The HSQE Department launches "Lean & Green" programme

Richard Shearwood-Porter writes: -

"It's a commonly held, but mistaken, belief that saving money and improving your environmental performance are mutually exclusive.  Organisations that hold to this belief may pay lip service to environmental performance, but often focus their attention on obvious cost savings, like head-count and sales. 

This strategy is frequently driven by poor markets & declining profitability and, once you get to this point, it can be very difficult to pull back from the brink.  Where do go when staff levels are cut to the bone and all of your competitors are chasing the same order?

Take the case of a company that is operating on a 10% margin, which has to increase sales by £10,000 to add a £1,000 to operating profit.  This can be difficult to do when your competitors are all trying to do the same thing.  The same company can add £1,000 to operating profit by reducing the cost of waste by £1,000.  This isn't so difficult when the savings come from small improvements throughout the organisation, especially when you take a whole-organisation approach.  Cost savings can come from eliminating wasted time, processes, power, experience & communications. 

Adopting Lean & Green means

Reduced waste = improved profitability AND improved environmental performance

Lean & Green uses the same tools & principles as Lean Manufacturing, the "lean office" or "lean healthcare".  These are easy to understand, but can be difficult to embed in an organisation.  Do it right and you see measureable benefits in cost saving, customer satisfaction, staff involvement, quality & environmental management and legal compliance."

The HSQE Department Ltd has designed its "Lean & Green" programme to help you to improve operating costs through adopting Lean principles.

About Richard Shearwood-Porter:

Richard became inspired by Lean principles after reading Womak & Jones "The Machine that Changed the World" in the early '90's, still actively follows Dan Jones' work and has used Lean tools for many years.