Environmental Management in Manufacturing Industries

The environmental concern requires manufacturing industries to direct resources and effort toward strategies and activities that help reducing their overall environmental impact. Using environmental management systems (EMSs) such as ISO 14001 or similar is common. However, as the EMSs do not put absolute requirements on the organization's environmental performance, it is still up to each manufacturing company to set the ambition level. As part of the EMSs, the identification of the environmental aspects to be dealt with during the operations phase could be supported by an industrial applicable method called Green Performance Map (GPM), engaging the employees on all levels to work with those environmental improvements they could impact. While most manufacturing companies are implementing the concept of lean production, it is advantageous to integrate the environmental improvement work into the existing lean infrastructure with, for example, daily management systems and scheduled activities for continuous improvement. Another approach discussed in the article is the need for emphasizing the design of the production system as an upstream activity that has fundamental impact on the environmental performance downstream, that is, in the operations phase. When designing new production equipment or renovating existing equipment, the opportunities to incorporate more energy- and resource-efficient solutions are much greater and cheaper compared to investing in such solutions afterward during serial production. Arguably, a combined design and operations approach is necessary in order to achieve a complete green mindset that will guide the environmental actions on both the strategic, tactical, and operational levels. Managing the environmental tasks is part of the overall strive toward lean and clean energy systems in manufacturing industry.