Lean Green, circular economy and frugality, new perspectives

Abstract

The search for tools that allow the development of productivity and the consolidation of productive structures of goods and services that provide a constant generation of value is one of the main concerns of industrial engineering professionals.
The bases of these tools were developed through the Toyota models that matured in the construction of the Lean manufacturing concept, which seeks the constant search for continuous improvement, and allows the development of the philosophy called Kaizen, applying tools that allow identifying where waste (mudas) is found in the workplace (gemba) identified complementing with the identification of imbalances and overload that may occur in the productive processes.
As manufacturing and service processes have become automated, with the arrival of sensors, information management through large volumes of data and the creation of cyber-physical spaces, real-time activities and processes are becoming present, allowing for better decision-making and anticipation of possible failures that generate the loss of value construction, giving greater validity to the construction of lean manufacturing and derivations such as lean six sigma, lean logistics, lean purchasing, etc.
Likewise, new aspects in the construction of collective value have come from business environments, such as the need to establish sustainability as a pillar of continuous improvement, opening the way to approaches such as Green Lean, which seeks to integrate sustainability into operations through concepts where clean energy, carbon, water and ecological footprints, as well as closing the cycle of equipment maintenance waste and services, are integrated with Lean Manufacturing. On the other hand, the Circular Economy is presented, where it is considered how the value chain is integrated in providing solutions for the life cycle of products, closing the gaps allowing the reduction, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, the minimization in the use of materials through the R (such as recycle, reduce and reuse), the integration of sustainable supply chain management and the search for new product alternatives taking advantage of natural resources and waste, integrating with Green Lean and Lean Manufacturing.
Finally, it is necessary to recognize how these tools and approaches need to be nourished through a philosophy to allow the integration of operations with markets, such as frugality, allowing to recognize how it is necessary to consume and use what is strictly necessary in the operations of goods and services, recognizing that there are limits in natural resources, integrating the economic factor in the resources used and their long-term projection, as well as individual behavior as it can contribute to sustainability; allowing the industrial engineer to develop new approaches.