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The evaluation of time-based performance is a valued approach in the lean management thinking which is based on delivering value from customer's perspective. This approach contributes for long-term competitiveness and success in today's business environment. The focus of this study is to analyse the cycle time and manufacturing lead time with value stream mapping (VSM) in the preparatory stage of the textile fabric manufacturing process and to identify and improve the non-value adding activities in the value chain (VC). The study presents an insight on the translation of performance improvement across functions and how upstream supply chain (SC) segments can be linked in the performance improvement program. It also covers how the application of VSM improves visibility and planning flexibility in textile fabric manufacturing process.

The time-based performance was evaluated using VSM and recording of the activity times in the existing process. The impact of the quality of supplier's raw material was also measured contributing to identify the strategy for procurement and the means to establish a feedback system to the upstream segments of the SC. The methodology of VSM, observation of the practice and the expertise of the individuals involved with the process were utilised to develop the value stream maps and to identify value adding activities, non-value adding activities, existing gaps and plans for improvement.

The means for improving the time-based performance were identified and their impact was measured. The factors responsible for improvement are related to the production system and with the procurement strategy. The improvement was achieved in terms of available capacity utilisation, balancing the work flow in the preparatory stages, visibility of the process by measuring its capability and flexibility for the planning function. The study revealed that the effectiveness and enhancement of VSM and related tools should be adopted to address the issue of limiting success rates of long term and repeating application of such tools. Continuous improvement, innovations and the systematic embedding of VSM in the process life cycle provide the ways for achieving long-term success.

The paper presents a real and in-depth study on the application of VSM in the textile manufacturing process. The scope of the study is broad; it covers activities across functions with actual estimates of activity times in the manufacturing process for the focused value streams. It offers researchers the opportunity to analyse the translation of productivity improvement across functions and how upstream SC segments can be linked in a performance improvement program.

The study offers useful insight for the managers in textile manufacturing and other sectors for improving the time-based performance and achieving higher utilisation of capacity. It identified the production factors and their impact on warping and sizing cycle time in selected value streams and those which share common activities. It also identified the directions for future research when repeating the application of VSM in the continuous improvement cycle. Furthermore, since the industries need to progress towards advanced systems including Industry 4.0 standards, adoption of advanced VSM tool with relevant technology can align their production systems to develop the required capability. This will also bring a sustainable competitive advantage in the system.

The focused sector is stagnant in terms of productivity and innovation. The adoption of the advanced tools can facilitate the implementation of continuous improvement and innovation strategies.

The main focus of this study is to analyse and improve the cycle time in the preparatory stage of the fabric manufacturing process. This has impact on other important and tangible measures including capacity utilisation and work flow and intangible measures including production planning flexibility and process visibility. The improvement impact is across departments.

Equipment performance helps the manufacturing sector achieve operational and financial improvements despite process variations. However, the literature lacks a clear index or metric to quantify the monetary advantages of enhanced equipment performance. Thus, the paper presents two innovative monetary performance measures to estimate the financial advantages of enhancing equipment performance by isolating the effect of manufacturing fluctuations such as product mix price, direct and indirect characteristics, and cost changes.

The research provides two measures, ISB (Improvement Saving Benefits) and IEB (Improvement Earning Benefits), to assess equipment performance improvements. The effectiveness of the metrics is validated through a three stages approach, namely (1) experts' binary opinion, (2) sample, and (3) actual cases. The relevant data may be collected through accounting systems, purpose-built software, or electronic spreadsheets.

The findings suggest that both measures provide an effective cost–benefit analysis of equipment performance enhancement. The measure ISB indicates savings from performance increases when equipment capacity is greater than product demand. IEB is utilised when equipment capacity is less than product demand. Both measurements may replace the unitary cost variation, which is subject to manufacturing changes.

Manufacturing businesses may utilise the ISB and IEB metrics to conduct a systematic analysis of equipment performance and to appreciate the financial savings perspective in order to emphasise profitability in the short and long term.

The study introduces two novel financial equipment performance improvement indicators that distinguish the effects of manufacturing variations. Manufacturing variations cause cost advantages from operational improvements to be misrepresented. There is currently no approach for manufacturing organisations to calculate the financial advantages of enhancing equipment performance while isolating production irregularities.

The literature has defined different indicators of training effectiveness. At the performance indicator level of analysis, training effectiveness measures the impact of training on knowledge, skills and job performance. This paper aims to analyse, from the perspective of managers and employees from the hotel sector in Colombia, the relationships between the improvement of knowledge and skills and the improvement of job performance.

The research technique used is a survey. Data are collected from a sample of managers and a sample of employees from the Colombian hospitality industry. The hypotheses are contrasted through regression analysis.

From the managers’ perspective, the data indicate a significant relationship between the improvement of knowledge and work performance. In contrast, there is no significant relationship between improving skills and improving job performance. From the employees’ perspective, significant relationships between the improvement of knowledge and the improvement of skills in job performance are revealed.

This work makes significant contributions to the training literature. It analyses the relationships among indicators of training effectiveness from the point of view of managers and employees from the Colombian hotel sector. It reveals differences between the perspectives of managers and employees.

The aim of this study is to empirically explore and analyze the concrete tasks of output measurement and the inherent challenges related to these tasks in a traditional and autonomous professional public work setting – the judicial system.

The analysis of the tasks is based on a categorization of general performance measurement motives (control-motivate-learn) and main stakeholder levels (society-organization-professionals). The analysis is exploratory and conducted as an empirical content analysis on materials and reports produced in two performance improvement projects conducted in European justice organizations.

The identified main tasks in the different categories are related to managing resources, controlling performance deviations, and encouraging improvement and development of performance. Based on the results, key improvement areas connected to output measurement in professional public organizations are connected to the improvement of objectivity and fairness in budgeting and work allocation practices, improvement of output measures' versatility and informativeness to highlight motivational and learning purposes, improvement of professional self-management in setting output targets and producing outputs, as well as improvement of organizational learning from the output measurement.

The paper presents empirically founded practical examples of challenges and improvement opportunities related to the tasks of output measurement in professional public organization.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how general performance management motives realize as concrete tasks of output measurement in justice organizations.

Existing conceptual, empirical and case studies evidence suggests that manufacturing industries find the joint implementation of Kaizen philosophy initiatives. However, the existing practices rarely demonstrated in a single framework and implementation procedure in a structure nature. This paper, therefore, aims to develop, validate and practically test a framework and implementation procedure for the implementation of integrated Kaizen in manufacturing industries to attain long-term improvement of operational, innovation, business (financial and marketing) processes, performance and competitiveness.

The study primarily described the problem, extensively reviewed the current state-of-the-art literature and then identified a gap. Based on it, generic and comprehensive integrated framework and implementation procedure is developed. Besides, the study used managers, consultants and academics from various fields to validate a framework and implementation procedure for addressing business concerns. In this case, the primary data was collected through self-administered questionnaire, and 244 valid questionnaires were received and were analyzed. Furthermore, the research verified the practicability of the framework by empirically exploring the current scenario of selected manufacturing companies.

The research discovered innovative framework and six-phase implementation procedure to fill the existing conceptual gap. Furthermore, the survey-based and exploratory empirical analysis of the research demonstrated that the practice of the proposed framework based on structured procedure is valued and companies attain the middling improvements of productivity, delivery time, quality, 5S practice, waste and accident rate by 61.03, 44, 52.53, 95.19, 80.12, and 70.55% respectively. Additionally, the companies saved a total of 14933446 ETH Birr and 5,658 M² free spaces. Even though, the practices and improvements vary from company to company, and even companies unable to practice some of the unique techniques of the identified CI initiatives considered in the proposed framework.

All data collected in the survey came from professionals working for Ethiopian manufacturing companies, universities and government. It is important to highlight that n = 244 is high sample size, which is adequate for a preliminary survey but reinforcing still needs further survey in terms of generalization of the results since there are hundreds of manufacturing companies, consultants and academicians implementing and consulting Kaizen. Therefore, a further study on a wider Ethiopian manufacturing companies, consultants and academic scale would be informative.

This work is very important for Kaizen professionals in the manufacturing industry, academic and government but in particular for senior management and leadership teams. Aside from the main findings on framework development, there is some strong evidence that practice of Kaizen resulted in achieving quantitative (monetary and non-monetary) and qualitative results. Thus, senior management teams should use this research out to practice and analyze the effect of Kaizen on their own organizations. Within the academic community, this study is one of the first focusing on development, validating and practically testing and should aid further study, research and understanding of Kaizen in manufacturing industries.

So far, it is rare to find preceding studies proposed, validated and practically test an integrated Kaizen framework with the context of manufacturing industries. Thus, authors understand that this is the very first research focused on the development of the framework for manufacturing industries continuously to be competitive and could help managers, institutions, practitioners and academicians in Kaizen practice.

Generic quality management system standard ISO 9001 and the automotive quality management system standard IATF 16949 both require organisations to demonstrate continual improvement in their customer satisfaction and the number of non-conformities identified during quality system audits. However, the long-term trends of these two parameters under ISO 9001 and IATF 16949 standards are not researched so far. It is expected that under continual improvement, organisations will achieve a step-function/stair-case shaped pattern. This study evaluates if this expectation is true when long-term performance of certified organisations is assessed.

A longitudinal exploration of three organisations certified to ISO 9001 standard and three certified to IATF 16949 standard is done. The observations are further substantiated using secondary data for the same ten years period about customer satisfaction of the major automobile manufacturers.

It is observed that none of the two indicators, i.e. the customer satisfaction and number of non-conformities, in any of the six organisations show step-wise/stair-case type improvement. All indicators followed random up and down patterns like ocean waves. It is paradoxical that certified organisations are claiming continual improvement and are remaining certified but there is actually no long-term improvement.

Longitudinal studies for the generic quality management standard ISO 9001 and the quality system standard for automotive sector IATF 16949 are rare. The revelation about ocean wave patterns observed in the long-term trends for customer satisfaction and the number of non-conformities in ISO 9001 and IATF 16949 certified organisations is a startling finding. It is outlandishly different from the conventional perception of a staircase-styled continual improvement pattern expected a priori in certified organisations.

The paper tests if and to what extent lean management system adoption generates abnormal profitability, and how it accrues over time. Configurational approaches to lean management systems and “S-curve” effects in lean implementation are used to ground the paper's hypotheses and interpret its findings.

Using the emerging view of lean as enterprise-wide management systems, this quasi-experimental study uses a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the abnormal profitability (ROIC) attributable to lean management system adoption. The paper leverages a unique data set of lean adopters nested in a panel data set (19 years) of 2,088 industrial firms matched by industry and firm size. It applies a variety of regression methods (two-way fixed effect panel estimator, propensity score matching, instrumental variable two-stage-least squares) to estimate the size of the abnormal profitability attributable to lean management systems, addressing endogeneity issues related to non-random sampling, omitted variable bias and reverse causation. It also analyzes the cross-firm variability of such abnormal profitability and how it accrues over time.

For the average non-adopter in the sample (44.3 million euro revenues), lean adoption generates abnormal ROIC ranging from 1.4% to 3.9%. These results come into effect approximately three years after starting lean adoption and peak after eight years. While the average abnormal profitability attributable to lean adoption is sizable, it varies significantly across firms and over time. This significant variation is compatible with firms' diverse ability to understand the complex inner workings of lean systems, and to design and implement them so that they improve profitability.

The conceptualization of lean as enterprise-wide management system can be further refined to more effectively categorize the components of lean systems and investigate the nature of their relationships. Lean system adoption measurement can be fine-tuned to better capture cross-firm and longitudinal heterogeneity. Future work can explore other dependent variables of interest to different stakeholders including shareholders' value, employment and environmental and social sustainability.

The financial benefits of adopting lean can be reaped to the extent to which managers embrace lean as a philosophy and implement it pervasively in the organization. A firm can use the study's estimates as a basis for making calculations about the returns of investment in lean adoption. The paper also shows that “getting the lean system right” makes a significant difference in terms of abnormal profitability, which is twice as large for the best lean adopters..

Compared with the promises of many lean proponents and supporters, the paper provides a more realistic view of what to expect from lean adoption in terms of profitability. Adopting lean as a comprehensive, enterprise-wide management system is not a universal panacea, but a complex endeavor, characterized by multiple complex decisions that require considerable capabilities, coordinated efforts and consistency of action.

Differently from extant research, this study does not study the correlation between the adoption of lean operation practices and financial performance but focuses on the abnormal profitability generated by the adoption of lean as a pervasive, enterprise-wide management system. Its research design allows to identify the differential profitability attributable to lean adoption and documents that it accrues non-linearly.

Smart manufacturing (SM) lies at the core of Industry 4.0. Uniform adoption of SM across business partners is crucial to exploit its value creation potential. However, firms' willingness to invest in SM is limited by insufficient or inconclusive evidence on its performance-related benefits. To close this gap, this paper develops and tests a model linking SM adoption to firms' financial performance. Improvements along the four dimensions of operational performance (i.e. cost quality, delivery and flexibility) mediate this relation.

This study follows an empirical research approach. In particular, survey data from 234 automotive component suppliers are analyzed via covariance-based structural equation modeling to explore the link between SM adoption and operational performance. Survey data are then matched with secondary data from balance sheets of 81 firms to investigate the impact of SM on financial performance via partial least square structural equation modeling.

Findings highlight that adoption of SM results in improvements in cost, quality, delivery performance, thus suggesting that SM is a mean to overcome performance trade-offs. Improvements in operational performance enabled by SM do not give rise to superior financial performance, thus implying that SM might support firms in maintaining the competitive position in the market, but could be insufficient to generate higher margin.

Results have implications for SM research and for manufacturing executives engaged in the adoption of SM, as they provide a detailed analysis of the impact of SM on operational performance and clarify the effect that SM adoption has on financial performance.

This study aims to investigate how to identify and address production levelling problems in assembly lines utilising an intensive manual workforce when higher productivity levels are urgently requested to meet market demands.

A mixed-methods approach was used in the research design, integrating case study analysis, interviews and qualitative/quantitative data collection and analysis. The methodology implemented also introduces to the literature on operational performance a novel combination of data analysis methods by introducing the use of the Natural Language Understanding (NLU) methods.

First, the findings unveil the impacts on operational performance that transportation, limited documentation and waiting times play in assembly lines composed of an intensive workforce. Second, the paper unveils the understanding of the role that a limited understanding of how the assembly line functions play in productivity. Finally, the authors provide actionable insights into the levelling problems in manual assembly lines.

This research supports industries operating assembly lines with intensive utilisation of manual workforce to improve operational performance. The paper also proposed a novel conceptual model prescriptively guiding quick and long-term improvements in intensive manual workforce assembly lines. The article assists industrial decision-makers with subsequent turnaround strategies to ensure higher efficiency levels requested by the market.

The paper offers actionable findings relevant to other manual assembly lines utilising an intensive workforce looking to improve operational performance. Some of the methods and strategies examined in this study to improve productivity require minimal capital investments. Lastly, the study contributes to the empirical literature by identifying production levelling problems in a real context.

The aim of this paper is to explore the implementation of an integrated lean and ISO 14001 approach in meat industry for environmental performance and examine a proposed conceptual framework by capturing insights from lean and ISO 14001 experts in New Zealand (NZ).

Semi-structured interviews have been conducted with a group of consultants (lean and ISO 14001) to evaluate the suitability of an integrated lean and ISO 14001 approach in the meat industry for environmental performance. A conceptual framework from literature has guided this study leading to its further development based on the empirical evidence collected.

Findings have illustrated a synergistic positive impact of lean and ISO 14001 implementation as an integrated approach for sustaining environmental performance in the meat industry. A joint implementation program provides more clarity in aligning ISO 14001 operational procedures with lean tools and techniques for an enhanced environmental performance outcome.

The application of an integrated lean and ISO 14001 framework is proposed in this paper, which can help industry practitioners and academia in developing a joint implementation strategy and conducting future research.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to assess the effective implementation of lean and ISO 14001 as an integrated approach in the NZ meat industry.