Lean is Green
If I asked you to list your most satisfying accomplishments before age 10, you might describe your little league team’s big win, a picture you drew, or your performance in the school play. I think of building a hide-out near the family pond and re-organizing canned goods in the pantry.
Yes, you read that right, and yes, I realize how sad it sounds to be proud of shuffling cans around a shelf. But it was my job to put the groceries away, and I was frustrated with how much time it took me to scan the shelves for a match to the can or jar I held. I decided to bring order to the chaos so that I could finish my chores and get back outside to to my fort by the pond. By the end of the afternoon, everything was visually organized, stacked, and clean so that you could not only find the item you wanted in a hurry, but you could also see which staples were getting low and needed to be restocked.
It should come as little surprise then, that I am naturally attracted to efficiency and process improvement, and few methodologies inspire me more than Lean. Lean is a way of thinking and a set of tools that allow you to focus on delivering value, while eliminating the wastes in a process. And while it has its roots in the manufacturing world, its principles can be applied to almost any process. My wife and I recently redesigned our home mail sorting system based on Lean thinking!
There is a clear overlap between Lean and Green. Lean begins with a long-term vision of a company’s purpose and supports all future efforts with this grounded philosophy. It then empowers individuals, the workers on the front line, to find and eliminate waste in their processes. Done well, green initiatives do the same – uniting the company with a long-term sustainable vision, and empowering grass roots efforts to save energy, water, or materials. But Lean has another advantage – its is inherently measurement based, meaning it can avoid some of the “Well, I think the problem is….” pitfalls that often stall or distract green efforts.
You’ll hear more from me on why Lean is Green in future posts, but for now, you can see a helpful introduction to just what “waste” means in this video from Gemba Academy.
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