Eco Lean Management - Recent Progress, Experiences and Perspectives

Sustainability increasingly becomes a focus of production management. Consequently, we introduced the concept of Eco Lean Management (ELM) to the scientific community about five years ago. The concept is designed to synergistically implement and constantly optimize ecological criteria alongside economic aspects within a holistic framework of day-to-day operations in manufacturing companies. By facing issues at the economic-ecological interface on a daily basis, managers and employees are sensitized for a sustainable development of the manufacturing environment. After ELM has found its way into multiple companies, we review recent progress and discuss perspectives on a micro and macro level. We demonstrate that the systematic introduction of the concept in four factories continues to have considerable synergetic optimization potential. However, we find that its impact on the overall economic sustainability of production will remain low, even in an optimistic forecast.