Lean and green manufacturing.

1. Introduction:
Today, manufacturers want to use their minimum resources while maximizing the
productivity. At the same time, they also want to minimize the bad effects on environment caused
by manufacturing. Companies recognize the need of discovering new competitive manufacturing
modes and firms must comply with environmental regulations to manage the depletion of natural
resources at a sustainable rate. They can get these achievements by concept of lean and green
manufacturing which improves the productivity and keeps the environment safe.

Lean Manufacturing.
In lean manufacturing we use our minimum resources to get the maximum output with improved
quality. We make product as per demand of the customer and make him satisfied. It focuses on the
elimination of the waste. Lean is becoming more than a production tool because the productivity
increases and the prices of products decrease and the company get profit. Lean manufacturing was
introduced by Japanese manufacturers of Toyota production systems. The principle of Toyota
Production system is to reduce or remove non-value adding activities from manufacturing process.
We have visited the Millet Tractor industry to monitor the implementation of lean manufacturing
technique as the concept on reducing waste from automotive industry has been around for a long
time. We should establish lean production method and improve approach using I4.0 Technology
so technology and man work together to get success using a mix of strategies. But the
implementation of lean manufacturing is not quite easy due to cultural problems.
Lean manufacturing has been approved by both large companies and SMEs in achieving higher
level quality and flexibility at lower cost. To achieve lean, various tools and techniques have been
evolve, including supplier quality, lean SC, just in time, workforce commitment, employee
involvement, quality circles, leveled scheduling, Kanban, cellular manufacturing, visual control,
workforce engagement, SMED, VSM, etc. All these techniques have their own pros and cons.

Green Manufacturing.
Green manufacturing is a strong alloy of Lean manufacturing. Environmental issue has become
critical due to increase in population and industrial growth. Green manufacturing is a
manufacturing process that has produce minimum pollution in the environment and minimize the
waste by applying multiple environmental practices, green chemistry, environmental monitoring
and electronic devices. These practices aim to protect and maintain the natural environment and
resources. Green manufacturing prevents the negative effects of human association and produces
products that meet to a circular economy (CE) environment.
Green Manufacturing have become important in response to rigid environmental regulations due
to the shortage of raw materials, global warming and waste problems. Green manufacturing has
quite use benefits like it ensures quality and environmental conformance, waste reduction and risk
of legal fees preventions. It also improves the efficiency as it uses less water, energy and raw
materials. Green manufacturing is responsible for production of environmentally friendly products
that do not harm the environment during their production. As there is no any product that is
completely green but implementation of green manufacturing is an effort to minimize the negative
effects on environment.

2. Statistical Process Control (SPC) in Manufacturing

Statistical Process Control (SPC) is the application of statistical methods to monitoring and control
of a process to ensure that it operates at its full potential to produce a conforming product. Under
SPC, a process produces conforming products with least possible waste. Key tools in SPC are
control charts, continuous improvement and design experiments.
Variations that effect the quality are detected and corrected, thus reducing the wastes. It’s early
detection and prevention, SPC has advantage over other methods. When a process is out of control,
an alarm is raised, so that engineers can look for causes of variation and try to eliminate them.

SPC Implementation:
In SPC application, it is important to understand and identify key product characteristics which
are critical to customers or key process variation as shown in Fig 1.
The key steps for implementing SPC are:
▪ Identify defined processes
▪ Identify measurable attributes of the process
▪ Characterize natural variation of attributes
▪ Track process variation
▪ If the process is in control, continue to track
▪ If the process is not in control
- Identify assignable cause
- Remove assignable cause
- Return to ‘Track process variation’s
 Fig .1 Steps in SPC implementation (Source GOLD PRACTICE)

SPC Tools.
SPC has been used to control formal inspections, testing, maintenance and personal improvement
processes. Control charts are the most common tools for determining whether a process is under
statistical control

Tool Application / Use

Check Sheet To count occurrences of problems

Histogram To identify central tendencies and any skewing to

one side or the other
Pareto Chart To identify the 20% of the modules which yield
80% of the issues
Cause and Effect Diagram To identify assignable causes
Scatter Diagram For identifying correlation and suggesting
causation
Control Chart For identifying processes that re out of control
Graph For visually displaying data e.g, in a pie chart

Table.1 Seven SPC quality tools (Source GOLD PRACTICE )

The combination of an Upper Control Limit (UCL) and a Lower Control Limit (LCL) specify, on
control charts, the variability due to natural causes.

SPC benefits
Statistical techniques provided by SPC enable optimizes the amount of information needed for
decision making, through understating of business baselines, insights for process improvements,
communication of value and results of processes, and active as well as visible involvement. SPC
provides real time analysis to establish controllable baselines; learn, set and dynamically improve
process capabilities; and focus business on areas needing improvement.