Exploring the Greening of the Food Supply Chain with Lean Thinking Techniques

In this paper, a systematic approach for determining the waste in the agrifood supply chains is presented and analyzed. The suggested approach will be based on Lean thinking techniques so as to identify sources of waste in the targeted supply chain. Specifically, the Value-Stream Mapping (VSM) tool is proposed for determining waste, in terms of measuring the carbon dioxide emissions particularly across organizational boundaries. Authors argue that lean thinking techniques can be considered as effective tools for identifying the factors that influence the total emissions in the targeted supply chain and also for decreasing waste as measured by carbon dioxide emissions.