Green lean approach for improving sustainability and economic performance of vegetable supply-chain: the ZEROEMISSION case

Because of the high bargaining power of large retailers, their suppliers face a strong pressure to be very competitive in both price and quality as well as being responsive to customer demands. This pressure is resulting in food supply chains becoming leaner and leaner from the perspective of value added delivery and cost efficiency. Consequently, the application of some paradigms such as Lean Thinking, Total Quality Management, and Supply Chain Management are now playing a significant role in agro-food supply-chains. Lean thinking or lean production, often simply, "Lean" is a management paradigm that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes a product or service, "value" is defined as any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay for. Basically, lean is centered on enhancing value while consuming less resources. The paper reports on the development of a district-based brand certifying the zero CO2e footprint of local supply chain for onions and potatoes, that deals with the use of lean approach for a rationalization of the local supply chain for the two crops, resulting in significant reduction of energy and water consumption in the cultivation of onions and potatoes in the Province of Alessandria, in the Southern part of the Piedmont Region in Italy, and increase in both sustainability and economic performance of the supply chain. Currently, both crops have high production costs, in particular to the cost of inefficient irrigation practices, limited storage structures with high energy consumption mostly due to poor refrigeration. The objective of the paper is to present a strategy to improve the competitiveness of both crops by promoting a eco-sustainability certification process, as well as ensuring water and electricity savings and the development and use of renewable energy sources, primarily biofuels produced from locally grown crops and locally created biomass, through the application of lean principles to the enhancement of the supply-chain. The ZEROEMISSION model has been developed to promote this process. The BAT (Best Available Techniques) that are implemented by ZEROEMISSION model include:Innovative water-based refrigeration technologies, utilization of this water for high efficiency irrigation techniques for the two crops, optimization of logistics in the transport of the crops to the packing center, biofuels powered water pumps, biofuels powered equipment, production of biofuels from locally produced crops and biomass. The lean&green methodology was applied to optimize the use of energy and to increase the efficiency of the water used for irrigation purposes. The tool used to analyze the “kaizen” – possible improvement points - was the Value Stream Mapping tools. The tool allowed to track down the flow of the interested resource (e.g. water, energy, emissions) inside the analysed process. One important improvement was the adoption of Innovative water-based refrigeration technologies, and the use of the water effuent from the refrigeration unit for high efficiency irrigation techniques for onions and potatoes. The savings of water and energy were analysed related to a conditioning facility that can store about 3000 t of produce. The results, considering a production of 2050 t of potatoes and 700 t of onions, allowed savings of 130 t/year of CO2 and 32407 m3/year of water.