core value that both deliver
equally well: the ability to get from A to B safely and comfortably. The differences
in how the two cars do so are marginal in comparison.
This is not true of urban inequality. The differences in access to quality work and
quality goods and services between a resident of the inner city, and a resident at the
urban fringe, are huge. At the same time, the government of Victoria (for instance)
continues to invest in luxury goods (a new contemporary arts center) while there are
still many areas in Melbourne without equitable access to quality work, and without
walkable access to urban basics such as parks, core retail and city services.
In terms of lean, this provides a possible definition of equality which does not
mean the same level of affordance for all—an idea which is spatially and physically
impossible (Venkatasubramanian et al. 2015) and does not have support from a broad
public, which sees some inequality as “fair” (Clark and D’Ambrosio 2013).
From a lean perspective, urban equity could mean having walkable access to those
basics common to the population: work, health, education, retail, recreation, culture.
We can then define urban equity as equality of affordance to a basic (non-luxury)
level of these goods. Tagging as inequitable, elitist, or even wasteful the production
of yet another art museum in the center of the city—beyond the affordance of most
citizens,—might alter the pattern of city spending and politics. It would be a brave
government that overtly invests in luxury goods accessible only to elites.
6.4 Fragmentation
Throughout this paper, there have been examples of management: different levels
of government, statutory authorities, private enterprise, households and individu-
als. But the political power dynamic needs this fragmentation as different levels
of government vie for for control over different aspects of the city. Some aspects
become privatised for economic reasons. Sometimes a city operation is put into an
independent authority, in an attempt to free from political contest. Fragmentation is
entrenched, and difficult to change (Bogdanor 1999; Tomlinson and Spiller 2018).
This makes any form of continuous improvement complex, because value chains
run through and across these different systems of management.
Significantly, there is no clear governance over the issue of affordance. City
governments manage urban use and construction; statutory authorities and private
enterprises manage public transport and location; individuals and households
manage private transport and location.
∗ ∗ ∗
Under lean, workers do not work to maximum capacity, because to do so creates

muda downstream. Rather, they use the time made available for kaizen: continuous
improvement within their cells. Most city processes are however bureaucratically
organized and fragmented, making kaizen difficult. There are certain emergent pro-
cesses which might allow for the relaxed control by the city of urban affordance
space, and thus the continuous improvement of those spaces by citizens and other
non-government actors.
In general, in fact, the idea of cells and kaizen would favour a move towards more
local units of the management of space. This move is also consistent with the eighth of
Elinor Ostrom’s eight design principles for the governance of the commons: “Nested
enterprises”, which mandates that “governance activities are organized in multiple
layers of nested enterprises” (Ostrom 1990, p. 90). When many city governments
were born, the cities they governed consisted of a few thousand people. But as
the cities grew in size and population, lower levels of governance did not emerge,
leaving a huge gap in scale between the individual business or home, and the city
as a whole. The solution is to insert more levels. There is little appetite for more
bureaucracy, so this would mean more strategic and active engagement with civil
society organizations (Week 2016).
The process of perfection also highlights a feature of cars not present in cities.
Every car buyer, at whatever price point, gets a safe, comfortable vehicle capable of
moving from A to B at legal speeds. High price points add what might be considered
luxury capabilities: off-road driving, leather seats, higher carrying capacity, accel-
eration, electronics, automation, and so forth. This is not the case in the city, which
does not deliver basic urban affordances at all for some of its citizens and continues
to invest in luxury features while base features remain incomplete.
7 Conclusion: City as Platform
This paper aims to apply lean principles to the city. In so doing, it does not seek to
create lean urban administration, but rather treat the city itself seriously as a factory
producing a singular customer value: access. This value underlies the economic
wealth of cities, and the cultural wealth of city life.
Applying lean to cities might help bring a 21st century approach to city manage-
ment. In so doing, it may bring to cities the same benefits that lean has brought to
manufacturing: more value in terms of affordance; less waste.
The main points of the five principles of lean as applied to the city have been:
• Value: The value that citizens seek in the city can be summarised in terms of the
affordances that the city supplies, the form of access to work, services, and to other
citizens—people both like themselves, and people marked by being different. The
city is a virtual space of affordances.
The major mechanisms by which the city creates these affordances are (a) density,
which brings all points closer to each other; (b) mix, which helps ensure a variety
of affordances for every point; and (c) access, which is the network of pathways
378 D. Week
along which transport moves. Density and mix allow citizens and enterprises to
cluster, and these cluters are a major feature of urban structure.
Managing the city involves managing the affordances themselves. Managing
affordances is complicated by the constantly shifting patterns of demand from
both citizens and enterprises, and further complicated by the relative inelasticity of
existing urban structure. Change thus necessarily involves a mix of new structure,
and repurposing of the historically given structure.
• Value Streams: The values streams of the city forma a complex mesh. Within
these streams, the roles of producer, consumer and product often merge.
The particular value propositions being enacted in these streams range from factors
that can be captured in a utility function, to more subtle and subconscious “mo-
tivations” studied by ronics, automation—but a basic Toyotathe new mobilities
paradigm.
This suggests that the creation and management of these affordances can only be
crudely represented in any kind of centralized master-planning model.
• Flow: Urban flow is difficult to capture in a single model. Takt time is varied in
cities, and crossing value streams may have different takt times. Different modes
of transport, and different flows of desire beat different drums. The question
becomes not one of takt time in a particular flow, but the coordination of the takt
times of different flows.
But flow and takt time cannot be applied just to transport. The processes which
create density and mix for instance, involve processes of construction and
relocation. Both are currently fraught with turbulence.
• Pull: Pull involves matching supply with demand, in order to avoid overpro-
duction. Both public transport and private transport, when they match demand,
involve overproduction—either excessive capital in the car, or spare seats on train
and cars. A primary mechanism for managing flow is visual signalling. The city is
rich in visual signalling, but most of the signalling mechanisms are old ones. The
smart phone offers a rich new medium for accomplishing the same as thing as a
Kanban board—the state of supply around you, allowing the citizen or enterprise
to make decisions in real time. The current picture of the smart citizen is of a
person better enabled to cope with the poor services of non-lean transport. In
future, the smart citizen might be the owner-producer-product of lean.
• Perfection: Under lean, workers do not work to maximum capacity, because to do
so creates muda. Rather, they use the time made available for kaizen: continuous
improvement within their cells. Most city processes are however bureaucratically
organized and fragmented. Citizens are not empowered to change process. This
makes kaizen difficult. However, there are emergent processes which might allow
for the relaxed control by the city of urban affordance space, and thus the contin-
uous improvement of those spaces by citizens and other non-government actors.
In fact, the very idea of cells and kaizen would favour a move towards more local
units of the management of space. This move is also consistent with the eighth
of Elinor Ostrom’s eight design principles for the governance of the commons:
“Nested enterprises”, which mandates that “governance activities are organized
in multiple layers of nested enterprises” (Ostrom 1990, p. 90). When many city
governments were born, the cities they governed consisted of a few thousand
people. But as the cities grew in size and population, lower levels of governance
did not emerge, leaving a huge gap in scale between the individual business or
home, and the city as a whole. The solution is to insert more levels. There is
little appetite for more bureaucracy, so this would mean more strategic and active
engagement with civil society organizations (Week 2016).
The process of perfection also highlights a feature of manufactured objects not
present in cities: the addition of luxury options to a standard product. Every car
buyer, at whatever price point, gets a safe, comfortable vehicle capable of moving
from A to B. Higher price points add luxury capabilities—off-road driving,
leather seats, higher carrying capacity, acceleration, electronics, automation—but
a basic Toyota is still quality transport. This is not the case in the city, which does
not deliver basic urban affordances to all citizens yet continues to invest in luxury
features for some. This suggests a possible definition of urban equality: a full
base model for all.
But applying lean to urbanism means departing from certain characteristics of the
industrial plant. In the city, citizens are both workers and customers. The production
line is more like a production mesh, extending over thousands of square kilometers.
And there is no single management—it is fragmented across institutions, and even
allocated to individual workers who are given no insight into their role as workers,
and therefore perform haphazardly. Affordance itself—the core value provided by
the city—seems to have no governance.
This then leaves this question: is the city so complex that it is not open to lean
operations?
The previous analyses have looked at lean in terms of the original model for lean:
a production process as seen in product manufacture or service delivery. However,
there is another important business model which may better suit further lean analysis
of the city—the platform.
The conflation of producer, worker and consumer is not unique to the city. This
conflation appears in the analysis of television by media scholar Sut Jhally in his
model of “the factory in the living room” (Jhally and Livant 1986; Jhally 2007) In
analysing the media industry, Jhally asks: what does the media industry produce?
The naive answer might be “media”—but this is not be the case. In order to ask what
an industry produces, we have to ask what its clients pay for. What is of value?
The media industry produces audiences. It sells these audiences to advertisers.
In order to create audiences, it provides “free to air” programming. The audience
watches the programs but pays the price of advertising. In the sense the audience
is also the worker in the industry: it does the “job” of watching the ads. This
explains why free-to-air programming is often so poorly made, and why reality tele-
vision—which is very cheap—predominates. Like all businesses, the media industry
seeks to pay its workers as cheaply as possible. It also explains why subscription tele-
vision—Netflix or HBO produces better programming. In that subscription model,
the view pays them, and the networks need to compete to offer best value for money.
380 D. Week
When we move into new media, such as social networks, the picture remains
similar (Fuchs and Trottier 2013). When I read Facebook, I am consuming content.
My consumption is harvested for data which is then sold to advertisers who use
it to target ads. On the one hand, this avoids the annoyance of the untargeted ads
of broadcast media. On the other hand, the targeting can be creepily insistent, and
Facebook has studies which show that the mere presence of an ad on-screen drives
buying behaviour even when the ad is not read. The effect is subconscious.
Facebook does not need studios to produce programming. Because the Facebook
user is also a content producer—a new role dubbed the “prosumer”. The users both
produce and consume content, leaving Facebook only to maintain and improve the
platform, and gather data and sell ads. This is the platform model.
In a sense, a café is also a platform model if one looks at the value proposition.
People don’t go to cafés just to drink coffee. They go have meetings, have a change
of scenery, read a book, see and be seen, etc. The coffee supply—like the data
gathering—is just a method of funding. And this explains why cafés offer so many
values other than coffee, many of them “free”—Internet, good seating, atmosphere
and cachet. Starbucks has made this the center of its business plan, and has publicly
stated that its customers are welcome, whether they buy coffee or not.
We can see then the city, as seen under the aspect of lean, as much like Facebook.
Like Facebook, the city provides an affordance—the ability to connect, trade and
share with other people. These affordances are not actualized until a Facebook user
starts doing the work of actually making the connections. In addition to building
the network, the citizen also produces the content of the city. When transported, the
citizen becomes the product as well. The citizen (whether person or firm) is worker,
product, and consumer.
She is also assumed one other role: part-owner. Because about half of most cities
are privately owned, the remainder publicly owned.
This suggest that the apparently intractable picture of urban complexity can be
reduced if one sees the city as platform and differentiates it from all the activity of its
produce/co-owner/consumers. The role of a platform is to enable connections, but
not define them. The second part of this move is to define the smart, informationally
empowered citizen, and the characteristics a platform must have to support that
citizen.
Fleshing out that picture of city-as-platform serving smart citizens is a next step
in understanding the lean city.
Acknowledgements I wish to thank Margaret Hazeltine, former CEO of Mars Australia, for intro-
ducing me to lean thinking fifteen years ago; David Ashmore for introducing me to concepts of
urban transportation; Tanzil Shafique for being my co-investigator into the ideas of Deleuze and
Guattari; both David Ashmore and Tanzil Shafique for critical readings of this paper; Farida Fleming
for editorial oversight and mentoring; Kim Dovey for DMA, city assemblages, and guitar sessions.
This paper could not have been written without their influence. Its shortcomings and errors are all
my own.
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Accelerating Sustainability with Lean
Leadership
Shannon Flumerfelt and Jeni Wenson
Abstract The need for enterprises to fulfill the call for sustainability responsibilities
is evident in all sectors, such as with green production and service processes, concur-
rent engineering (Felder n.d.), cradle-to-cradle design and triple bottom line strategy,
design and performance (McDonough and Braungart in Cradle to cradle: Rethinking
the way we make things. North Point, New York, 2002a, b). The Fourth Indus-
trial Revolution, known as Industry 4.0, provides advanced technological assistance,
ranging from the Internet of Things to the Digital Twin to Artificial Intelligence, all
with hopes of eliminating waste and increasing sustainability of the organization and
the planet. These technological innovations are providing a platform for enterprise
transformation. However, few of the aspirations of the innovations and disruptors
driven by machine and technical systems will be possible in the next decades if the
needs of the human systems of organizations are not leveraged in a congruent way
through a System of Systems perspective. The past failures of not comprehending the
complexities of the human system interfaces with machines and technology provide
a clear roadmap as to where organizations cannot afford to travel in the future (Amen
et al. in Mechanical engineering 133(12), 2011).
1 Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to provide insight into the importance of holistic
Lean Leadership development for organizational sustainability. Noted, Lean thought
leaders, Womack and Jones (2003, p. 247) stated, “The trick is to find the right leaders
with the right knowledge …” Other authors have endorsed the importance of Lean
Leadership and indicated the absence of Lean Leadership as a confounding barrier in
Lean deployment, particularly for enterprise development and sustainability (Rother
and Shook 1998; Dennis 2002; Graban 2008; Keyte and Locher 2004; Mann 2009).
S. Flumerfelt (B) · J. Wenson

Oakland University, Auburn Hills, MI, USA
e-mail: flumerfe@oakland.edu
J. Wenson
e-mail: wenson@oakland.edu
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13515-7_13
386 S. Flumerfelt and J. Wenson
A3: PLAN DO
Theme: There is a need to Target Condition: Identify a Lean Leadership learning system of
better understand Lean mental models to accelerate the learning process and eliminate
Leadership Learning waste in organizational work
Background: The need for Implementation Chart:

Lean Leadership is cited as a
critical barrier to Lean 1. Identify theoretically sound mental models of Lean
deployment. Leadership as a learning system
2. Design, deploy and validate our Lean Leadership learning
system design to accelerate outcomes
Current Condition:
Organizations often develop
Lean Leadership on a limited
CHECK ADJUST
basis and flawed paradigms.
Statement of the Problem: A. Accelerated lean 1. Dismantle paradigms

leadership learning and processed of
There is a need for better Lean B. Rapid improvements learning
Leadership via improved Lean in organizational 2. Reassemble leadership
Leadership Learning to outcomes as a result learning programs
of accelerated 3. Connect leadership
increase organizational
leadership learning learning with
excellence organizational results
Fig. 1 A3 of Lean Leadership learning needs
Therefore, this chapter will provide a literature review and a case study regarding
why Lean Leadership matters to the mision of sustainability. In reference to an
anectodal example of the context for the need for Lean Leadership, here is a sample
of an advertisement from a Lean company:
Senior Business Partner: Demonstrated knowledge in driving process improvement; Passion
for innovative solutions and process improvement; and Skills in conducting Kaizen.
The applicant for this leadership position needs holistic accomplishment in Lean
Leadership. This person should know both why, what, where and how to deploy Lean;
appreciate and comprehend what it means to innovate and standardize improvement
solutions; and collaborate skillfully for sustainability.
The Lean tool, the A3 is presented next and it summarizes the need for Lean
Leadership and Lean Leadership learning improvements. The A3 depicts that there
are Lean Leadership learning gaps that prevent organizational sustainability (see
Fig. 1). The Target Condition (see Fig. 1) requests a:
Better Lean Leadership learning system of mental models to accelerate the learning process
and eliminate waste [and créate sustainability] in organizational work.
In other words, this A3 urges better education and training of individuals to enter
Lean Leadership engagements to attain sustainability (Flumerfelt et al. 2016b).
Accelerating Sustainability with Lean Leadership 387
This chapter describes theoretically the overall perspective or weltsanschauung

needed, the context and meaning of Lean Leadership, how to attain better outcomes
in Lean Leadership learning for organizational sustainability.
2 The Weltanschauung of Sustainability
The weltanschauung of sustainability is a mindset that is founded on Lean and

includes a systemic view of organizational development and leadership. The weltan-
schauung of sustainability encompasses a congruent socio-technical scoping of all
systems in use (Waterson et al. 2002). Such a mindset is selected to avoid narrowness
and the pitfalls of a reductionists’ analyses (Flumerfelt 2018). For example, a techni-
cal perspective only or a social perspective only means that entire fields of knowledge
and practice are ignored while decisions are made. In addition, if technical and social
contexts are considered unequally, where technical systems are more heavily con-
sidered than human ones are, then the weltanschauung is also incorrect. Instead, an
equally weighted consideration of both the social and technical contexts—and their
key performance indicators—is the weltanschauung of sustainability (Trist 1981).
In recent years, there has been substantial work done by scholars and practitioners
in figuring out how to better manage the complexity of this proposed weltanschau-
ung. This has been driven partly by the acceleration of disruptive technologies, such
as Industry 4.0, and emerging conditions, such as globalization, which have been the
impetus for better complexity conceptualizations by leadership of the entire scope
of systems. For example, the digital twin greatly reduces the quality assurance gaps,
while enhancing the speed of the manufacturing design and build processes. The
potential for positive sustainability impacts through the digital twin include eliminat-
ing waste in prototype design and testing. The digital twin provides significant green
benefits to organizations. Big data platforms and artificial intelligence have increased
worldwide access to adaptive, intelligent deliverables, enabling better, cheaper and
faster globalization of services, such as in healthcare. These disruptive technologies
are the foundation for the affordability business case for sustainability. They are
also seen as essential to survival. The deployment of disruptive technologies is not a
solution in itself. The weltanschauung of sustainability requires more.
The organizational transformation needed to deploy any disruptive technology
well requires a new philosophy and perspective, an enriched weltanschauung (de
Jong and van Dijk 2015). This enriched weltanschauung requires Lean Leadership.
This is because Lean has been used to drive many cycles of innovations, such as world-
class standards and delivery of goods and services. For example, many organizations
are enhancing or investing in intelligent customer records management systems set
up with blockchain architecture. Blockchain offers just-in-time currency conversion,
higher speed of processing and better cybersecurity. However, the decentralization
of information systems, the foundation of blockchain, also drastically changes the
organizational system, flows and roles of financial services institutions. And while
blockchain, for example, is seen as a required survival capacity for financial service
institutions, its sustainability will be driven by a weltanschauung that encompasses

a congruent view of socio-technical systems. Lean Leadership is the organizational
competency required to enact this systemic transformation for the weltanschauung
of sustainability.
The ability to encumber and enact the socio-technical landscape via a full weltan-
schauung is a part of System of Systems (SoS) management. The term, System of
Systems (SoS) is described by Hilton et al. (2017) as, “… a strategy made up of pro-
cesses and analytical protocols that lead … to … the scientific totality of the system”
(p. 49). The difficulties of complexity, emergence, adaptivity and interrelatedness,
attributes present in disruptive technology’s largest socio-technical systems, its SoS,
means that the task of leadership is difficult. According to Bright (2017), effective
management of the SoS “… is not an easy problem to solve” (p. v) particularly in
systems engineering. The antithesis of sustainability is common, where system dys-
function and/or failure correlates to the scope of the SoS against organizational risk
and competitiveness.
3 Barriers to Sustainability
Therefore, there are many challenges to sustainability leadership, but solutions are
found in Lean Leadership and some of them have been around for a while. Many years
ago, Senge addressed the need for systems-based work around the Fifth Discipline
(1990). He provided a framework of behaviours to inform the SoS weltanschauung.
Even further back, the continuous improvement cycle by Shewhart (1934) provided a
method for getting at the SoS weltanschauung through process and results improve-
ment. The Plan-Do-Check-Adjust cycle provides at least two rounds of learning, a
critical method for identifying waste in the SoS and getting to sustainability.
The power of systems approaches to Lean Leadership learning stems from the
continuous improvement cycle of Plan-Do-Check-Adjust (Shewhart 1934). What
occurs when the full cycle is employed is that the deutero learning schema is engaged,
as thinking and doing each receive two rounds of work. See Fig. 2.
Some barriers to sustainability that are in the weltanschauung are noted next. For
example, the lack of systems competency is often ignored (Flumerfelt et al. 2015;
Fig. 2 Deutero learning and

the continuous improvement THINKING— DOING-
cycle
2 ROUNDS 2 ROUNDS
PLAN DO
CHECK ADJUST
Ackoff 2004). Instead, functional or organizational expertise is used exclusively.

For example, the functional expertise of Operations Management along with the
organizational expertise of policies, such as ISO 9000, are often used as an exclu-
sive framework for systems engineering. These knowledge and experience areas are
important, but they alone are not enough to handle the totality of the SoS weltan-
schauung (Jackson 2003). Many authors, such as Goleman (1998) have encouraged
this socio-technical development of leaders by focusing on emotional intelligence
in conjunction with technical intelligence. Other examples of the call to address the
problem of a limited weltanschauung come from the American Society of Mechan-
ical Engineers (ASME 2011).
The strength of Scientific Management, promoted by Frederic Winslow Taylor
(1911), where distinctions were structurally made between planning and production
is another barrier to the SoS weltanschauung. Taylor’s model did help with efficien-
cies in mass production models, however this strategy creates barriers to collaboration
by dividing people and processes. Defined as the competitive edge (Porter 1985)
collaboration is an essential leadership strategy to gain the SoS weltanschauung.
Taylor’s model was about efficiency, and it did not require organizational systems
competency.
4 The Case for Lean Leadership for Sustainability
The importance Lean Leadership is presented next as a specified method for SoS
sustainability. “Lean” is often described as the tools or techniques that are used to
continuously improve processes, when in fact only 20% of “Lean” is comprised of
tools. The remaining 80% consists of organizational culture or behavior changes
(Mann 2009). Further, senior leaders play an important role as change agents in
the Lean journey. However, a majority of Lean literature is focused solely on Lean
tools, not on Lean behaviors, which is reported to be a significant shortcoming in
Lean deployment (Womack and Jones 1996; Rother and Shook 1998; Dennis 2002;
Graban 2008; Keyte and Locher 2004; Swank 2003; Mann 2009). Therefore, there
is rationale regarding the need for Lean Leadership as the basis for sustainability.
Lean Leadership, therefore, encompasses not only Lean content, but transforma-
tional leadership skills as well, ensuring the SoS weltanschauung. In other words,
Lean Leadership behaviors, decision making and facilitation skills help to bridge
the gap between Lean tools and Lean thinking that are needed for organizational
improvement and transformation (Mann 2009). This approach has been conceptual-
ized as a “double helix DNA” of content and competency mastery (Flumerfelt et al.
2016b).
The traditional theoretical underpinnings of most organizational design histor-
ically have been hierarchically- and matrix-driven. Organizations divide human
resources based on responsibilities and synchronization. In the traditional struc-
ture, the leader stands alone at the top and delegates, directs and monitors. However,
organizational design does not make a leader. Leaders are required to absorb and
synthesize information from various stakeholders. Leaders’ power and influence

make them effective leaders, not their organizational authority or position power, such
as position power or coercive power (Quinn 2004; Bolman and Deal 2013). Managers
typically aid the leader by providing information, knowledge transfer, and guidance.
But often the information is filtered, leaving the leader to discern its accuracy.
Given this context for leadership, the Lean Leadership journey of sustainability
requires switching the organizational triangle to embrace transformational leader-
ship. The Lean philosophy for sustainability requires all people to be engaged and
participative. A Lean Leader must be responsible for putting his or her followers’
work into context and supporting them. This reverse hierarchy, known as Kata, is the
responsibility of the Lean Leader and it provides for transformational dynamics and
sustainability (Rother 2010).
There are significant differences in transactional and transformational leadership.
Burns defined transactional leadership as including set processes and procedures,
rewards to motivate, and management by exception (as cited in Bass 1990, p. 203).
Burns’ definition exemplified the management portion of leadership. Managers react
to situations, solve problems, and prevent chaos from occurring. Transactional lead-
ership sets procedures to give direction to an organization. Transactional leadership
focuses on job functions, organizational structures, business plans, objectives, goals
and routine operations. Zaleznik (1992) noted, “A managerial culture emphasizes
rationality and control” (p. 62). Organizations require different leadership styles at
various times. Management takes a major or minor role depending upon the situation.
However, management must always exist to provide the necessary organizational
control.
Burns also defined transformational leadership, critical to the SoS weltanschau-
ung, transformation and sustainability, to include elevating followers’ interests,
generating awareness of the mission, and looking beyond the leader’s own self-
interest (as cited in Bass 1990, p. 203). Burns’ definition exemplifies the leadership
portion of transformation. Leaders are responsible for their people and they must
consider beyond their needs to the needs of others. Partnership entails motivating
one’s people. Lean Leadership aids in the deployment of Lean tools through strong
transformational leadership. Leaders provide validation, information and partici-
pation to motivate and impart employees’ control. Transformational leadership is
the type of guidance where Lean excels because the philosophy of Lean requires a
focus on respecting people first and continuous improvement next (Emiliani 2008).
Transformational leaders use collaboration with their team to identify the needed
change, create a goal to direct and inspire and then execute the change (Dibia et al.
2014). Kirkbride (2006) created a leadership model to develop transformational
leaders and support follow-up coaching to solidify the power of the model and assist
in behavior change. Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe (2006) concluded their
research by noting, frequent leadership from all employees is necessary to deal
with twenty-first century challenges. This supports the Lean philosophy as well, as
Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe’s research affirmed the need for development
interventions that transfer from personal learning to actual organizational change.
This approach to learning as the work of transformational leadership is mirrored in
the continuous improvement feedback loops found in Lean, whereby leaders are able
to benchmark observable differences in performance from current to future states.
When the Lean Transformation occurs, enabling sustainability, it is about chang-
ing the way people and organizations think and make decisions, communicate,
retrieve and interpret data, and act to get better results (Flinchbaugh et al. 2008;
Fast 2015; Wuestman and Casey 2015; Koenigsaecker 2005; Dibia et al. 2014). This
is the SoS weltanschauung. A Lean culture is an environment where people operate
without fear, where they have the resources to tackle projects, and where they are
habitual improvers who feel empowered and engaged to take action. This culture
is based on value-added work where best practices are documented and followed
by the organization. A Lean culture uses tenets to situate itself for adaptation and
to apply the tools to deploy change. Lean Leadership, therefore, is transformational
and is used to guide organizations through the learning journey (Flinchbaugh et al.
2008). Conceptualizing the current state and then articulating the ideal state of an
organization can be risky for subordinates without Lean Leadership in place (Flinch-
baugh et al. 2008; Fast 2015; Koenigsaecker 2005). Lean Leadership eliminates fear
through employee participation, engagement, and empowerment (Balle et al. 2015).
Organizational leaders are regularly successfully using Lean tools, which requires
mastery of Lean content. Lean Leaders also coach, advise, direct and inspire the
organization to use Lean as a habitual standard of head, heart and hands. Therefore,
Lean Leadership is highly valued, based on soft skills or competencies that can be
learned and used (Balle et al. 2015; Koenigsaecker 2005; Testani and Ramakrishnan
2010). Lean Leadership is based on going and seeing, asking questions, aiding in
employees seeing, active listening, problem-solving, empowerment, teamwork, and
the use of collaboration and problem-solving tools (Balle et al. 2015; Wuestman and
Casey 2015). Lean Leadership, therefore, is conceptualized as a combination of both
Lean content mastery and Lean competency mastery (Wuestman and Casey 2015;
Koenigsaecker 2005), enabling the SoS weltanschauung.
5 The Lean Leadership System of Content

and Competency Mastery
Examples of the duality of Lean Leadership knowledge and competencies are pro-
vided next. An explanation of two of many competencies, change agency and critical
thinking, are described as the competency component of Lean Leadership. Change
agency is examined first.
Oakland and Tanner (2007) described change agency as playing a key role in
developing the mind-set of the organization, facilitating strategy implementation and
building change capability. Further, they found that leaders as actors in transformation
must: (1) set a clear direction and manage risks, (2) align change to operational issues,
(3) use a process approach, (4) apply performance measurement, (5) rely on project-
based approaches, (6) ensure the transfer of knowledge, and (7) align the culture
to support changes in people’s behavior (Oakland and Tanner 2007). Each of these
themes of change agency are inherent to the Lean performance management system
(Liker and Hoseus 2008). Critical thinking is described next.
Critical thinking is another desirable competency for Lean Leadership. The
National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking has defined critical thinking
as “the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing,
applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or
generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a
guide to belief and action” (Kivunja 2015). Changes in the workplace and advances
in technology have attributed to the importance of critical thinking skills. According
to Halpern (1998) many adult learners have acquired flawed thinking with various
studies that “have shown that critical thinking, defined as the deliberate use of skills
and strategies that increase the probability of a desirable outcome, can be learned in
ways that promote transfer to novel contexts” (p. 449). Critical thinking refers to the
application of skills that are needed by Lean Leaders to solve problems which results
in rational decisions being made that benefit the SoS weltanschauung. These ratio-
nal decisions promote a greater likelihood of successful human activities (Kivunja
2015), enacting the socio-technical system perspective. The attributes that are dis-
played with critical thinking include problem solving with an open-mind, listening,
observing, asking questions, making inferences, developing hypotheses, noting fact
vs. conjecture as well as capturing gaps in information. According to Kivunja (2015)
these skills provide “objectivity, honesty, empathy, exploring, explaining, elabo-
rating, applying, analyzing, sequencing, comparing, evaluating, appraising, creat-
ing, and self-regulation, all of which are essential for harmonious cohabitation by
humans” (p. 382).
While all leaders benefit from acumen in change agency and critical thinking,
Lean Leaders in particular require some mastery of these competencies because
the tools and tenets in the Lean performance management system rely on these
competencies. Therefore, consideration of both content and competency mastery for
Lean Leadership is tied to the needs of overall organizational sustaintablity.
Four examples follow to illustrate how content and competency development are
used in Lean Leadership. The examples indicate how a Lean Leader spirals the use of
lean content mastery of lean tools and tenets, such as with of value stream mapping,
visual management, the A3 and continuous improvement cycles, and Hoshin Kanri
(strategic planning and management), along with the Lean Leadership competency
mastery of change agency and critical thinking. These examples highlight how the
SoS weltanschauung of sustainability is developed.
Lean is founded on the principles of deeply understanding key stakeholders
and their value streams–and then working to develop flow, pull and continuous
improvement around those value streams. These value streams are often not known
or understood and many times there are several critical stakeholders’ value streams
to consider, the SoS weltanschauung. The first example of Lean content and compe-
tency mastery involves value stream maps, a Lean tool for a seeing a process from
a critical perspective. This requires the critical thinking competency. Womack and
Jones (1996) spoke to the need for identifying value streams due to their connection
to the customer. Value streams consist of the paradigms, materials and processes
that lead to what the critical stakeholder desires. The tool, Value Stream Mapping,
exemplifies process attributes, such as flow, pull and just-in-time deliverables based
on the use of customer-centric paradigms, materials or information that occur within
the enterprise, largely between the supplier and customer. While Value Stream Maps
are tools that can be used by any employee in an organization, Lean Leaders are those
individuals who work to facilitate data-driven choices around the development of
value streams using critical thinking. And Lean Leaders must further engage change
agency via the strategic importance and high level of attention to the maintenance
of value-adds in processes, so that improvements can be standardized and sustained
(Mann 2009) through the competency of change leadership. The place in an organi-
zation where value is created by humans is not at the leadership level, but at a place
called Gemba, where the “real” work happens. Value Streams Maps, therefore, must
reflect the appropriate “real” problems and solutions. And further, Lean Leaders are
critical in ensuring Gemba-based value stream work and intellectual product as a part
of change leadership, whereby employees have access to Gemba-based information
and resources required to complete improvements that in reality prevent waste (Davis
and Stubitz 1987; Philipoon et al. 1987; Spearman et al. 1990; Singh 1995). The
important attributes of the Value Stream Map, in terms of tenets and tool application,
therefore, is under the auspice of the Lean Leader. Employees must be respected by
the Lean leader, to carry out Value Stream Maps with safety and fidelity. Therefore,
Lean Leaders must constantly engage critical thinking and change leadership
competencies to attain strategically important and transformational improvements
that enrich and correct the SoS weltanschauung of sustainability.
A second commonly used tool of Lean Leaders is that of Visual Management. The
premise of Visual Management is to create a workplace where abnormal conditions
become obvious at a glance, expediting the critical thinking competency, and thus
allowing for continuous improvement to be applied, engaging the change agency
competency. Visual Management is a tool that is used to keep the environment in
the best working condition, to properly manage inventory, to standardize thinking
routines or work. Lean is based upon improving quality, thus tools and techniques
that enable mistake-proofing such as Visual Management are important in the Lean
journey. For example, Total Productive Maintenance is a proactive process involving
standardized equipment maintenance, thus the working conditions are always the
best possible for employees and for customer outcomes using visual exemplars, dis-
tinctive process signage and clear safety information (Nicholas 1998; Gubata 2014;
Prabhuswamy et al. 2013). Further, Poka-yoke is any technique where a preventative
measure is applied to cease incorrect usage (Shimbun 1988; Fantin 2014), a continual
process of critical thinking until zero-defect is obtained. Kanban is a visual inventory
management approach that eliminates wastage by keeping the office or workplace in
order, based on zones of access, usage or dating. Data walls or war rooms are used to
visually display artifacts, signage and symbols of continuous improvement thinking,
actions or outcomes, serving as drivers for change agency. Given the desire to per-
form transformational Lean Leadership, any of these aspects of visual management
require Lean content mastery, as well as the need to think critically to encompass
value-added systemization, and to carry out change agency to drive improvement and
to strategize around resource allocation, an indication of the SoS weltanschauung of
sutainability.
A third example of Lean Leadership content and competency mastery is presented
next. Continuous Improvement has been a part of organizational culture since the
1930’s beginning with the Plan, Do, Check and Act (PDCA) cycle created by She-
whart (1934) within agriculture. As Shewhart’s protégé, Deming (1986), founded
Total Quality Management to support the initial PDCA continuous improvement
cycle created by Shewhart. Lean uses a document, named the A3, a foundational lean
tool. This document facilitates critical thinking and change agency in identifying
and solving problems. The A3 tool reflects the PDCA cycle and consists of a
theme, background, current condition, problem identification, future state targets,
implementation steps, checking results, reflecting and making improvements
(Dennis 2007). With the PDCA cycle and the A3 as a foundational mental model
and tool for Lean Leaders, there is a substantial Lean Leadership task at hand,
with change agency and critical thinking as competency enablers. This is because a
disciplined and principled body of knowledge and practice is needed by leaders in
Lean organizations (or in organizations interested in the Lean journey) for effective
use of continuous improvement as a pivotal mental model, with the expression of
this effort existing in the A3 tool (Womack and Jones 1996). The power of the
PDCA mental model serves to enlighten the SoS weltanschauung of sustainability.
A final example of Lean content and competency mastery is found in strategic
planning and management. This leadership work consists of looking both backward
and forward (Hutchins 2008; Yoji 1991; Meade 2006) to determine the real versus
the planned deployment and outcomes. Hoshin Kanri is a Lean term indicating the
need for focused, “True North,” planning and management. This leadership work
consists of a review of corporate objectives, business plans, economic projections,
customer inputs and quality assessments, as well as accountability reviews of
work done against benchmarks. Hoshin Kanri is facilitated by Lean Leaders,
driven by change agency competency and using the inputs and expertise of critical
stakeholders as joint collaborative critical thought to both understand the reality of
the current state and to cast vision for the future. There are two stages of Hoshin
Kanri—strategic planning and strategic management, representing a progression
through the Lean transformation. Hoshin Kanri establishes the Lean focus areas
and action plans for the following year (Testani and Ramakrishnan 2010; Testani
2008). Through Hoshin Planning, Lean Leaders create Kata, or culture, the way that
people act and are treated, particularly when transitions are needed (Rosenbaum
2004; Ichijo and Nonaka 2006). Lean Project Management is also a part of Hoshin
Kanri. The organization aspires to deliver value added products or services with less
waste, a true sustainability engagement. So, without Lean Leadership’s strategic
thought, embedded in critical thinking and change agency competencies, it is hard
for employees to understand priorities and benchmarks, impinging attainment of a
better future state. Often, strategic planning and management relies on a breadth of
Lean tools, including Lean Financial Models for Accounting and Finance, Lean Six
Sigma for system analyses or Jidoka, a system of automation (machines and people
combinations). For example, when the organization is losing income as transitions

are made into Hoshin Kanri (Meade 2006), Lean Accounting and Finance are key
systems for the transition (Koenigsaecker 2005). Six Sigma business initiatives are
needed in the Lean Transformation as well, and often serve as disruptors to the current
state of operations, pulling on critical thinking and change agency as well (Testani
and Ramakrishnan 2010; Testani 2008). Six Sigma is a means to measure quality
striving for near perfection. Jidoka is another Lean system that is used to detect
defects and correct them via various degrees of intelligent automation versus manual
work in order to improve quality against strategic benchmarks. The Lean Leadership
work needed for Hoshin Kanri relies on the SoS weltanschauung for sustainability.
These four examples highlight the complexity of Lean Leadership as a body
of knowledge and practice. Further, advocacy for working toward the SoS weltan-
schauung for sustainaibility is linked to Lean Transformational Leadership which
uses both Lean Leadership content and competency. This is same theoretical frame-
work taken for the socio-technical weltanschauung for sustainability. The theoretical
and empirical examples given above are laying the foundation to deduct that Lean
Transformational Leadership and the SoS weltanschauung for sustainability are the
same. Whether it is a consideration of the Lean organization’s weltanschauung or the
Lean Leader’s weltanschauung, the need to obtain the SoS perspective for sustain-
ability can be fulfilled in Lean Leadership as described in this chapter. For example,
the leadership competency of critical thinking is needed to comprehend current gaps
against vision. The leadership competency of change agency is needed to maintain
the focus on the strategic initiatives and to comprehend, appreciate and act in ways
that move improvements forward. Therefore, there is a more sophisticated body of
knowledge and practice enacted for Lean Leaders seeking sustainability based on
the SoS weltanschauung.
6 Example of SoS Weltanschauung
One example of many possible options presents the application of the SoS weltan-
schauung for sustainability as an outcome called the integration of ideation. This
is one of many methods for gaining the SoS mindset, reflecting Lean Leadership
as a dual body of socio-technical mastery. The main challenge with integration of
ideation is that what is known and institutionalized is typically very resilient (Radeka
2013) and can be a barrier to the SoS weltanschauung. The status quo has its own
sustainability established from a faulty internally-based survival focus. This is not
the SoS weltanschauung needed for organizational sustainability.
A case study of barriers to integration of ideation was conducted by Calvo-Amodio
and Flumerfelt (2016). This was a study of the SoS weltanschauung of an oncology
patient care unit. The SoS weltanschauung was informed by data from three critical
stakeholder groups using a systems tool, the CX Tool (Flumerfelt 2017). The CX
Tools measures specifically what system changes are needed and what their adap-
tion means for the SoS. The CX Tool analysis revealed that integration of ideation
was totally lacking in this oncology unit, even though new technology was being
used to improve patient satisfaction. There was a need for integrated ideation around
the purpose of the work itself. Without this fundamental system element, the SoS
weltanschauung, the unit remained dysfunctional in spite of technological invest-
ments. In other words, technology could not solve the problem of a lack of purpose
and mission. The lack of a socio-technical approach to change was missing and the
sustainability of the new technology was waning because of this barrier. The problem
to be solved was actionable because of the CX Tool analysis. Executive management
knew that they had failed to engage in an SoS approach. It was easy for executive
management to identify the countermeasure as bringing forward the philosophy of
the unit, its mission, as ideation integration, to the three stakeholder groups to create
system sustainability. The potential to sustain the new technology was then enacted
within the SoS weltanschauung.
This chapter opened with advocacy for better Lean Leadership learning systems
in order to foster the SoS weltanschauung for sustainability. An explanation of a
Lean Leadership learning system designed to foster sustainability Lean Leadership
development is presented next.
7 Lean Leadership Learning System
Lean Leadership as a system of learning can be examined from three subsystems

components, comprising holistic leadership thinking and doing as Inputs, Processes
and Outputs:
(1) Inputs: Lean Leadership is a system of interrelated behaviors, decision making
and facilitation skills that closes the gap between Lean tools and Lean thinking.
(2) Processes: Lean Leadership learning processes rely on mental models of mastery
of Lean content and Leadership competencies including a holistic taxonomy of
an essential body of knowledge, dispositions and applications.
(3) Outputs: Lean Leadership outcomes range from facilitating Enterprise Trans-
formation or second order change to enabling organizational improvement and
sustainable standardization.
The proposed Lean Leadership learning system provides the framework for all that
occurs in leadership practice. Using a learning system approach is important in the
conceptualization of how leadership development occurs for SoS weltanschauung.
A dichotomous approach to leadership development, a linear, checklist approach
to knowledge mastery, is flawed as described earlier in this chapter. For example, the
limits of staged, gated thinking are not desirable, whereas looped, iterative thinking
is desirable, as concluded for systems engineering (DeTurris and Asmady n.d.). This
is because staged thinking, also known as event-oriented thinking, is very much like
what is found in the limited and unrealistic Engineering V (Grieves and Vickers
2017). Event thinking is linear and deductive, wherein cause and effect are seen
as separate incidents. In contrast, systems approaches allow for root causes to be
interconnected, as nodes of thinking, that are reviewed in cycles of analysis. This is

what Senge (1990) advocated for when he stated that the system itself is more than
the sum of its parts. These issues highlight the attributes of the SoS weltanschauung.
The generative nature of systems approaches allows for leveraging of various
perspectives, the essence of weltanschauung. For example, Argyris and Schön (1997)
conceptualized deutero learning and concluded that deutero organizational learning,
because of its double loop ontology, could serve as both an innovation and adoption
strategy.
The inputs of the Lean Leadership learning system, therefore, are presented as
interactive cycles of information, stemming from past experiences, attitudes and
knowledge. Ideally, the inputs are continuously improving as Lean Leaders get better
and better at sorting and categorizing important versus non-important inputs. With
this basis of inputs stemming from two or more rounds of thinking and doing, the
Lean Leader’s learning system receive the benefit of higher construct validity and
fidelity, developing the SoS weltanschauung.
The processes of Lean Leadership learning are important and they reflect the power
of SoS weltanschauung. The processes of learning involve both Lean Leadership
content and competency mastery as described earlier. Further, the taxonomy of head,
heart, and hands is holistic and encumbers leaders to deal beyond events, patterns of
behavior and systems structures. The use of mental models to understand deeply what
shapes and informs the value proposition is the foundation of the holistic taxonomy of
knowing, appreciating and applying solutions with content and competency mastery
of Lean Leadership.
Lean leadership learning employs a holistic taxonomy fully in use for the transfor-
mation journey of the organization. It is this holistic taxonomy, known as the head,
heart and hands of leader that provide acceleration of leadership praxis (Flinchbaugh
et al. 2008; Fast 2015; Wuestman and Casey 2015; Koenigsaecker 2005; Dibia et al.
2014; Balle et al. 2015; Testani and Ramakrishnan 2010).
The acceleration of Lean Leadership learning processes occurs when work is
viewed as learning. And when learning is viewed holistically, much can be gained.
This is because an adaptive, emergent and interrelated system of content and com-
petency mastery of knowledge (head), dispositions (heart), and application (hands)
occurs, causes multiple points of learning to leverage. This also enables the SoS
weltanschauung as noted in Fig. 3.
The use of artificial intelligence, cloud-based computing and mobile technologies
makes it possible for leaders to have a myriad of data, analytics and dashboards avail-
able. To engage in analysis of outcomes as an idealogical exercise or as pure analytics
is too narrow. Rather, a systemic examination and understanding of outcomes should
be used to exercise the option to impact organizational transformation and sustain-
ability. This case was established with the work of Argyris and Schön (1974). They
connected the process of organizational learning to organizational effectiveness. This
is also described as of co-authored learning between individuals and systems, and
viceversa. This dynamic enables SoS sustainability.
Figure 4 depicts the holistic ontology for a Lean Leadership learning system
designed to enable the SoS weltanschauung for sustainability.
1) TWO-
STRANDED
STRUCTURE MADE
2) SPIRALED
HOLISTIC LEAN
LEADERSHIP
JOURNEY
3) BACKBONE OF
OPPOSING CONTENT
AND COMPETENCY
MASTERY
Fig. 3 SoS Weltanschauung for Lean Leadership learning
LEAN LEADERSHIP CONTENT COMPETENCY
LEARNING SYSTEM MASTERY MASTERY
1=Beginning
2=Intermediate
3=Advanced
1 2 3 1 2 3
Head
Heart
Hands
Fig. 4 The Lean Leadership ontology

Lean Leadership for sustainability, therefore, is defined as a system of interrelated

behaviors, decision making and facilitation skills that closes that gap between Lean
tools and Lean Thinking for transformation then standardization and sustainability.
As a system of learning, Lean Leadership requires a process driven by mastery of
Lean content and Leadership competencies, which includes a holistic taxonomy of
an essential body of knowledge, dispositions, and applications. And the outcomes
of Lean Leadership range from the facilitation of Enterprise Transformation or
second order change to enabling organizational improvement and sustainable
standardization.
The processes of Lean leadership learning require dual mastery of both Lean
content and Leadership competencies. Further, a holistic taxonomy of knowledge,
dispositions and applications ensures that both depth and breadth of accomplished
is occurring. In the familiar Iceberg model, there are four levels, with each level
progression being more difficult to see at the surface, but critical for the stability of
the iceberg. For example, the first level, occurring at sea level is event-oriented. It
ponders the question, “What is happening?” The second level is below sea level and
it is focused on finding patterns, questioning, “What are the trends?” The third level
is deeper yet, where interrelationships and interdependencies are analyzed, inquiring
“How are the parts related? What influences the parts?” And finally, the fourth level
engages the use of mental models to clearly depict responses to the internalization
of, “How clear and aligned are values, beliefs and assumptions?” When the fourth
question is positively answerable, then the SoS weltanschauung for sustainability is
evident.
8 Conclusion
The importance of this chapter is that relays a theoretical framework based in SoS
wetlanschauung as a foundation in Lean Leadership for organizational sustainability.
Understanding what Lean Leadership entails, including the training and development
of emerging leaders, is of interest to employers seeking sustainability. In a recent
study, it was found that employers did want Lean Leaders to hold the duality of
socio-technical competence (Flumerfelt et al. 2016a). Further, it was determined
that employers confirmed that the presented Lean Leadership learning system would
produce outcomes in their employees that aligned with their organizational outcomes,
such as sustainability.
In conclusion, this chapter has attempted to align the parallel worlds of Lean
Leadership learning and practice and the SoS weltanschauung for sustainability via
theoretical frameworks. Further, this chapter advocated that in order to attain socio-
technical mastery of Lean Leadership for sustainability, a holistic Lean Leadership
learning system is needed. Lean Leadership learning is an emerging area of study and
much more needs to be done before Lean Leadership learning systems are perfectly
aligned to sustainability. However, this chapter intended to lay out the literature,
recent thinking, and possibilities for the future in regard to attainment of sustainability
through Lean Leadership.
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Lean Engineering For Global Development

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Anabela Carvalho Alves ·

Franz-Josef Kahlen · Shannon Flumerfelt ·

Franz-Josef Kahlen Shannon Flumerfelt

Anna Bella Siriban-Manalang

Lean Engineering for Global

ISBN 978-3-030-13514-0 ISBN 978-3-030-13515-7 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019931823

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

Lean Thinking for Sustainable Development

Currently, it is a fact that Lean Production (LP) is a popularized term. A Google

furnish a different culture. By educating future professionals in these principles,

responsible consumption and production, Goal 12, companies are encouraged to

Alves, A. C., & Colombo, C. R. (2017). Introducing sustainability in engineering education

Lean Thinking: A Transversal and Global Management

The Effect of Lean Practices on Environmental Performance:

Paulo Amaro, Anabela Carvalho Alves and Rui M. Sousa

Increasingly, organizations are confronted with challenges such as globalization of

P. Amaro (B) · A. C. Alves · R. M. Sousa

knowledge-driven and customer-focused process where everyone is continuously

This research uses a qualitative methodology based on a literature review of Lean

4 Results Presentation and Analysis

4.1 Case Studies and Surveys Characterization

Table 1 Characterization of Lean implementation case studies and surveys

Fig. 1 Distribution of the papers by used research methodology

Fig. 2 Distribution of the papers by year of publication

4.2 Transversality of Lean Implementations

In a first broad approach to assess the transversality of Lean implementations, the

4.3 Geographical Coverage of Lean Implementations

Fig. 4 Distribution of the papers by country

4.4 Scope of Lean Implementations

Fig. 5 Scope of the lean

more equipments, more packaging materials special needs for

Over- more pollution more space Transportation potential damages on

Over- extra consumption of

wasted energy during

Acknowledgements This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-

Integrated Manufacturing, 31(6), 579–594. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 33

2 Organization Management and Paradoxes

2.1 Representations of the Paradox Influencing

Moreover, for these authors, wanting to eradicate contradictions is a vain and

2.2 Qualify Organizational Paradoxes

Any attempt to manage organizational paradoxes requires an ability to identify them,

2.3 Manage the Paradoxes

If a certain consensus seems to emerge in the academic literature as to the nature of

Table 2 Defensive modes of response to organizational paradoxes

Fig. 1 Categorization of organizational tensions (from Smith and Lewis 2013)

While this work has undeniably contributed to improving our understanding of

2.4 The New Role of Middle Managers in Managing

formulated as follows: “I am trained to use these tools to develop my problem solving

• The concept of substitution—when situations exceed the competence of a given

3 The Lean Thinking as a Strategy for Organizational

Fig. 2 Research methodology

some principles of Lean Thinking as the continuous improvement of problem solving

3.1 Formulation of Specific Problem to Learning Problem

3.1.1 The Empirical Contradictions Within Continuous Improvement

This study confirms the problem of sustainability of problem-solving approaches

Fig. 3 Classical model of learning of problem solving

3.1.2 The Impacts on Learning of Problem Solving

Fig. 4 The impact of contradictions on single-double-triple loop learning

3.2 Formulation of the Problem Model

Perret (2003) proposes a framework of analysis in which two logics of contradictory

Table 3 Ambivalent behavior of the change according to Perret (2003)