How do you balance customer value and environmental value in your value stream mapping?

1 What is environmental value?

Environmental value is the benefit or harm that your process causes to the natural resources, ecosystems, and human health. It can be measured by indicators such as carbon footprint, water consumption, energy use, waste generation, pollution, biodiversity, and social responsibility. Environmental value is not only important for ethical and moral reasons, but also for business reasons. It can affect your reputation, customer loyalty, regulatory compliance, cost reduction, innovation, and competitive advantage. Therefore, it is essential to align your environmental value with your customer value and your business value.

2 How to assess your environmental value?

Before you can balance your environmental value with your customer value, you need to assess the current state of your process in terms of environmental performance. You can use tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA), environmental management system (EMS), or green accounting to measure and evaluate the environmental impacts of your process. You can also use a simple checklist or questionnaire to identify the sources and types of waste, emissions, and risks in your process. You can then compare your environmental value with your customer value and your business value, and identify any gaps or opportunities for improvement.

3 How to map your environmental value?

Once you have assessed your environmental value, you can incorporate it into your VSM. You can use the same symbols and steps as a traditional VSM, but with some modifications and additions. For instance, environmental data and metrics can be added to process boxes, and environmental inputs and outputs to material and information flows. Additionally, environmental activities and costs can be included in the timeline, as well as environmental requirements and expectations to customer and supplier icons. Moreover, environmental waste and improvement opportunities should be added to kaizen bursts for optimal results.

4 How to improve your environmental value?

Once you have mapped your environmental value, you can analyze your VSM and identify the root causes and effects of your environmental issues. To prioritize and solve your problems, you can use tools such as the 5 whys, fishbone diagram, or Pareto chart. Brainstorming, benchmarking, or best practices can also be used to generate and evaluate solutions . After implementing your solutions and monitoring their results, you may consider reducing or eliminating waste, emissions, or energy use by applying the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) or the 7 wastes of lean (muda). Additionally, increasing or optimizing the use of renewable, recycled, or biodegradable materials by applying the circular economy principles or the cradle-to-cradle design could improve your environmental value. Enhancing or restoring natural resources, ecosystems, or human health by applying green infrastructure, ecosystem services, or social responsibility concepts could also be beneficial.

5 How to sustain your environmental value?

Finally, you need to sustain your environmental value by making it a part of your culture and strategy. You can use tools such as the PDCA cycle (plan-do-check-act), the gemba walk (go and see), or the hoshin kanri (policy deployment) to continuously monitor, review, and improve your environmental performance. You can also use tools such as the balanced scorecard, the triple bottom line, or the ISO 14000 standards to align your environmental goals with your customer goals and your business goals. You can then communicate and celebrate your environmental achievements and benefits with your stakeholders and customers.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?