Lean–Green Improvement Opportunities for Sustainable Manufacturing Using Water Telemetry in Agri-Food Industry

Elisabeth Viles, Javier Santos, Andrés Muñoz-Villamizar, Paloma Grau and Tamara Fernández-Arévalo
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Elisabeth Viles: TECNUN, Escuela de Ingenieros, Universidad de Navarra, 20018 San Sebastián, Spain
Javier Santos: TECNUN, Escuela de Ingenieros, Universidad de Navarra, 20018 San Sebastián, Spain
Andrés Muñoz-Villamizar: Escuela Internacional de Ciencias Económicas y Administrativas, Universidad de La Sabana, 53753 Chía, Colombia
Paloma Grau: TECNUN, Escuela de Ingenieros, Universidad de Navarra, 20018 San Sebastián, Spain
Tamara Fernández-Arévalo: CEIT-Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), 20018 San Sebastian, Spain

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-12

Abstract: Water has become a critical resource due to increased manufacturing activities. However, there is a lack of detailed information on water management and consumption by industries. In the recent bibliography, lean–green was established as a good approach for achieving sustainability in manufacturing industries, but few studies have aimed to achieve both operational and environmental improvements in water consumption. In this paper, we present a multi-case study in the agri-food industry in which water consumption in company activities is monitored, allowing them to improve their industrial processes based on lean–green practices, leading to a zero-waste strategy for this critical resource. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of having detailed knowledge regarding water consumption in order to discover, in a lean–green context, new improvement opportunities which could remain hidden by the current way of analysing consumption.

Keywords: green production; lean manufacturing; sustainability; operation management; manufacturing; telemetry; agri-food sector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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