Lean Sustainability

What is good for our planet can be good for business and its shareholders

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Low Sustainability Ratings For Oil And Gas Corporations

An Oekom Study look­ing at 27 lead­ing oil and gas cor­po­ra­tions rates orga­ni­za­tions regard­ing their sus­tain­abil­ity. The study’s authors granted that cor­po­ra­tions try to do the right things, how­ever over­all their activ­i­ties are not focused enough and lack tan­gi­ble results. On a scale from A+ to D-, the small Aus­trian com­pany OMV ranked first with […]

Lean Means Sustainability — Step 4 — Improve

In ear­lier posts I wrote about “Define”, “Mea­sure” and “Ana­lyze” as part of Lean Six Sigma’s DMAIC cycle. The exam­ple I used in these pre­vi­ous posts showed that our office is not energy effi­cient, and we also ana­lyzed where and why. Remem­ber, the most impor­tant results of the Analy­sis phase are well deter­mined prob­lem causes. […]

Walmart’s Impact (3)

Wal­mart, the largest US-retailer, makes another move to get more sus­tain­able. This time the tar­gets are spe­cific pop­u­lar prod­uct cat­e­gories and their sup­pli­ers. Sup­pli­ers are asked to exam­ine and reduce their car­bon foot­print by using less energy, less pack­ag­ing, more effi­cient processes, etc. It sounds good and it is good, at least in my opinion. […]

Lean Means Sustainability – Step 1 — Define

Increas­ing effi­ciency is the name of the game. The objec­tive is to reduce waste and get more value into the prod­uct. Thus improv­ing prof­its and decreas­ing envi­ron­men­tal impacts. Lean Man­age­ment, Six Sigma and other man­age­ment philoso­phies offer tools to get sus­tain­abil­ity efforts right. For instance, Six Sigma offers DMAIC – Define, Mea­sure, Ana­lyze, Improve, Control. […]

The First Carbon Tax

I got this from the “Irish Times”: “There is noth­ing new about the con­cepts of green or sus­tain­able eco­nomic growth. The Cam­bridge econ­o­mist Arthur Pigou wrote about these ideas as far back as 1912. His famous exam­ple was a fac­tory which belched forth smoke and thereby entailed “social costs” which, he believed, the man­u­fac­turer should […]