Sustainable production: The ultimate result of a continuous improvement

To fulfil market requirements, companies have introduced cost awareness, quality programs and techniques to become flexible. These items should be handled as a continuous process of improvement. The cost awareness implies that e.g. material waste is avoided during production, the quality programs take care that non-qualified products are avoided, while flexibility results in avoiding waste of time. It is argued that a continuous improvement of efficiency, quality and flexibility will bring a company closer to a state of sustainable internal production. However, as a sustainable production can be defined as an industrial production resulting in products that meet the needs and wishes of the present society without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs and wishes, all phases during the lifetime of a product have to be considered. From a company's view this means that product design, internal production and product, parts and material recovery have to be considered in relation to the usage of materials and the quality of products, processes and systems. As is shown, then concurrent engineering techniques are related to shop-floor improvement techniques regarding efficiency, quality and flexibility. It is concluded that companies using sustainable production techniques will have an advantage over their competitors because of reduced costs, improved quality and better organisation of the shop-floor, while a market share increase may be expected as a result of the costumer's sympathy for 'green' products. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.