Lean and green production was introduced to the western manufacturing industry nearly thirty years ago. The essence of the new business model was to eliminate waste through lean tools according to Taiichi Ohno's eight categories of waste. Many companies became more competitive with waste reduction techniques but some of them faced, and still are facing failures. Such failures are closely related with misapplication of lean and green tools, and its sequential order of implementation. In order to define most powerful lean tools for reduction of certain types of waste, a study was made among lean companies. The concept of a study was to define best lean toolbox for reduction of each category of waste and to determine right sequential order of lean tools implementation. Stepwise multiple regression model revealed that Total Productive Maintenance, Poka-Yoke, Kaizen, 5S, Kanban, Six Big Losses, Heijunka, Takt Time, Andon, OEE, SMED, and KPIs are best waste management techniques. Nevertheless, it has been demonstrated that 5S, Kaizen, Kanban, Poka-Yoke and TPM are highly recommended for start of every lean manufacturing initiative.

The goal of this article is to explore the link between lean and green management, reasons for their implementation, their effect throughout the whole life cycle, as well as the current state of use of lean tools, economic and environmental indicators in the context of Croatian manufacturing companies. A semi-structured interview was used in this research. As a result, the frequency of economic and environmental performance indicators and lean tools in Croatian companies has been defined, as well as the reasons for the implementation of lean management. Additionally, the understanding of the use of Life Cycle Assessment methods, environmental standards has been obtained and the integration of lean and green management in Croatian companies has been explored. Further on, results were compared to the similar study done in the UK. Finally, it can be concluded that the integration of lean and green management is not yet sufficiently present in manufacturing companies, although there are cases in which these two approaches are integrated, primarily in the process and food industry. It is for these reasons that in the integration of these two approaches lies great potential.

Accelerated technology developments caused by Industry 4.0 create problems in its implementation. One of the most important factors that hinder the transition of companies is ignorance and, therefore, the fear of new technologies present among employees. Learning factories have proven to be one of the best solutions for introducing employees to the technologies of Industry 4.0. Croatia is significantly behind in implementing the features of Industry 4.0, especially compared to more developed countries. To facilitate the transition of the Croatian industry to Industry 4.0, it is necessary to acquaint existing and future employees with its technologies through learning factories. There is currently only one learning factory in Croatia, which is too few. This paper presents the process of design and establishment of a learning factory at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture in Zagreb, which facilitates research work and education of students and employees with Industry 4.0.

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Market positioning, i.e., the competitiveness of European shipyards, depends a lot on the measures of continuously improving the business processes, therefore meeting the criteria of environmental protection and sustainable energy. Lean management enables ongoing improvements of all system processes by recognizing and removing the unnecessary costs of the same, i.e., those activities which do not contribute to the added value for the customer. In this paper, the authors research the magnitude of improvements in the shipbuilding sales process achieved by applying the Lean tool “Value Stream Mapping” (VSM). The example of analysing the informational stream of the studied European shipyard’s existing sales process, performed by implementing the VSM, has defined the measures to decrease the losses in the process, with an emphasis on waiting time in internal and external communication. Upon VSM of the future state, measuring improvements realised by applying key performance indicators began. Significant cost savings in the sales process and the simultaneous increase of productivity of the employees participating in those process activities have been noted, as well as the substantial growth in sales and the shipyard’s income.