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This paperaims to review how the field of lean and green has been evolving. Authors draw parallels between the fields of sustainability and quality management. The paper’s title is borrowed and modified from Crosby’s seminal book: Quality is Free.

The paper starts with a review on how early lean researchers in the late 1980s draw upon benchmark studies, looking at Toyota versus other auto manufacturers to demonstrate that quality is free. Similarly, the authors carry out a benchmark to show how the same argument is valid about Toyota’s environmental performance and how Toyota’s concept of Monozukuri can be exploited as proof for the environment is free movement. The paper concludes with an attempt to address the gap between theory and practice in the field of lean and green.

The starting point for creating a lean and green business system is the understanding that there is no trade-off between lean and green, that lean and green should be brought together in a symbiosis, as Toyota have done with Monozukuri approach. This requires a coherent strategy that is well developed, and well deployed across all levels of business. The bottom line remains that environment is free, but it is not a gift.

The findings presented in the paper are based on arguments resulted from the review of the relevant literature. It is important to obtain feedback from a large sample of businesses regarding lean and green symbiosis to arrive at sound and valid conclusions.

This paper contributes to the fields of operations management and sustainability by proposing a change in businesses’ mind-set about sustainability. Rather than seeing environmental protection as a cost, it should be regarded as an opportunity for enhancing economic performance. In doing so, we can seek inspiration from the fields of quality management and the total quality movement.

Supply chain performance is two‐dimensional: efficiency and effectiveness. The purpose of this paper is to further define and explore the demarcation between supply chain effectiveness and supply chain efficiency.

A case‐study research method is adopted in this paper. This contribution discusses an approach for the improvement of supply chain effectiveness, i.e. Supply Chain Kano‐QFD.

A case‐study of the fast moving consumer goods sector is provided which shows how the proposed “Supply Chain Kano‐QFD” technique can be deployed to engage the capabilities and enthusiasm of the firms along the chain to enhance the value of the final consumable.

“Supply Chain Kano‐QFD” is an integrative method which helps drive effectiveness by focusing on how the various supply chain members might jointly develop innovative solutions to create unique, individualized sources of consumer value.

A review of the existing supply chain literature shows that there is generally a strong focus on efficiency improvements while little attention is given to enhancing the effectiveness of the supply chain offer. The supply chain management literature, however, should evolve to address relevant methods for achieving consumer focus in the context of the supply chain, i.e. supply chain effectiveness.

A key vision of tomorrow's industry is creating supply chains which collaboratively strive on enhancing the value to the end‐consumer. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the food value chain analysis (FVCA) methodology for improving consumer focus in the agri‐food sector based on the lean paradigm, value stream mapping and value chain analysis (Porter, 1985).

This contribution presents a case‐study of a UK red meat supply chain explaining how the FVCA method enabled a team of researchers and practitioners to identify the misalignments of both product attributes and supply chain activities with the consumer needs.

This paper explains how the FVCA methodology potentially realigned the processes along the supply chain with the true consumer requirements and why the supply chain effectiveness was improved; this follows with a description of the subsequent efficiency gains from application of the FVCA methodology.

This paper further defines the demarcation between supply chain “effectiveness” and “efficiency”. This paper contributes to the debate on the importance of supply chain effectiveness by linking to consumer value at every stage of the supply chain.

Lean is a well‐established industrial paradigm and has proved to be of significant benefit in different sectors of the manufacturing industry (e.g. automotive and aerospace). This paper aims to report on the introduction of lean to a new sector – the “UK red meat industry”. It highlights the benefits of lean production in one specific manufacturing area, the “cutting room”, where meat is split down from a carcass into retail cuts of meat.

A multiple case study approach is adopted in this paper. As part of the Red Meat Industry Forum's Value Chain Analysis Initiative, five cutting plants are presented as case studies in this paper.

This paper identifies two “traditional” and three “advanced” cutting rooms and reports a typical 25 per cent productivity gap. The paper tentatively concludes this is due to the advanced cases practicing lean techniques, such as “Takt‐time” and “work standardization”.

The literature review identifies a gap in previous research on the applications of logistics and operations management concepts and practices into the red meat industry. Particularly, lean techniques have been overlooked in the red meat industry.