AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

In today's competitive world, companies focus on eliminating wastes to increase their profit, growth and ensure customer satisfaction. Among the known wastes, environmental wastes are typically the least considered. Organizations must comply with federal rules and regulations towards environmental friendly manufacturing. Lean Manufacturing provides opportunities for improving the environmental performance along a production line. This thesis discusses previous work performed in analyzing environmental impacts and wastes. Based on this previous work, a method is developed to assess and document the impact of environmental factors in a production line using a value stream map. This new approach to calculate the environmental factors of a manufacturing/assembly line and to incorporate the environmental factors in a value stream map is explained in detail with case studies. The result of the case studies as tested in a production line is discussed and concludes with significant opportunities for improvement if implemented in a large scale.