Track: Sustainable Manufacturing

Abstract

The main focus of the industry in the 21st century is sustainability and customers. On a world scale, plastic produces a large carbon footprint during the process of producing to become plastic pellets. Biodegradable plastic is a sustainable solution to this environmental problem. Unfortunately, sustainable products tend to have high production costs. Lean manufacturing has been proven to provide advantages for manufacturing companies in the form of eliminated waste to increase product value and customer satisfaction. Value stream mapping (VSM) is an important tool of the lean approach and is used to identify and reduce activities that do not add value. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a systematic method for evaluating the environmental burden associated with a product, process or activity, by identifying and measuring the energy and materials consumed and the waste released into the environment. This study aims to implementation the concepts of lean manufacturing and life cycle assessment at the gate to gate stage in the biodegradable plastics industry to reduce cycle time and environmental impact in order to cut production costs therefore products can be sold at lower prices. In this paper, various aspects closely related to lean manufacturing are analyzed and reviewed, such as business process reengineering (BPR), layout optimization, machine automation, line balancing and increase capacity. The results showed that the combination of VSM and LCA with simulation is a good alternative in making decisions to reduce cycle time and environmental impact on the Biodegradable Plastics Industry