From Strategic Goals to focused Eco-efficiency Improvement in Production: Bridging the gap using Environmental Value Stream Mapping

The combination of environmental and economic performance measurement is a key prerequisite for manufacturing companies to achieve high eco-efficiency and thus crucial to maintain their competitiveness in global markets. Despite the availability of several standards and guidelines proposing environmental and economic performance indicators for manufacturing companies, a user-oriented approach to enable an ecoefficiency assessment and translate strategic goals into focused improvements at an operational level has not yet been formulated. This paper shows how the novel approach of environmental value stream mapping (EVSM) can be used to fill this gap. EVSM is introduced as an interface between a multi-dimensional performance measurement system and a manufacturing system integrating environmentally and economically relevant process flows in one process model. After describing the basic structure of an environmental value stream map, the industrial applicability is demonstrated in a case study from the consumer goods industry.