Six sigma with the blue economy fundamentals to assess the economic and environmental performance in the aircraft refueling process

The fundamentals of the blue economy promoting sustainable development by minimizing the consumption of fresh water, organic pollution and chemical contamination. On the other hand, the six sigma tool enables companies to improve the performance of their processes by reducing waste and statistical techniques. Not many works have been identified that related these two approaches, therefore, the objective of this work is to apply the six sigma tool with the blue economy fundamentals to assess the economic and environmental performance in the aircraft refueling process. The methods used were Return of Investment (ROI) and Mass Intensity Factor (MIF). A multiple case study was carried out involving two largest Brazilian airlines and the fuel distributor. The main results show the reduction of flight delays and, consequently, a decrease in the diesel consumption by trucks and energy generators, and water. The calculated economic gains were 52.9 million dollars annually and the environmental gains were the non-generation of 150 thousand tons annually. This work contributed to the theory for being the first to link SS in Aviation with measuring environmental benefits, even more so through the Blue Economy and to the practice for presenting to managers the possibility of obtaining economic and environmental benefits in the aircraft refueling process with no investment.