Category: Lean Six Sigma Tools

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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Reducing electricity in a large facility or company

Often times we read about case studies where a company implemented a lighting project, or replaced equipment, or implemented some electricity savings project. However, it’s not very often that the approach on HOW to arrive at that solution is discussed or explained. Perhaps there was no approach, just an idea that got implemented. But that
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recycled content packaging minimal

Design for the Environment (DfE) and why your company needs to jump on board

Product designers have many different requirements and stakeholders to consider. Design for the Environment (DfE) criteria may appear to be just another set of considerations or requirements that the designer needs to balance and optimize. However, it is quickly becoming one of the more important considerations, and should be highlighted and tracked closely as a
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Lean “Go and See” mindset also works on the environment

I’d like to share another example of Lean and Six Sigma application to environmental issues. Let’s start with a simple approach for reducing energy that doesn’t require a lot of technical expertise or outside consulting. Sometimes we don’t see wasted energy as a problem on the same level as product defects, excessive inventory, or over
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Does bottled water actually taste better? Attribute Agreement Analysis

In order to answer this question, we setup an experiment to see if people could tell the difference between four different types of water (Filtered Tap Water, Fiji©, Zephyrhills© and a generic brand purchased at 7-11©). Fiji© Zephyrhills© 7-11© Generic Filtered Tap Water Each person was given a sample of the four waters at the
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Use simple meters to track electricity in your home or small office

Data is so critical to making decisions. Yet tracking electricity data can be frustrating, since it can be difficult to get your hands on the data you need. Most utilities don’t give you more than the monthly total. To address this problem in my home, I have been using the Black and Decker Power Consumption
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