Files and links (2)
Published VersionCC BY V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
Transforming manufacturing to be ‘good for planet and people’, through enabling lean and green thinking in small and medium-sized enterprises
Sustainable Earth, Vol.2(1), pp.1-19
2019
Abstract
With the increasing trends of global waste generation and environmental pollution, there are many conversations internationally around how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can become more resource efficient and reduce waste. Responding to this challenge, this research explored how manufacturing SMEs can strategically play a role in sustainable development.
Lean thinking is described as business approach that aims to deliver better value for customers by eliminating non-value-adding activities. Within this realm, conventional ‘lean thinking’ has expanded into ‘lean and green thinking’ as a targeted intervention for SMEs to reduce waste and pollution, comprising an integrated approach that focusses on resource optimisation and promotes strategies to ‘do more with less’. Although a range of lean thinking tools have been shown to improve efficiency and effectiveness, they have not necessarily captured environmental and social impacts of implementation. Furthermore, considering cash flow challenges and operating budgets for SMEs, it is still unclear how to select or integrate such tools to harness best sustainable business outcomes in a cost-effective way. A 3P Model for lean and green strategy, presenting four steps that SMEs can follow, including a 3P matrix of tools to selectively engage with lean and green actions towards sustainable business practice. This model also guides SME industrial practitioners to overcome the potential for ad hoc use of lean and green tools and optimise their choice of tools – and budget expended – to improve their sustainable business outcomes. Within this structure, SMEs can follow a sequence of steps to: explore, prioritise, invest, and monitor and evaluate, to transition towards sustainable business practice. Our findings are immediately useful for industry practitioners, government policymakers addressing circular economy opportunities at a firm level, and governance leaders in bridging the gap between ideas and action for scaling up sustainable business practice in SMEs.
Details
- Title
- Transforming manufacturing to be ‘good for planet and people’, through enabling lean and green thinking in small and medium-sized enterprises
- Authors
- H T S Caldera (Corresponding Author) - Griffith UniversityC. Desha (Author) - Griffith UniversityL. Dawes (Author) - Queensland University of Technology
- Publication details
- Sustainable Earth, Vol.2(1), pp.1-19
- Publisher
- BioMed Central Ltd.
- Date published
- 2019
- DOI
- 10.1186/s42055-019-0011-z
- ISSN
- 2520-8748
- Copyright note
- This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Science, Technology and Engineering
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99725557902621
- Output Type
- Journal article
Metrics
7 File views/ downloads
14 Record Views