Environment-Conscious Production Planning Mechanism for Supply Chain Management

The automobile industry has been advancing the cost cut by a merger, the introduction of foreign capital, promotion of competition of a supplier, etc. It becomes very important in future to remove waste of the production business and to realize needs of an individual customer and the conformity nature to a change of a market. In particular, a variety of customer specification in product and service, without dropping the productive efficiency in great need of mass customization in supply chain management, is satisfactory. Simultaneously, the environmental problem is considered, because the manufacturing industry gives a large load to earth environment. Large part of greenhouse effect of the energy origin is occupied by industry, therefore environment-conscious production planning and management mechanism are required for the sustenance of enterprise of automobile industry. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the evaluation techniques for environmental preservation and evasion of resources drain. LCA gives not only the indicator of the recycling design for realizing sustainable development, but also the estimation of effective mechanism of manufacture. In LCA, it is important to reduce the environmental load when the products are transported in logistics and the products are manufacture at machine tool. The paper proposes an environment-conscious production planning and management mechanism which holds both reduction of environmental load and growth of customer satisfaction, without dropping the productive efficiency