Lean Energy: Turning Sustainable Development into Organizational Renewal

Árni Halldórsson, Ida Gremyr, Anette Winter and Naghmeh Taghahvi
Additional contact information
Árni Halldórsson: Division of Service Management & Logistics, Chalmers University of Technology, 41296 Gothenburg, Sweden
Ida Gremyr: Division of Service Management & Logistics, Chalmers University of Technology, 41296 Gothenburg, Sweden
Anette Winter: Chalmers Professional Education, 41756 Gothenburg, Sweden
Naghmeh Taghahvi: Division of Service Management & Logistics, Chalmers University of Technology, 41296 Gothenburg, Sweden

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 12, 1-15

Abstract: The potential for integrating principles of lean management and sustainability initiatives has been recognized in earlier research. The present study argues for the need to focus on how this should be implemented and to acknowledge the criticality of developing individuals’ competencies to support such integration. The purpose of this paper is to explore the integration of lean and energy efficiency practices and provide practical examples of such integration. This study is explorative in nature and based on a qualitative research approach. Primary evidence was collected through an interview study of 19 participants in a lean energy course, and through a participant observation at a company workshop following up the program results. Secondary evidence was collected on the development and evaluation of this course. By operationalizing sustainability through energy efficiency and combining with lean principles, organizations can exploit continuous improvement efforts for sustainable development. This paper focuses on professional education as a component for integrating improvement initiatives and sustainable development. Whilst professional education enables individual learning, organization-wide efforts are needed to follow up on the educational program and support a scaling-up of lean energy. The scaling-up means that the organization itself encourages the use of principles and tools to identify and remove energy waste and support a move from local practices to shared experience.

Keywords: lean; energy efficiency improvement; continuous improvement; sustainable development; professional education; organizational renewal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/12/4464/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/12/4464/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:12:p:4464-:d:186089

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().