Green Manufacturing.pdf

We accelerate growth

GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT GREEN MANUFACTURING

By: Satish Lele

Asia Pacific Market InsightsFrost & Sullivans commentary on the Asia Pacific IPC industry, addressing

opportunities, best practices, and major events

2009

Manufacturing plays a very strategic role in an organization, especially to build competitive advantage and improve

performance. With rapid changes in technology, customer needs and globalization, manufacturing itself is constantly

transforming and evolving. The beginning of the century saw the automobile industry introduce the mass production

techniques which revolutionized manufacturing processes. Over the years the need for meeting individualistic customer

demands without compromising productivity or quality, brought about the introduction of flexible and mass customization

techniques.

The focus is now on Green manufacturing. Recent volatility in the price of fossil fuels and global awareness about the finite

nature of our resources is creating the need for a more

sustainable way of how we produce and use. Green manufacturing

itself is not new. The concept has been around for a couple of

decades, but has never received much attention from

manufacturers except for participation in seminars and scoring

well in polls and surveys. However recent trends show that with

the heightened focus on climate change, a transformation of mindset is happening and so positive action is now finally

imminent.

What is Green manufacturing?

There are many interpretations of green manufacturing and all convey similar meaning. According to Melnyk and Smith, it is

a system that integrates product and process design issues with issues of manufacturing, planning and control in such a

manner as to identify, quantify, assess, and manage the flow of environmental waste with the goal of reducing and ultimately

minimizing environmental impact while also trying to maximize resource efficiency.

Green Manufacturing is also known by plethora of different names: Clean manufacturing, environmentally conscious

manufacturing, environmentally benign manufacturing, environmentally responsible manufacturing and Sustainable

manufacturing. Irrespective of the various acronyms, the primary goal remains the same designing and delivering products

that minimize negative effects on the environment through their production, use, and disposal.

The fundamentals of green manufacturing are very simple and relate to minimizing the use of resources and the

environmental impact of a product. This philosophy is extended to all the elements of its life cycle from its design to its

end of life.

There are tremendous opportunities which will arise with Green manufacturing. Each element of this cycle has the potential

to be an industry by itself, given the rapid growth rate and demand it is expected to generate in the mid to long term.

Although it is very difficult to estimate the market size for green manufacturing, industry experts feel this would be very

significant in the coming decade. As government, companies and consumers realize the importance of going green the barriers

for investment in these technologies is expected to fall rapidly.

2009 Frost & Sullivan Page 2

Getting serious about Green manufacturing

Market Insight

The drivers for green

There are many drivers which are expanding the boundaries for

green manufacturing. Frost & Sullivan recently conducted a survey

among senior industry leaders to find some of the drivers for going

green. A growing number of executives today feel that going green

will help them to compete more effectively in the marketplace in

the long term. Also organizations tend to conform to implicit

expectations of their communities, which is another driver of

change. In summary the major drivers can be grouped into three

key areas:

1. Competitiveness: The natural desire of manufacturing firms to improve its processes and capabilities forcompetitive advantage. This can manifest in terms of technology, new product and process development as wellas opportunities for business.

2. Corporate Social Responsibility: The growing pressure on manufacturing firms to become more responsible tothe social and environmental impact it creates. Companies would like to brand themselves with a green image.

3. Legislation: Manufacturing firms have to constantly strive to meet current and upcoming stricter environmentalregulations.

The challenges

Although the benefits look very obvious, there are many challenges to going green. The most significant is the economic

mindset and rationalities of organizations. And it cannot be denied that going green will be at an initial cost with potential



Market Insight

savings coming much later. In fact according to a 2005 report by the

U.S. Small Business Administration, in 2004 the business sector was

forced to shoulder 65% of the environmental regulatory costs. This

worked out to an average of $4,850 per employee for U.S.

manufacturing companies.

Another key challenge is that most companies have not integrated

the process of continuous environmental management into the

core of their business strategy, either because it conflicts with their

existing priorities or simple because they are ignorant about how

to do it. Moreover companies do not have specific environmental performance indicators or social performance metrics by

which they are measured by their stakeholders. Many firms today are engaged in some level of environmental management,

however such solutions may not in themselves promote effciency gains or improvements in productivity. This would further

reduce incentive for deploying green manufacturing company wide.

The way ahead

The change to green manufacturing will not happen overnight but over time. However we do expect a tipping point after

which adoption will be very rapid, when it moves beyond a continuous improvement approach. Till today, firms have always

operated on the concept of producing quality and technology products at lowest cost to achieve competitiveness.

Manufacturing processes were designed to make products faster and better on purely economic terms.

The leap into green manufacturing will follow with the fundamental change in the way companies design, procure,

manufacture, distribute, dispose and recycle their products. It has now been proved beyond doubt through increasing

experience of companies implementing green manufacturing practices that the payback periods of such investment is

generally 1 to 3 years.

But Industry by itself cannot bring about this change. Government has to play a very important role of creating the right

environment in which adopters of green manufacturing do not lose competitive edge in the short term.

This article was authored by: Satish Lele, Vice President, Asia Pacific Industrial Technologies Frost & Sullivan.



Market Insight


About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve

best in class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service

provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best practice models to

drive the generation, evaluation and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan

leverages over 45 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses

and the investment community from more than 35 offices on six continents. To join our Growth

Partnership, please visit http://www.frost.com.


Market Insight

ContactTel : (65) 6890 0999

Emai l : apacfrost@frost .comWebsi te : www.frost .com

Documents

Green Manufacturing.pdf