Abstract

The increasing customer’s environmental conscientious, the strict environmental regulations and the need to keep market competitiveness, is pressuring organizations to reduce their environmental impacts. Hence, organizations are looking for new approaches to achieve sustainability. Several studies discuss the relation between Lean and Green Manufacturing approaches not only to reach Leaner results but also to decrease the environmental footprint of organizations. However, most researchers evaluate the global impact of Lean Manufacturing tools, and so their individual impact is lost. To overcome this gap, this work presents a comparative study of the Kanban system’s environmental impacts, evaluating Green KPIs, such as, Energy usage, Material usage, Water usage, Waste, and Air and Water pollution. The analyzed papers showed a positive impact related to the Energy usage, Material usage and Waste, when Kanban and its related practices are applied. Regarding Water usage and pollution, the findings are very scarce. Additionally, the results show that Air Pollution is the most controversial Green KPI. This comparative study allows for a global view on Kanban’s environmental impacts to prevent them in advance. Moreover, at the end of the paper a work-in-progress, regarding the practical measurement of the Green KPIs upon the Kanban system’s implementation, is presented.