Green and Lean management

Renowned experts for lean management held a lecture at VERN'

In the competitive economic environment, the companies compete by innovations, productivity increase, environmental protection and reduction of production costs. Although it seems that this balance is simultaneously difficult to apply, lean management, a method of business management shows the opposite.

The leading global expert in this area, Michael Ballé, Ph.D., and the head of the doctoral study of Industrial Engineering at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, prof. Nedeljko Štefanić held a guest lecture at VERN', where they introduced the students and professors with this known management model applied by many global leaders, like Toyota, Ford, Harley Davidson, LG and Sony.

This initiative, explained prof. Štefanić, came into life due to the need for organizing necessary changes, because this was the only way to survive, improve and be competitive in the global environment. Toyota was the first one to start applying this model, and it later spread among other companies. Since the green and lean methods are based on processes, they are applicable and universal to most of human activities, not only in production, explained prof. Štefanić. In the practical examples, he explained how they analyzed conditions at the Croatian companies, such as Coca-Cola, Končar and Dalekovod, which are thinking of introducing lean management.

A co-founder of the French Lean institute, Michael Ballé, illustratively explained to students the way of functioning of economy and generators of its growth, as well as their mutual connection.

"The organization manages the knowledge, careers and assets vertically, but all the right values result from the horizontal processes that are difficult to control. Besides reducing the costs, the application of lean management also stimulates innovation, strengthens cooperation among employees and positively affects the business processes, which the competition can only achieve by increasing costs", Balle emphasized. He added that Croatian companies, but also the economy in whole, could be much more competitive only if they would be able to reconcile mutual interests and improve cooperation, which is precisely the point of lean management.

He explained to students and professors that lean management stimulates establishment of a balanced flow in an organization, which means that it removes disruptions, minimizes and eliminates losses, and also stimulates flexibility of the system. Such an environment is characterized by small series of production, small storage premises, motivated employees who recognize value in education, balanced costs, direct cooperation with suppliers, regular preventive maintenance etc.