University of Kentucky Center for Manufacturing

When lean meets green┬áDr I.S. Jawahir of the University of Kentucky Center for Manufacturing tells Martin Ashcroft how the concept of sustainable manufacturing has evolved from lean, through green, collecting more Rs as it grows. If you are a certain age you may remember when the three Rs stood for reading, writing and arithmetic (or, as some said, reckoning). It required a little linguistic license, perhaps, but the phrase has been a popular idiom for many years. How the world has changed! Most of us now recognize the three Rs as representing the green mantraÔÇöreduce, reuse, recycleÔÇöand now, Dr I.S. Jawahir of the University of Kentucky Center for Manufacturing tells me that sustainable manufacturing is based on no less than six Rs. Where have they all come from?I asked him just how lean met green and developed into the concept of sustainable manufacturing. ÔÇ£In the beginning there was one single R,ÔÇØ he says, ÔÇ£the big RÔÇöreduce.ÔÇØ That was in the 1980s when manufacturers caught on to the basic principle of lean manufacturing as demonstrated by Toyota and other Japanese manufacturers. ÔÇ£Then in the 1990s the green revolution came in, building on lean. We then had the three Rs, reduce, reuse, recycle.ÔÇØIn the 21st century, however, sustainable manufacturing takes the concept to another level, bringing yet more Rs into play. Sustainability has been a popular agenda item for a good number of years now, but in manufacturing it is often seen as a cost. ÔÇ£For sustainability to work there has to be an economic return,ÔÇØ says Dr Jawahir. ÔÇ£Building on the first three Rs we have added another three RsÔÇörecover, redesign and remanufacture.ÔÇØ Sustainability has attracted another catchphrase in the last few yearsÔÇöthe triple bottom line, or people, planet, profit. The people and planet elements have been in place for some time, but itÔÇÖs the profit that has held up progress. ÔÇ£Engineering and technology have done a lousy job in not proving the business case,ÔÇØ says Dr Jawahir. ÔÇ£ThatÔÇÖs one of the reasons sustainable manufacturing has been slow to get off the ground. Now the business economists and management specialists are starting to look at this. We are trying to break down the cost structure for the current scenario and develop a new structure for sustainable manufacturing and the sustainable supply chain. ÔÇ£There are societal benefits, environmental benefits and economic benefits,ÔÇØ he continues, echoing the triple bottom line. ÔÇ£Engineers in the past were only able to get numbers on the board for products of the first generation and for single lifecycle products, but there is a recovery value for the next generation of products. There is a certain amount of recovery that can be translated into dollars.ÔÇØ By definition, the study of sustainable manufacturing or sustainable supply chains requires a multi-disciplinary approach. In keeping with this, the University of Kentucky has launched a new Ph.D. Fellowship in Sustainable Systems, an interdisciplinary program to be managed by the Center for Manufacturing. The program will be based on traditional mentoring in the studentÔÇÖs ÔÇ£homeÔÇØ discipline, but will also provide mentoring by faculty from other disciplines as well as a solid grounding in lean systems, and a general approach to creating high performance/zero waste operations derived from ToyotaÔÇÖs approach to manufacturing (but applicable to any organization, be it industrial, governmental, nonprofit, etc). There is an element of spirituality in sustainable manufacturing, not only because its distinction from lean and green is based on life after death. ÔÇ£At the end of a productÔÇÖs life there can be a second life,ÔÇØ says Dr Jawahir. ÔÇ£We donÔÇÖt want to keep on adding to landfill. We donÔÇÖt want to keep on polluting the water and the atmosphere with toxicity and hazardous waste. So we should recover as much as we can from the first lifecycle of a product, and redesign the next generation of products for remanufacture. ThatÔÇÖs where the three new Rs come in.ÔÇØ Connecting all the elements of the supply chain to improve sustainability means looking at products throughout their total lifecycle, but, says Dr Jawahir, ÔÇ£total lifecycle analysis is very badly used. There are numerous software products around the world for product lifecycle management, which try to show companies that productivity improvement can be made by applying lifecycle analysis. I think 99 percent of them fail miserably, by covering only three of the four lifecycle stages.ÔÇØThe first of the four lifecycle stages is pre-manufacturingÔÇöall the things that have to be done to get the raw materials and other supplies in place before manufacturing can begin. The second stage is manufacturing itself, the production of finished products, and the third stage is the user level, when the manufactured product is put into use. ÔÇ£The fourth stage,ÔÇØ he says, ÔÇ£which almost everybody fails to understand, is the post-use stage, after the product has eventually died. Whether itÔÇÖs a car or an aircraft or a washing machine, when it comes to the end of its life, thatÔÇÖs when the real problem begins. We were just discussing in a defense teleconference recently that the Iraq war is coming to an end now, so whatÔÇÖs going to happen to all the weapons and munitions that have been taken over there? I think 90 percent of them are not going to come back to the US. ItÔÇÖs not cost-effective. ItÔÇÖs the same scenario in many of the defense agencies with aircraft and ships and other fighting equipment, not to mention commercial products of all kinds. ÔÇ£End of life is a mysterious area,ÔÇØ he continues. Products need to be disassembled and resources recovered and reused to make the next generation of products. ÔÇ£Our objective is to exhaust every last drop of consumption out of resources to minimize the discharged emissions and waste into the ecosystem. If you donÔÇÖt do that, the eco-balance is going to be violated in a matter of time.ÔÇØEurope is ahead of the United States in legislation for end of life, but it will come, Dr Jawahir has no doubt. ItÔÇÖs already here to a certain extent, as EuropeÔÇÖs Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE) puts the onus on manufacturers to establish an infrastructure for collecting waste electrical and electronic equipment at the end of its life, and to dispose of it ecologically or by reuse or refurbishment. That legislation also covers equipment that is made in North America and sold into European markets. ÔÇ£That puts a lot of pressure on the manufacturer to design the parts that go into those products in a way that can be easily disassembled, recovered and reused,ÔÇØ says Dr Jawahir.The University of Kentucky is partnering with government and commercial organizations on a number of research projects, one of which is The Next Generation Supply Chain Modeling, which is intended to develop predictive performance models for improved process efficiency throughout the supply chain. Products will also be studied from a sustainability point of view, focusing on the total product lifecycle including pre-manufacturing, manufacturing, use and post-use stages to incorporate UKÔÇÖs unique 6R approach.ÔÇ£Our focus is on building sustainable supply chain networks,ÔÇØ says Dr Jawahir. ÔÇ£Right now if you look at any manufacturing segment, whether itÔÇÖs aerospace, automotive, pharmaceutical, whatever it is, they have their own well-established supplier network. They have supplier relationships for materials and distribution and warehousing and all kinds of things, but there is no central or interoperable platform where all the suppliers can come together. ItÔÇÖs fragmented. So our objective is to bring the upstream and downstream suppliers together with the focus company to create a sustainable supply chain network. Then we can identify the supply chain risk involved.ÔÇØ Dr. JawahirÔÇÖs team of researchers includes Dr. Badurdeen (Center for Manufacturing/Mechanical Engineering) who leads the engineering aspects and Dr. Goldsby (UKÔÇÖs Gatton College of Business and Economics) who leads the business and management aspects of next generation supply chain modeling.Risks can be anywhere in the supply chain: from within the market, like price rises or shortage of materials, from natural disasters like hurricanes or tornados, as a result of labor issues within an organization, or even the credit crunch. ÔÇ£We try to identify the risk elements and develop an ÔÇÿif and whatÔÇÖ scenario,ÔÇØ Dr Jawahir continues. ÔÇ£If this happens, what are the consequences? We are trying to connect all the elements of the supply chain, develop an interoperable platform and also go to the next step of modeling the supply chain to be able to predict its performance and efficiency.ÔÇØUK is currently embarking on a major program building activity to cover research, education at the undergraduate and graduate levels and at professional continuing education levels, and also technology transfer, involving development and deployment of new technologies in sustainable manufacturing.┬á