Lean and Circular Economy
摘要
This chapter addresses the concepts of Circular Economy (CE) as an alternative tool for implementing lean to improve manufacturing processes, analyzing its origin, evolution, importance, and success factors. It also describes the tools that comprise the implementation of Lean Manufacturing (LM). In addition, a bibliometric review of lean and CE is performed to identify the principal authors who have worked on the tool, the number of citations, and journals that have led to lean and circular economy publications. Finally, an application case to develop a polypropylene composite with Tetra Pak® aimed to improve the hardness property by implementing a lean and circular economy through a design of experiment (DOE). A statistically optimal formulation for this property yields an excellent 70 Shore A hardness result.