Investigating the Relationship Among Lean Manufacturing Practices to Improved Eco-Efficiency Performance: A Fuzzy DEMATEL Analysis

The urgency to address environmental challenges has grown, Lean management has expanded its scope to incorporate environmental sustainability performance. However, there is a lack of studies on how specific lean management practices interacts with each other as a final objective of improving the environmental performances of a manufacturing firm. The objective of this study is to investigate the cause-effect relationships among Lean manufacturing practices for solid waste reduction. A set of Lean practices is extract from today's literature. Subsequently, a set of managers with more than five years of experience in implementing Lean practices give their opinion on the influence of the selected practices. In particular, the study will focus on the Apparel industry. Through the use of the fuzzy DEMATEL methodology, the cause-effect relationships of the Lean practices involved in this study are analyzed. The analysis of the DEMATEL approach responses showed that the Lean practices studied in this article can be divided in 5 different areas. In order to explain how the cause-effect relationships between various lean manufacturing practices, for the reduction of solid waste, manifest themselves; it was necessary to analyze how these new areas of practices interact with each other. In conclusion, the result of this research was able to analyze the role of lean manufacturing practices in reducing solid waste, and in particular what cause-effect relationships exist between the various practice.