Page 34 - FoodFocusThailand No.227 February 2025

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Lean Integrate Green Productivity:

Guidelines for Enhancing Sustainable

Productivity through the Lean Concept

Continuous improvement of work processes through increased productivity is critical. This effort enhances
organizational efficiency, reduces waste, improves quality, and lowers costs by optimizing resource
utilization. Every individual in the organization contributes to this process of improvement. Additionally,
given the growing global emphasis on sustainable development, businesses aiming to export products
internationally must thoroughly understand how to enhance process efficiency to drive sustainability within
the food industry.

Tools for Productivity particularly significant for the food industry, which relies heavily on labor. While
Enhancement in Processes food production often involves machinery, systematic maintenance is crucial.
The concept of green productivity, an Consequently, total productive maintenance, emphasizing participation from all
initiative by the Asian Productivity personnel, becomes essential.
Organization (APO), is a vital tool. Its However, food manufacturing facilities should adapt this approach to suit their
objective is to promote resource efficiency production processes and environments. Prioritization should be based on
and productivity, leading to improved identifying losses, such as problem areas, bottlenecks in the process, points
performance, cost reduction, and impacting product quality, and steps contributing to high production costs. These
sustainability in economic, social, and insights should guide the planning and sequencing of development and
environmental dimensions. Green improvement efforts to optimize efficiency and sustainability.
Productivity emphasizes both productivity
enhancement and ecological sustainability.
Regarding productivity and efficiency
improvement, the principles of ‘lean’ are
applied as a crucial tool to optimize work
processes. The primary goal of lean is to
minimize the ‘7 wastes’, also referred to as
Muda in Japanese, which include
overproduction, unnecessary inventory,
inefficient transportation, waiting time,
excessive motion, defective products and
rework, and ineffective processing.
The organization can enhance process
efficiency if personnel are knowledgeable
about identifying these wastes (7 waste
findings) and engage in continuous
improvement initiatives (Kaizen). This is

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