Integrating and implementing Lean and Green practices based on proposition of Carbon-Value Efficiency metric

Despite strong correlation between Lean and Green, companies have found it challenging to integrate and implement Lean and Green practices simultaneously especially when resources are limited. Although there are existing model, framework, and methodologies, some limitations and challenges still exist. This paper aims to overcome some of the limitations and challenges from the existing works. Specifically, one of the objectives is to propose a methodology that aims to integrate Lean and Green practices, and enables the implementation of the integrated Lean and Green practices in an easy and practical manner. To achieve this objective, the proposed methodology will adopt and streamline some of the approaches used in existing works. In this methodology, an easy-to-track metric called Carbon-Value Efficiency, which aims to integrate metrics derived from Lean and Green implementation, is introduced. The other key objective is to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed methodology using a case study of metal stamped parts production. The results show that Carbon-Value Efficiency can be improved by 36.3%, given an improvement in production lead time by 64.7% and a reduction in carbon footprint by 29.9%. This case study demonstrates that the proposed methodology helps to overcome the challenge in integrating and implementing Lean and Green practices, and achieve beneficial results. Future work could study other cases and explore other case specific supporting tools and techniques in order to enhance the proposed methodology. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.