Implementation Challenges Affecting the Environmental Improvement Performance in Pharmaceutical Production:

Abstract

This paper reports on working findings in an action research-based project, implementing a green kaizen pilot in a European pharmaceutical manufacturing company. The aim of the study is to investigate how continuous improvement initiatives with focus on environment originally developed for the automotive manufacturing industry could apply to the pharmaceutical industry. It also aspires to understand the enabling and hindering issues are for such implementation. There are considerable similarities of implementing lean in general in the two sectors, however, some key differences and challenges were apparent when implementing this specific green kaizen method called Green Performance Map. An implication for pharma practitioners implementing the green kaizen method concerns how to improve working procedures and production equipment to become more environmentally friendly amid high regulatory demands on process quality. Implementation challenges are discussed in terms of fidelity, locus and extensiveness of lean practices implementation.

Scoping Review of Kaizen and Green Practices: State of the Art and Future Directions

“…With regard to data collection methodologies, many of the works do not specify the technique used. In some cases, however, express reference is made to individual or group interviews [39], surveys [4,42] and brainstorming sessions [47].…”

“…Among the nineteen articles analyzed, fifteen are case studies that show concrete applications of kaizen with a clear orientation towards environmental sustainability [4,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50]. In all of them, the aim is to show the synergies between both kaizen and green philosophies.…”

“…Acharry et al [41] Electrical/Electronic Alves Pinto Junior and Mendes [40] Electronic Antomarioni et al [45] Manufacturing Bellgran et al [47] Pharmaceutical Birkie et al [39] Pharmaceutical Cherrafi et al [52] Aerospace and automotive Garza-Reyes et al [50] Manufacturing Goyal et al [37] Manufacturing Harris et al [42] Automotive Hughes [49] Manufacturing Hussain et al [4] Hotels Nahmens [43] Housing Pampanelli et al [8] Manufacturing Pampanalli et al [53] Engineering Ramakrishnan et al [48] Manufacturing Whyle and Bland [44] Manufacturing…”

“…Acharry et al [41] Asia (Thailand) Alves Pinto Junior and Mendes [40] South America Antomarioni et al [45] Europe (Italy) Birkie et al [39] Europe Cherrafi et al [52] US Garza-Reyes et al [50] World Goyal [24] Asia (India) Harris et al [42] US Hughes [49] US Hussain et al [4] Asia (United Arab Emirates) Pampanelli et al [8] South America (Brazil) Pampanelli et al [53] South America (Brazil) Vais et al [38] Europe (Romania) Whyle and Bland [44] Europe (UK)…”