Lean makes our economy more responsible – the SunPower story [Planet Lean]

SunPower is a vertically integrated solar company that designs and manufactures solar cells and panels for residential roofs, commercial buildings and wholesale power plants. They share how they merge the circular economy with lean principles to help reduce their impact on the environment.

With a strong semiconductor background, they already had a strong foundation for process improvement with heavy reliance on statistical process control (SPC) to reduce variation in their product. They wanted to improve the flow, and in 2009 started a lean journey. At the same time, they decided to add “cradle to cradle” concepts into their factories. They had never considered what happens when their product leaves the factory, or where their raw materials come from, or what happens after the customer is done with a product.

“cradle-to-cradle thinking and lean thinking go hand in hand: we have taken full advantage of lean – the transformational drivetrain that we use to move the company from point A to point B – and we have used the concept of circular economy to push ourselves to aspire to something higher…lean thinking and cradle-to-cradle thinking have a lot in common.

Adopting the circular economy framework and the ideas it promotes (such as, being at the highest ecological standard of production or having targets like zero waste to landfill) boosted the engagement of our people and encouraged them to ask more questions.”

Read more at https://www.planet-lean.com/articles/lean-management-circular-economy