Production and Quality Management for SDGs

Abstract

Industry has undertaken mass production and consumed resources to optimize only economic efficiency. Most products are discarded or disposed at the end of their lifetimes. Therefore, most companies should design and manage their production system for sustainability. One of the most important factors to develop a sustainable production system is the environmental aspect. Environmentally conscious operations management makes some contributions to sustainable development goals (SDGs) #9 and #12. This chapter deals with production and quality management systems for SDGs. Firstly, representative operations management systems such as inventory management and total quality management (TQM) are introduced. These systems are useful to control the production processes efficiently. Secondly, we explain the Just-in-Time (JIT) production system which is based on the two key concepts, JIT and JIDOKAJIDOKA. Some advantages of the JIT production system include its simplicity in production scheduling, reduced burden on operators, ease of identification of parts by the two kinds of kanbans attached to the containers, and substantial reduction in the process work. Finally, we consider environmentally conscious manufacturing and describe a closed loop supply chain which includes activities necessary to acquire end-of-life products from customers to recover value.