INTRODUCTION
 The Asian Productivity Organization (APO) has been conducting various activities related to
the environment over the past 10 years to increase environmental
awareness and promote policy, technology, and
knowledge on the protection and improvement
of the environment among its
member countries. Inspired by the
developments during 1992 such as the Earth Summit
in Rio and Agenda 21, the APO launched its Special Program
for the Environment in 1994 under a special grant from the
Japanese government.
In an endeavor to find practical and attractive
approaches for industries to deal with both productivity and
environmental protection for sustainable development, the
APO has decided to tackle the issue with the concept of
Green Productivity (GP). In
concrete terms, GP aims at
improving environment in the process of
increasing productivity, thus giving a competitive
edge to businesses in the age of globalization.
To substantiate the GP concept, the APO
has adopted a multi-dimensional micro-to-macro approach
to promote GP practices. It
focuses on the enterprise level through
the applications of productivity and management tools (such as
TQM, 5S, TPM etc.) that go in tandem with waste and emission
prevention, energy conservation, pollution
control, and environmental management systems.
Initially taking off in the industrial sector, GP is now
being increasingly applied to agriculture, service
industry, and even communities. GP is thus evolving
as a drive with comprehensive strategies for sustainable
socio-economic development.
To operationalize GP at practical levels, the APO has developed
a six-step, 13-task methodology following Deming's
plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle. This methodology has been
successfully applied in the past few years throughout the
APO region in various GP demonstration programs and has
been found to be very effective and
productive. While the PDCA framework provides the basic skeleton
of GP implementation, the distinctive part of GP methodology is
its ever-expanding set of tools and techniques to
complement the PDCA framework. This methodology
has been thus field-tested and is
being disseminated through various training programs in APO
member countries.
This Training Manual is the culmination of the
efforts of many GP experts from the region over the
past few years. This manual has so far been used in
many of the APO's multi-country
workshops and by the national
productivity organizations (NPOs) in their
in-country GP programs as the participants' handbook
together with the viewgraphs, for presentations by the trainers.
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