Category: Land and Building Use

Hold a lean kaizen event without wasting paper!

As someone who is conscientious of wasting paper, I struggle with conducting lean events with the vast amounts of “butcher” paper and easel pads that are used during the event. I try to utilize white boards as much as possible, especially for mapping and documenting actions items. I’ll also encourage computer use, to capture information
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Green Your Work by Kim Carlson – Book Review

Green Your Work was written by Kim Carlson, who has led several different businesses through a green transformation, and well before all the “cool kids” were doing it. Green Your Work: Boost Your Bottom Line While Reducing Your Carbon Footprint The book is very well organized, into three main section, for a total of 14
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Minitab Tutorial and Excel Data Tables for Utilizing the EPA’s Statistical Analysis at RCRA Facilities document

In March 2009, the EPA published the document called “STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF GROUNDWATER MONITORING DATA AT RCRA FACILITIES” The document is meant to provide support to RCRA facilities on how to apply the correct statistical techniques. It is essentially a statistics reference guide focused on groundwater contamination data. However, it is a good statistical reference
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Top 5 reasons why environmental problems can hide within a Lean Six Sigma initiative

Lean and Six Sigma are established approaches to improving processes to make organizations more successful. It seems only natural that we would be able to reduce environmental problems with these same approaches. Just by having an improvement program, you will naturally improve the environment when you take out waste and inefficiencies in your company. However,
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“Six Sigma for Sustainability” book is a must-read!

My background in statistics and Six Sigma was what started me down the path of process improvement. Later on, I added the Lean approach and experience, to balance out my approach, and make it more holistic. As I became more focused on environmental sustainability in my personal life, I quickly saw how nicely these techniques
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Simple checklist to green your office or restaurant

Portland is leading the charge once again. In 2006, the Portland Office of Sustainable Development (now the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability) commissioned research with dozens of local small businesses. The research revealed that businesses will embrace resource efficiency and sustainability if those services are offered in an easy, one-stop approach. Sustainability at Work is the
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20 Lean and Green organizations share environmental successes

The best way to convince your management to embrace sustainability is to show the success of others, especially competitors and customers who are doing the right thing. Pamela Gordon has compiled success stories from 20 international organizations in her book, Lean and Green: Profit For Your Workplace and the Environment. The companies highlighted in the
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Saving the equivalent of 4.5 million bottles of milk at Arla Foods

Arla Foods UK supplies a full range of fresh dairy products to the major retailers and foodservice customers, such as Cravendale, Anchor, Lurpak and Tickler. The intervention team led by Keivan Zokaei began by looking at waste at a very high level through the creation of a mass balance (or system boundary map) of all
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Rockwell Collins goes green with LEED buildings

I had the opportunity to tour one of the LEED certified buildings on the Rockwell Collins campus in Cedar Rapids, IA. The older building of the two is Gold certified, and the newer one is Silver. At the beginning of the project, they discovered that many LEED buildings cost around $250 per square foot. They
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