Product design goes Lean and green

Creating sustainability throughout a product's entire life cycle is an increasingly important consideration for manufacturers, given the rising emphasis on environmental protection. With this in mind, the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) incorporated the critical element of sustainability into its three-pronged Lean and Sustainable Product Design (LSPD) service, which the network offers to its manufacturing clients.

“Environmental attributes are designed-in early and balanced with quality, performance and price-value attributes,” MEP's Manufacturing Innovation blog explains. “As such, the resulting product meets the needs of the customer and market place, and still makes it profitable to produce, sell and service.”

For MEP, which assists the country's small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with job creation and retention, profit generation, waste reduction and other cost-saving initiatives, the principles of Kaizen are a natural fit when it comes to streamlining the product design process. LSPD marries the concepts of innovation, sustainability and continuous improvement to help SMBs in the manufacturing industry achieve their sometimes conflicting goals of delivering high performance, maintaining a price-value balance and producing high-quality products in an environmentally sustainable fashion.

“Being Lean and sustainable isn't just about addressing environmental stewardship or altruism,” the blog notes. “More importantly, it is about growing your business, because in many cases, sustainability makes good business sense so that you can stay sustainable and help both your firm and the planet that it resides on.”

Realizing success with Lean manufacturing

By applying Lean manufacturing tenets to product design, MEP's clients can effectively position themselves for success in several ways. With the help of LSPD, small and medium-sized manufacturers can meet the rising market demand for green products, reduce the environmental impact of their processes, optimize their raw material consumption and energy use, and streamline their waste management and pollution prevention efforts, thereby decreasing waste. In addition, manufacturers that get on board with LSPD may also benefit from cutting production and life cycle costs, and also have the chance to realize opportunities for design enhancement and other forms of innovation.

Although Kaizen originated on the shop floors of manufacturing plants – Japanese vehicle manufacturer Toyota's, to be specific – the continuous improvement philosophy can be applied to virtually any industry. For instance, Lean healthcare has become prevalent in recent years, while Tulsa World reported earlier this year that some architectural firms are also embracing the idea of becoming Lean and green.