Lean manufacturing and sustainability: An integrated view

Abstract

Lean Manufacturing has always been seen as a mean to improve efficiency by reducing operations costs, but the recent focus on sustainability and its three pillar (economic, environmental and social) brought new issues to be addressed. In this paper, a new framework that links lean manufacturing with sustainability is proposed and then refined through a cross-sectoral multiple case study. The results highlight the need to align the lean implementation process with the sustainability strategy in order to avoid the negative impacts that lean production could have on the environmental and social components of sustainability.