BARRIERS TO GREEN MANUFACTURING

Green Manufacturing is driven by a number of positive factors, though the manufacturing industry is still faced with some barriers hindering “green” applications to be implemented into practice. The various barriers are:

Fig: Barriers to Green Manufacturing

v  RISK OF BUSINESS: As in every business there is a basic risk to the implementation and success of Green Manufacturing practices. The recent change in the overall thinking, as well as the recent trend of “greener” products does not promise to maintain consistent success over a long period of time. Unforeseeable cultural or social events, like wars for example, can tremendously change the demands and needs of a country’s civilization. But facing the current economic trend, a decrease of interest in sustainable manufacturing is not expected to happen.

v  TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT PRESSURE: Staying on the top of the business in most cases means to be the technological leader, or to be at least at the state of the art. Since green business is here to stay, keeping ahead of the competitors in green technologies and strategies can be very challenging, both from a managerial and financial point of view. The natural selection takes place like in every free market situation and further shows that a specialization into certain technologies or products and systems is the current trend for businesses over the globe. Moreover, competition is one of the main drivers for prices; the lower the prices are, the more people will buy the product. There will be businesses failing off or miss to jump the train for progress to maintain competitive. Hence, every company has to keep an eye on the three pillars of sustainable manufacturing.

v  COMPLEXITY: Applying green manufacturing concepts is not a easy job as it require the analysis of all the processes within organization and thus applying green manufacturing significantly include the total management support, skilled technicians etc.

v  LACK OF TOP MANAGEMENT COMISSION: Leadership is one of the most important drivers for a green approach to manufacturing, but top management positions, like others, contain a certain amount of subjectivity in decision making. Top management thinking is generally profit oriented and thus satisfying top management with green manufacturing concepts is a tedious work and requires a lot of analysis which is again complex and time consuming.

v  HIGH INVESTMENT COST: Sometimes we know about the concept and we knew the benefits but still the investment cost is so high that applying that concept is not possible for an organization.

v  LACK OF VISION AND KNOWLEDGE: As green manufacturing provides profit in long term thus a vision is necessary and a clear picture of concept is required which is lacking in most of conditions. Even if CEO is equipped with the conceptual knowledge, the transfer of knowledge down line (i.e. from management to workers) requires a great commitment of management.

DRIVERS TO GREEN MANUFACTURING

Green manufacturing is a promising tool for increasing plant efficiency and benefits of planet, but at the same time applying green manufacturing in an industry is a big investment initially and thus companies are not much interested in making their companies green. There are various driving forces due to which companies are moving towards green manufacturing, these are:

 Fig: drivers of Green Manufacturing

v  GOVERNMENT PRESSURE (i.e. Regulations, Penalties and Tax Benefits): This can be visualized by terms like regulations, as well as penalties, tax benefits or sponsorship are main drivers. One of the highest impacts is caused by the generally increasing energy costs which lead to an overall rethinking and new approaches. Other than this there are many policies and quality standards which led to application of green manufacturing in an organization these are:

·         ISO14000

·         EURO standards for emission control and BS (Bharat Stage) standards for INDIA.

·         IPCC

v  CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT:

Improve constantly and forever.

                                                            -- One of DEMING’s 14 points.

Continuous improvement leads to better quality, industrial environment and greater profits thus continuous improvement has become an inevitable part of organization. Green manufacturing also supports the same ideology.

v  COMPETITION: Another driver is the competitive advantages that a company is able to obtain in the market through implementation of sustainable manufacturing strategies. The main indicator therefore is the consumer himself. Due to the public’s awareness and concerns, implementing green manufacturing principles can enhance a company’s image in the society and also can generate higher revenues, and increase market share, as a consequence. Though long term but if implemented Green Manufacturing tactfully in the industry there is always gain in productivity either by decreasing scrap, input raw material, energy or by having better working conditions which will benefit the organization. Thus there is always competitive benefit of applying Green Manufacturing in long term.

v  PRESSURE FROM CUSTOMERS/ SOCIETY AND CONSUMERS: Satisfying consumer in all prospective is the main goal of company, this is because customer is the one which builds a company by purchasing its goods and services. Now as customer has become more aware of environmental consequences and thus including green manufacturing techniques helps satisfy customers.

v  SCARCITY OF RESOURCES AND ITS RISK: Infinite economic growth cannot be performed in a finite world, but humans have been quite smart at finding solutions for the problem of scarcity in natural resources. Many manufacturing companies are faced with problems concerning the acquisition of raw materials. Next to fossil fuels, as a classic, some of the recent issues are related to metals, uranium, noble earths, and also fresh water. Faced with the scarcity and the coexisting price pressure, the gap for new technologies and industries came up, dealing with the recycling of materials and alternative, more environmentally friendly mining technologies.

v  TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES: to apply Green manufacturing in an organization there is need of technical advance machinery which also increase company’s technical status and increase productivity due to increase efficiency of new and advanced machinery.

v COMPETITIVE DIFFERENTIATION: Green manufacturing also brings competitive differentiation to an organization this is particularly aimed by first or new movers (those organizations which are able to break ice between short term higher cost and other benefits).

v  SELF MOTIVATION: Nature is humankind’s mother. This is the ideology that we are becoming aware of now. Humans know if nature is destroyed humankind is nowhere to survive. This provides self-motivation to make good that are environment friendly and green.

Green has moved from being perceived as a ‘necessary evil’ to being seen as ‘good business’. Companies that undertake Green initiatives stand to be advantaged on brand enhancement, Political traction and regulatory compliance, greater ability to attract and retain talent, enhanced customer retention and potential cost savings. However, these benefits require a long term commitment and making tradeoffs against short term objectives, as the economics of Green manufacturing are not well understood yet.

Difference between Green and Sustainable manufacturing

Most of times, while studying  Green manufacturing, often their is a confusion that Green manufacturing is same as Sustainable manufacturing because in both we are trying to use our resources to full without exploitation and in a manner that it does not harm living organisms. When  I started reading about Green manufacturing, it interest me because here we are trying to save our mother nature but then I got confused that we are doing the same in sustainable manufacturing as well. My confusion get clear when I came across a figure I would like to share:

This figure explains the difference. Green Manufacturing is something in which our focus is on people and plant i.e. we are concerned about social and environmental issues but in case of Sustainable Manufacturing one another important factor that act is organisations's economy i.e. profit.

Lets understand this with the help of an example,Suppose of a condition in which bio-fuels are costlier than petrol, than as per green manufacturing the use of bio-fuels is recommended as it benefits people as well as planet but as per sustainability the use of petrol is still not recommended as the use of bio-fuels does not provide organizational benefit.

Industries today work on Sustainability and to make a process sustainable the first step is to make it Green only then can think of sustainability. So, we can conclude that Green Manufacturing is an important and significant step towards sustainability.

In case of any doubt , please leave a comment. And if their is any other part of Green manufacturing to be understood, you can mail or leave a comment.