In working with regulated industries over the past eight years, many EPA regulatory reinvention initiatives have recognized an emerging and very real redefinition of the manufacturing landscape. Largely, this movement has arisen in the context of today’s increasingly competitive “immediate” global market, requiring companies to conceive and deliver products faster, at lower cost, and of better quality than their competitors. Lean manufacturing is a leading manufacturing paradigm of this fast-paced market economy, with a fundamental focus on the systematic elimination of waste that holds the potential to produce meaningful environmental results. Realizing that this waste-focused paradigm shift held the.
