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In recent years, the environmental impact of the supply chain has become an increasingly popular area of interest for businesses, regulators, scientists, and consumers. As climate change becomes a more significant concern, more companies are making commitments to switch to sustainable products.

Dumping items in a landfill is no longer a sustainable business model or something that consumers are willing to accept. Billions of pounds of usable products and materials find their way into landfills annually, and some items are causing irreparable harm to the environment. Now that online shopping has become so popular, returns are also on the rise. This presents eCommerce businesses with a problem as well as an opportunity to address reverse logistics in a circular economy.

As we said in Part One, (Here, in case you missed it), a short series of articles on Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)  we did had some excellent feedback that compelled us to share some similar info for the Warehouse and Logistics space. (See parts One, Two and Three here). While Part One focused on the major systems that would be better known and practically required for most growing businesses, this week we focus on some lesser-known specialty solutions that we think are both compelling in their intent and potentially important enough that they will become commonplace in the future.

While it’s important for lean consultants to stay on top of current trends in lean manufacturing, it is difficult to keep up with advances in technology and new opportunities. For instance there is new warehouse cart technology available that reduces waste. Here are five new trends in lean manufacturing we believe you will want to know about:

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1. Strength-Based Lean Thinking

Most applications of lean thinking begin with an assumption that there is a theoretical “perfect state” for each organizational process and that the current state deviates from the perfect state due to inefficiencies and waste.

The strength-based approach to lean has a different focus. Instead of focusing on what is not working and inefficient, it teaches how to identify what is already working efficiently and generates value in existing processes and systems (this is called “strength focus”).

The strength-based approach to lean is more natural to work with and more sustainable in the long term.

Leveraging current or past knowledge, and accessing experiences and successes from within the system, are great resources for the next generation of improvement initiatives. They also provide motivation for everyone to face the challenges and opportunities ahead.