Lean Environmental Management Integration System for Sustainability of ISO 14001 : 2004 standard implementation

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to present a model for integrating Lean Principles with ISO 14001 Environmental Management System. Design/methodology: To achieve the objective of the study, the methodology used in this study is based on preliminary literature review of ISO 14001 standards and Lean Principles as well as certain case reports from various proponents and authors of ISO 14001 and Lean as noted in various articles and journals and some books. Findings: The findings of this study are a new model called Lean Environmental Management Integration System (LEMIS) has been developed and leads to the creation of these measurement standards for evaluating the organization, making its environmental efforts more realistic, focused and attainable. Research limitations/implications: Future research should be conducted case studies in this direction are required to be conducted for examining the feasibility of amalgamation and implementing ISO 14001:2004 standards with the philosophy of Lean Principles to enable the achievement of world class standards. Practical implications: This model helps to eliminate any wasteful processes in the organization’s implementation of the ISO 14001 standard thus leading to higher environmental performance. Integrating the standard with Lean principles through LEMIS model helps to


Introduction
ISO 14001 spells out the criteria for developing an environmental management system (EMS).
It is crucial as it states how the EMS should be managed and how an organization should be structured to become more environmentally sensitive.ISO 14001 is a voluntary standard; therefore, organizations are not required by law to implement the standard.The standard has no specific measures of performance, but it deals mainly with the managerial process instead of specifying environmental outcomes and consequences.This is one of the main criticisms towards the standard.Various research studies have cast doubt on the benefits and sustainability of ISO 14001 certification.Some of the studies accuse the standard of not focusing on the environmental performance of an organization or company (Krut & Gleckman, 2002).Rondinelli and Vastag (2000) claim that the standard assumes that firms which have been certified have a management system in place for measuring their environmental results and effects.The main factor making the standard unsustainable is the fact that it does not specify environmental performance measures for organizations.
Environmental measurement systems are developing more rapidly than ever, but most current measurement systems still fail to provide important information .For example, most of the existing environmental data sources were originally designed to monitor regulatory compliance, not measure environmental performance.Measuring environmental performance allows management to identify program successes and failures, and assess the level of environmental goals being met.
Efficiency is a crucial dimension in manufacturing.Lean manufacturing focuses on eliminating waste from organizational processes with a view to deliver more value to a customer.Thus, integrating Lean with the ISO 14001 standard will make the standard more sustainable because it will be customer-oriented, which is consistent with the objectives of many organizations (Simpson & Power, 2005;Shah & Ward, 2007).The research done by Puvanasvaran, Kerk, Suresh and Muhamad (2012) lean principles have positive and highly significant relationship with ISO 14001 requirements.The integration of lean principles in ISO (Puvanasvaran et al., 2012).
Implementing Lean principles requires an organization to identify all the processes that are involved in the conversion of raw materials into a finished product for the customers.This process is known as mapping the value stream.Integrating Lean with ISO 14001 standard ensures that the environmental impact of all processes leading to the delivery of products to customers are identified and dealt with effectively (Sroufe, 2003;Montabon, Sroufe & Narasimhan, 2007).This will lead to higher environmental performance of organizations.Puvanasvaran, Kerk and Muhamad (2011) effectiveness of integrating Lean and EMS can be realized by adopting processes and procedures designed to eliminate waste and create an economically sustainable work environment.

Literature review
This section will focus on an introduction to ISO 14001 and Lean system and subsequently provides an in-depth literature review of ISO 14001 and Lean system related papers published in journals, book and reports.
The hallmark of the ISO 14001 standard that differentiates it from other environmental standards is the integration of managerial decision-making with environmental protection efforts (Raines, 2002).This is a more effective approach that divorces environmental protection efforts from other management activities.Despite its merits, several criticisms have been leveled against the ISO 14001 standard.To start with, it has been argued that the standard does not focus on environmental outcomes but instead it describes managerial processes that lead to such outcomes (Sharma, 2003).This nature of the standard makes it difficult to evaluate organizations' environmental performance based on a standard benchmark (Corbett & Kirsch, 2001).Secondly, compliance with the standard is voluntary which means some organizations may not comply with it.This aspect reduces the effectiveness of the standard in reducing emissions to the environment (Smith, 2001).Some studies have also questioned the cost-benefit value of the standard claiming that the costs of implementing it exceed the benefits for some firms.
Today application of lean principles is not confined to manufacturing operations only but has extended to all forms of businesses including insurance, health institutions, government departments, airlines, etc.In every firm that has adopted these principles the main goal is to improve the organization's performance by eliminating unnecessary activities (Eng, 2011).The key challenge in adopting a Lean philosophy for non-manufacturing organizations is determined which principles apply and how to apply them.This is where the principles of continuous learning and improvement gain even more significance.
Lean principles are essentially about reducing wastage in organizational processes.Thus, establishing an organizational culture with a waste elimination mind-set is the first step towards implementing the Lean philosophy (Visser, 2010).It is also necessary to change the organizational structure to make it more flexible.Flexibility allows the redeployment of organizational resources according to customer's needs.To avoid employees' resistance to change it is crucial to involve all employees in the adoption of the principles from the start (Cowley, 2007).In addition, there should be a comprehensive and efficient information system linking downstream and upstream partners of the organization to enhance demand and supply visibility.
Lean thinking exists in conceptual form which means that it is not a particular methodology to be applied to organizational processes (Pun, Fung & Wong, 2006).However, the philosophy provides a unified focus for organizational operations, which is eliminating wasteful activities which do not deliver value to customers (Sarkar, 2008).Picchi (2001) the term "techniques" (or tools) is generally used for routines, standardized for training and communication, such as Kanban, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), 5S, Pokayoke.We can say that techniques are more related to operational aspects, system integration aspects, and philosophy to conceptual aspects (Table 1).In truth, the separation of technique/system/philosophy is not simple.Every technique (Kanban, for example), when taught, is integrating to the system (e.g.The JIT production system) and several conceptual aspects, or philosophy, are emphasized (pulled production, total quality, etc.) (Picchi, 2001).
The most important element in lean thinking is a philosophy rather than the system and techniques.Besides a conceptual basis provided by philosophy, a company needs practical application templates, in the operational level, to design its systems and select techniques.The direct application of techniques developed in an industry to a different sector is limited, due to specific characteristics of each industry (as stated by Koskela and Vrijhoef (2000)).In this case, more adaptation is demanded in the operational extreme (techniques) and lies in the conceptual extreme (philosophy).(Picchi, 2001) To understand the concept of lean systems, it is essential to understand its principles.Womack and Jones (1996) organize the fundaments of Lean Thinking in five principles: • Value Definition

• Identifying the Value Stream
• Making Value-Creating Steps Flow • The Pull Principle

• Perfection
The 5 lean principles give us a better understanding of the lean philosophy and its core concepts.To apply these concepts in different environments (as other industries) it is interesting to deploy these ideas or principles in detailed concepts, but not reaching the operational field.

Research methodology
The research design is one of the key factors in determining the effectiveness of the research study.If the method applied does not meet the needs of the objectives, the findings and analysis of data collected are wasted.Therefore, this study was intended to develop Lean-EMS integration model to help organization to sustain the Environmental management system though effective continuous improvement method.Integration of Lean and ISO 14001 standard requires the application of Lean principles into the implementation of the standard.
Figure 1 shows the framework development steps.The framework was broken into 6 phases and the details as per below: • Phase 1: In phase 1, data collections in Environmental management system were identified by review of papers, journals, books, magazines, report and dissertations.
This step was part of the Literature Review effort.
• Phase 2: In Phase 2, information's from phase 1 were used as a base.We elaboration of the ISO 14001:2004 clauses from 18 main clauses to 42 sub clauses which will give a better understanding of the clauses and ensures that all the clauses are well considered for the standards sustainability.Use who, how, when and why as an input, where and what as an output to identify the essential of each sub clauses and help to understand better on the ISO14001:2004 standards.The outcome of WH Question was reviewed and validated by an EMS expert from manufacturing industry.
• Phase 3: In phase 3, data collections on Lean were identified by review of papers, journals, books, magazines, report and dissertations.This step was part of the Literature Review effort.
• Phase 4: In phase 4, five principles of lean were detailed out into nine core elements which give a better view of each principle.The framework for this phase was adapted from Picchi (2001) research paper.
• Phase 5: In this phase the 42 sub requirements of ISO14001 were integrated with the Lean principles Core element.This was done by crossing the each Sub requirement of the ISO 14001 with each lean principles core element.The 42 sub requirements of ISO14001 represented in rows and the Lean core elements were represented in columns.Figure 2 illustrates an example of the integration process.
• Phase 6: This is the final phase of the framework development.The critical success factor for the framework were determined through literature review and based on the preliminary data which was collected through questionnaire survey.Besides that, the developed framework was validated by lean and EMS experts.Eight experts from the related field were invited to validate the framework.Focus group methodology was adopted in this phase.

Result and discussion
The 18 main requirements of ISO 14001 standard were identified in phase 2 for framework development.These requirements were adopted from the ISO 14001:2004 standard.Table 3 shows the 18 requirements of ISO14001 standard.Based on the ISO 14001:2004 standard, the 18 requirements were further refined into 42 sub requirements.Table 4 shows an example how the main requirements were refined into sub requirements.The refinements of the clauses were done by the researcher together with EMS expert from an OEM industry.
The identified sub requirements were then analysed using the WH question methodology.Yang et. al., (2003), mentioned a question and answer event shows a great consistent similarity to all its elements in discussing the correspondence of WH-questions.The purpose of this analysis is to understand in detail on each sub requirements.Six questions were developed to analyse each sub requirements.The questions are as per below: • Who is responsible for implementation of the requirements?
• How to establish the requirements?
• Where the requirements were applied?
• When the requirements need to be implement, control and valuate?
• Why the requirement needed?
• What is the impact of the requirement to organizations?
The handbook of environmental management system was used as main reference to answer all the WH questions.Table 5 shows an example on how the questions were answered for the requirements.The WH question analysis validated by an EMS expert from manufacturing industry.
In phase 3 of framework development, the characteristic of Lean principles were identified through extensive literature reviews and questionnaire survey.The important elements of Lean principles such as the requirements, critical success factors, elements of continuous improvement and elements of sustainability were identified in this phase.The information gathered in this phase was useful for the researcher in the integration phase.
However for the phase 4, the five principles of lean were detailed out into nine core elements which give a better view of each principle.The framework for this phase was adapted from Pichhi (2001) research paper.

WHY (Purpose)
-To create awareness of the EMS standards, use as a guidance or reference in EMS implementation and also continually improve to sustain the EMS.
-Management can be more focused and ease to manage all the aspect that significant for the environment.

WHAT (Impact)
-Create awareness on environmental management to stay competitive in the market -Social responsibility -Create awareness on environmental management to stay competitive in the market -Social responsibility Table 5. WH Question Analysis In phase 5 of framework development, the sub requirements of ISO 14001 standard were integrated with the core elements of Lean principles.This was done by crossing each sub requirements of ISO 14001 standard with the core elements of Lean principles.According to Pichhi (2001), crossing the variables is one of common techniques which has been used to cross-tabulate variables in his studies.This researcher has used this technique to design the system and select, adapt or create techniques which are coherent with lean philosophy.
The 42 sub requirements of ISO14001were represented in rows and the Lean core elements were represented in columns.As an example, ISO 14001 sub requirement 1 (SR1) was crossed with lean core element 1 (CE1), then crossed with CE2 until CE9.The same steps were used for rest of ISO 14001 sub requirements.Appendix B shows the matrix of how the ISO 14001 sub-requirements cross-tabulated with lean core elements.
The handbook of EMS and information gathered through extensive literature reviews were used as reference during the cross-tabulation processes.Appendix C shows an example on how the sub requirements of ISO 14001 standard were integrated with the lean principles core elements.
encouraging perfection in every aspect of the system.The outputs of the integration model are an effective EMS and better environmental outcomes by an organization.
Before developing the inputs of the LEMIS model, the organization has to come up with an environmental policy.This policy is then converted into an action plan with clear and measurable goals which become the inputs of the model (Russell, 2008).The goals are aimed at reducing the environmental impact of all the organizational processes.
As a result of the integration of Lean principles with the ISO 14001 standard, the output of the LEMIS model includes a more effective and efficient EMS and better performance of the organization on the environmental front (Cowley, 2007).Effectiveness of the EMS is enhanced by clearly defined goals and the establishment of measurable environmental outcomes.These factors in turn lead to better environmental performance of the organization.
The deliverables of the LEMIS model are a more effective EMS which is well understood by all employees in the organization and higher environmental performance by the organization since all of the firm's operations will have a common focus on reducing the impact of its operations on the environment (Bansal & Bogner, 2002).
An EMS that is based on the guidelines of the ISO 14001 standard only may not be effective as the standard does not specify environmental outcomes to be used to measure the organization's performance.Integrating the standard with Lean principles, however, leads to the creation of these measurement standards for evaluating the organization, making its environmental efforts more realistic, focused, and attainable (Cragg, 2005).The LEMIS model also eliminates any wasteful processes in the organization's implementation of the standard thus leading to higher environmental performance.

Critical success factors of implementation of the Lemis model
Several critical factors that determine the success of implementing of lean principles with ISO14001 integration identified.Management commitment, communication, training, teamwork, quality commitment, employee welfare and employee involvement, amongst other factors; are classified as the most pertinent issues critical for the successful integration of lean principles in ISO 14001.From the summary of studies done by researchers in Table 6, the management approach success factor emphasized on the commitment and support from top management was seen to be a successful implementation of this integration model.However the communication must be consistent and sharing best practices throughout the departments or business units and all employees in the organization.Employees need training to build the skills and educate for quality work and creating a sense of self belongings by engaging them in small group activities and team works.This creates better understanding between employees and management, which will be helpful in future stages and make employees a decision maker than an ordinary worker.Each individual has an important part to play in increasing the quality of products and share any responsibility for the quality of products.All employees are aware of their responsibility in an organization and work closely with others.
Team members' opinions and ideas are considered before making a decision.The management should consider the welfare of employees and do everything possible to reduce or eliminate layoffs in this process.The involvement of employee is important, employees should give more planning and quality responsibility, encouraged to involve in the production process and all employees' suggestions are objectively evaluated.Figure 3 illustrates the elements of critical factors for a successful of lean principles and ISO 14001 integration.(1996), Sebhatu & Enquist (2007) 4. Teamwork Ambika & Amrik (2004), Clement (1996), Zutshi & Sohal (2004) Achanga et al. (2006), Boyer (1996) 5. Quality Commitment Clement (1996), Kuhre (1995), Lin (1995), Boyer (1996) 6. Employee Welfare Ambika & Amrik (2004)

Conclusion
This research investigates how the ISO 14001 standard can be made more sustainable by integrating it with Lean principles.The principles which focus on eliminating wasteful organization processes can be integrated with ISO 14001 to make it more efficient and effective in its application to organizations' EMS systems.The research explains how the core elements of lean philosophy can be linked to ISO 14001 in a joint LEMIS model, the inputs and outputs of the model, and the expected outcomes.
There are several factors which make ISO 14001 standard unsustainable.First, the standard is voluntary which means that it may not be adopted by some organizations, especially those that do not perceive any value in implementing the standard.Some firms have also argued the cost of implementing the ISO 14001 standard exceeds the benefits especially for small firms.
However, the main factor making the standard unsustainable is the fact that it does not specify environmental performance measures for organizations.Integrating the standard with Lean principles through the LEMIS model helps to specify these performance measures making the standard achieve sustainability and continual improvement.Organisations over the past few decades have focused on applying the principles of Lean and EMS for a sustainable development and optimising their production resources.The primary objectives behind the application of such standards are both cost savings and environmental considerations.The business models developed along the lines of these principles are guided by the need for continual improvement in production processes.Considering the challenges posed by the rapid changes within the business environment this study contributes to the development of a new framework know as Lean Environmental Management Integration system (LEMIS) that helps the firms in complying with the needs of sustainable growth and development objectives.The study in another way will help or lead more organizations to adopt the EMS and lean principles to fulfil their management objective and social responsibility in terms of environmental issues.
The article concludes by stating that more case studies in this direction are required to be conducted for examining the feasibility of amalgamation and implementing ISO 14001:2004 standards with the philosophy of Lean Principles to enable the achievement of world class standards.
Considering the standards complexity and its characteristics, we can say that important steps have been done, even if compared to other standards.We conclude that a lot is still left, until we have a real case of application covering simultaneously most core elements and ISO 14001 flows.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Elements of critical factors for a successful of lean principles and ISO 14001 integration

Table 1
. Lean Thinking: Philosophy, system, and techniques Table 2 represents the core elements of lean principles.

Table 4 .
Refinement of ISO14001 standard requirements

Table 6 .
Critical Success Factors for Lean and ISO 14001 implementation