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This paper, a case study, aims to illustrate the application of Six Sigma in a small-scale ceramic manufacturing industry. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the empirical application of DMAIC methodology to reduce failure rate at high voltage (HV) testing of one of the most critical products, insulator.

The case study is based on primary data collected from a real-life situation prevailing in the industry. The case study methodology adopted here is at one small-scale unit wherein the authors have applied DMAIC methodology and observed and recorded the improvement results, especially, reduction in failure rate at HV testing of insulator and, thus, increase in Sigma level.

The results found after implementation of the solutions are very significant. The rejection percentage has been reduced from 0.5 to 0.1 percent and consequently the Sigma level has been improved from 4.4 to 5.0.

This success story can be a guiding roadmap for other such industries to successfully implement Six Sigma to improve quality, productivity and profitability.

This case study will serve as one of the resource bases for the industries which have till not implemented Six Sigma and benefited from the same.

Improved quality and productivity leads to better economy. This case will help industries to serve the society with better economy with improved quality and productivity.

Though ceramic industries in India are having enormous potential for growth, majority of them, especially, small and medium industries are either not aware of or not implementing Six Sigma to reap its multidimensional benefits of improving quality, productivity and profitability. This study highlights the benefits reaped by small-scale ceramic manufacturing industry opening up the avenues for its application at other such organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and prioritize the lean implementation (LI) barriers in the context of labor intensive Indian ceramic industries through a statistically reliable and validated model.

In this study, LI barriers are identified through a comprehensive review of relevant literature and discussions held with academicians/practitioners. Identified barriers, thereafter, are evaluated with Cronbach's alpha values using a statistical tool. The interpretive ranking process (IRP) methodology is applied for ranking of the barriers with reference to the measurable performance indicators.

The study identified highly relevant barriers of Indian ceramic industries. Further, these barriers were compared with performance measures through a cross-interaction matrix developed in the IRP model. The model highlights the analysis of dominance relationship of different barriers. Moreover, the result shows that top management commitment and leadership is at the top of the model, followed by lack of training opportunity and skills, and resistance to change and adopt innovations indicating their strongest driving power in LI.

This model may enable the firms to understand the LI barriers and come up with sensible implementation program. Further, the correlation results among the barriers will provide insights in mitigating the hurdles of lean manufacturing (LM) implementation in the industries.

This study empirically develops a model through the IRP for the barriers in LM implementation. From the reported literature, it appears that the application of IRP is very rare in ceramic industries in India. The analysis and prioritization of LI barriers may help practitioners to plan strategies to implement lean in a selected domain.

Risk management has emerged as a critical issue in operating a supply chain effectively in the presence of uncertainties that result from unexpected variations. Assessing and managing supply chain risks are receiving significant attention from practitioners and academics. At present, the ceramic industry in Bangladesh is growing. Thus, managers in the industry need to properly assess supply chain risks for mitigation purposes. This study aims to identify and analyze various supply chain risks occurring in a ceramic factory in Bangladesh.

A model is proposed based on a fuzzy technique for order preference using similarity to an ideal solution (fuzzy-TOPSIS) for evaluating supply chain risks. For this, 20 supply chain risk factors were identified through an extensive literature review and while consulting with experts from the ceramic factories. Fuzzy-TOPSIS contributed to the analysis and assessment of those risks.

The results of this research indicate that among the identified 20 supply chain risks, lack of operational quality, lack of material quality and damage to inventory were the major risks for the ceramic sector in Bangladesh.

The impact of supply chain risks was not shown in this study and the risks were considered independent. Therefore, research can be continued to address these two factors.

The outcome of this research is expected to assist industrial managers and practitioners in the ceramic sector in taking proactive action to minimize supply chain risks. A sensitivity analysis was performed to determine the relative stability of the risks.

This study uses survey data to analyze and evaluate the major supply chain risks related to the ceramic sector. An original methodology is provided for identifying and evaluating the major supply chain risks in the ceramic sector of Bangladesh.

The purpose of this paper is to capture the status of implementation of Six Sigma in various manufacturing industries and also examine the success of the Six Sigma by using different performance indicators.

The methodology of critical review involves the selection and classification of 112 research articles on the implementation of Six Sigma in different manufacturing industries. The selected articles are categorized by the following: articles distribution based on the year of publication, publication database, various journals, contribution of authors, continent, scale of industry, implemented approaches, focused industry, tools and techniques used in phases of Six Sigma methodology, and performance indicators used in Six Sigma implementation. Then after, future scopes of research opportunities are derived based on significant findings.

The literature revealed that: Very few work was undertaken on the implementation of Six Sigma in various manufacturing industries like ceramic, paper, gems and jewelry, cement, furniture, stone, fertilizer, forging, paper and surface treatment industries. Most of the researchers have considered very few performance indicators to identify the improvement after Six Sigma implementation. But, there is no clue regarding overall improvement in different perspectives after the implementation of Six Sigma. The financial indicators, personnel indicators, process indicators and customer indicators are useful to measure the overall improvement after the implementation of Six Sigma in the manufacturing sector.

The study was carried out on the implementation of Six Sigma methodology in various manufacturing industries, and various performance indicators were identified while implementing the Six Sigma methodology. Case studies pertaining to service industries were not covered here.

Very little research has been carried out to measure the overall success of implementing Six Sigma methodology in manufacturing industries. This paper will provide value to students, researchers and practitioners of Six Sigma by providing insight into the implementation of Six Sigma in manufacturing industries.

The relative performance of manufacturing industry in Wales and the UK is appraised using a range of performance measures related to a number of concepts of efficiency, which are outlined. The four measurement approaches are: productivity analysis and efficiency frontiers; survey results; the Wharton approach; potential efficiency and comparative technology used.

Clarifies the concept of lean manufacturing and what it comprises. Commences with a review of the lean production literature and, specifically, existing models that identify the variables and component elements of lean production firms. Presents a research instrument for measuring the degree of leanness possessed by manufacturing firms. Research questions were developed and incorporated into structured survey questionnaires for both manufacturing directors and managing directors that enabled a quantitative assessment to be made for the various components of leanness. The survey was completed by over 30 firms in the UK ceramics tableware industry and so represents a comprehensive overview of the state of play in that sector. The figures derived allowed for hypotheses testing and a quantitative analysis. Presents selected results and conclusions from the current survey to illustrate the application and usefulness of the instrument. Argues that, though developed specifically for the tableware industry, the research instrument can be adapted for use in other industries.

This paper seeks to examine empirically from a contingency perspective the influence of business strategy on the relationship between operations strategy and business results.

Analysis is carried out on a sample of 76 Spanish ceramic tile firms. Data on strategies are gathered by means of a postal survey addressed to operations managers and information on firms' results is drawn from secondary sources. Operations strategy is represented by competitive priorities and business strategy is based on Miles and Snow's typology. Relationships are modelled in regression equations including interaction terms in order to test for the existence of a moderating effect.

Existence of a moderating effect of business strategy on the relationship between operations strategy and firms' results is demonstrated. Specifically, in defender firms, the cost and quality priorities influence positively, whereas priorities of delivery and flexibility have a negative effect. No influence of operations strategy on firms' results is observed in analyser or prospector firms.

Limitations of this research include the reduced number of organisations investigated and the fact that all companies belong to a single industry. Also, the fact that strategy variables are based on self‐reporting measures identified by a single respondent.

Practitioners must bear in mind the coherence between operations strategy and business strategy. In this work, details of business and operations strategy fits are given.

The fit between operations strategy and business strategy is studied by focusing on the moderating role of business strategy.

The paper aims to present a systematic literature review to analyze interrelated enablers of Industry 4.0 for implementation. Industry 4.0 is an integrated manufacturing strategy embedded with disruptive technologies. Adapting these technologies with the present industrial scenario is dependent on understanding the dynamics of various critical enablers in the existing literature. In this paper, an effort has been taken to validate and reinforce these enablers by experts in the field of Industry 4.0 for implementation.

A mixed-methodology is designed in this paper. A text mining approach with an expert’s linguistic assessment method is planned to discover the enablers from literature 2010 to 2019. The most critical enablers and their dependencies on other enablers are studied by using correlation analysis.

The research explores the power driving enablers in three groups: technology, features and requirements for implementing Industry 4.0 in the existing factory. In each group, a high degree of associated and dependent enablers is fragmented in detail.

This paper will benefit the research communities and practitioners to understand the significance of an integrated ecosystem of Industry 4.0 technologies, features and requirements for implementation.

The text mining approach integrated with expert’s linguistic assessment to explore the pairwise relationship among the enablers using word correlation is a novel approach in this paper. Moreover, to best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first-ever attempt to conduct a structured literature review combined with text analysis and linguistic assessment to identify the enablers of Industry 4.0 for implementation.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First and most importantly, the paper aims to explain how Pilkington is able to revolutionize the flat glass industry. The modified design envelope model is applied to demonstrate the technological competence and especially strategic thinking concerning to understanding of the markets and positioning the product. Second, the paper demonstrates the entrepreneurship within a large‐scale manufacturing firm.

The paper applies a longitudinal, historical, and contextual approach. The paper uses multiple case study method and multiple data sources. This is done because creation of an innovation does not take place in vacuum, it is context bound.

The float glass fulfills the requirements of two industries: the plate and sheet glasses. Within both industries, short‐sighted competitors concentrate on technologies applicable only in other industry. Pilkington positions the float glass first clearly in the plate glass industry and after further development introduces the technology to sheet glass industry as a total surprise. Based on the case, the paper argues that positioning should be part of the corporate strategy.

In addition to complex systematic technologies, the example shows that the design envelope model is applicable also for simple non‐assembled products like flat glass. The model is useful for companies to build scenarios for responses if new unexpected innovations will be introduced in its own or related industries.

This paper offers a novel insight to the old but still viable case of dominant design. In addition, the thorough case description allows reader to go deeply into a classic example of process innovation.

This paper aims to present simulation studies on voltage and electric field characteristics for imperfect ceramic insulators using QuickField^TM software. Based on previous studies, it is accepted that string insulator can still serve the transmission line although imperfect of certain insulator exist in a string. However, different materials of porcelain and glass type had made these insulators own different abilities to carry electricity to be transferred to the consumers.

Cap and pin type of porcelain and glass insulators are used as the main subject for comparison. The simulation works begins with modeling a single insulator, followed by string of ten insulators with their respective applied voltage, that is, 11 and 132 kV. The insulator was modeled in alternate current conduction analysis problem type using QuickField Professional Software. Technical parameters for porcelain and glass insulator were manually inserted in the modeling.

This paper presents an investigation on the influence of broken porcelain and glass insulators in string for voltage and electric field characteristics. For single insulator, the voltage distribution may literally reduce when experiencing external damages; whereby the broken porcelain insulator condition is worse than the glass insulator. In terms of electric field distribution, the glass insulator is badly affected compared with the porcelain insulator, as it is pulverized comprehensively.

Further work needs to be done to establish whether the experiments of these simulations study will present coequal outcomes. This study endeavors in promoting a good example of voltage and electric field characteristics across high voltage (HV) insulator with the presence of broken insulator in the string.

This study is beneficial to future researchers and manufacturing companies in strategic management and research planning when they involve in the field of HV insulators. It will also serve as a future reference for academic and study purposes. This research will also educate many people on how HV insulators work.

This study will be helpful to the industry and business practitioners in training for the additional results and knowledge to be updated in the area of HV insulators.

This paper presents the analysis of porcelain and glass insulators according to their respective logic conditions when broken. Consequently, the existence of a damage insulator in a string may alter the distribution of voltage and electric field which may ultimately lead to the insulation breakdown after some time. This is because the broken insulator may cause other insulators to withstand the remaining voltage allocated for that particular insulator and may affect the insulators in terms of the life span. Therefore, the distribution of voltage and electrical field characteristics in the presence of broken insulators had been studied in this project.