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This paper aims to highlight that a define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC) project should be carried out keeping the broader business goal of achieving continuous improvement in mind and that a design of experiment (DOE) based improvement approach should be preferred to achieve this goal.

“Ease of control” of the improved process and “gain in process knowledge” from a DMAIC study are identified as two measures for judging the contribution of a DMAIC project towards continuous improvement. Various improvement approaches are classified into seven groups and the likely impact of each of these seven approaches on the above two quality measures are discussed.

The improvement approach adopted during the improve phase is partially determined by the nature of the root cause(s) – type X or type Y. The type Y root cause leads to the adoption of the “innovation‐prioritization” approach, which is very popular but has many limitations. Accordingly, an “analysis strategy” is proposed for efficient identification of the X‐type root causes.

The above findings suggest that one should try to identify as many X‐type root causes as possible. However, in case of service and transactional processes one finds it difficult to do so. Much more research is necessary in the area of service process design before the path of continuous improvement of such processes can be embarked on effectively.

It is expected that an awareness of the broader goal of continuous improvement, the classification of the end states of the analyze phase, the proposed “analysis strategy” and the practical guidelines provided for selecting an appropriate improvement approach will be helpful in executing the analyze and improve phases of DMAIC better.

Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is a continuous improvement methodology that has been adopted by several companies as a strategy to increase their competitive advantage. However, due to the misuse of LSS theory in practice, a high rate of implementation failure results. There is a need for a structured and standardised framework to describe how the LSS initiative should be implemented and sustained over time. As a result, this study aims to develop a practical, user-friendly and accurate LSS road map for a Scottish manufacturing small and medium enterprise.

The approach was to analyse existing literature on lean and Six Sigma that included road maps and critical success factors (CSFs) in order to design an in-company, quantitative survey instrument. The aim of the survey was to evaluate employees' perceptions on the importance of LSS CSFs for the successful implementation and sustainability of a continuous improvement initiative. Based on the literature and results from the data collected, an LSS reference guide - in the form of a road map - was designed to support LSS implementation and sustainability.

A customised LSS reference guide in a road map format for the Scottish SME was proposed. This road map was developed by adopting existing successful road maps from the literature into consideration and then adapting them to fulfil the company's particular perspective on CI. This study complements current literature on LSS road maps and corroborates LSS CSFs as crucial for successful LSS implementation and sustainability, regardless of the type of company and/or culture. However, a degree of importance is ascribed to the organisation's culture.

Whilst a survey was used as the data collection instrument future interviews with employees would enhance the understanding of the organisational culture and hence further improve the road map.

The authors developed a practical and strategic roadmap for a Scottish packaging small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) which can be used by other similar SMEs. The proposed LSS road map can be replicated and/or adapted for companies in their application of LSS. The methodology by which this study's road map was designed can be used as a guide in the development of further CI road maps.

Despite the increasing importance of shared leadership, researches examining its relations with vertical leadership, a complementary source of power, has been scarce. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to extend the authors’ knowledge on this little-known topic by analysing vertical and shared leadership interactions in a change management project.

A qualitative content analysis based on nine semi-structured interviews with top and middle managers, and a dataset of documents including corporate reports, a Road Map book and presentations was carried out, analysing the reciprocal leadership relationships by using an extended framework, which includes directive, transformational, transactional and empowering behaviours.

Both in radical and incremental step, vertical as well as shared leadership interacted, showing their reciprocal need to deal with change. Leadership approaches and behaviours, conceptually and empirically distinct, even if highly related, are complementary sources that shape a constant compromise, according to the contextual demands of the project, to face change.

Further studies could strengthen the generalizability of the findings that suffer for the qualitative method. Moreover further studies could extend leadership interactions beyond leader-change management team relationships to the top-bottom levels of the organization. Contribution to theory is mainly twofold. First, findings highlight that for every specific change phase, both radical and incremental ones, different gradients of vertical and shared leadership are required. Second the authors found that leadership behaviours could be contrasting, requiring the ability to perform the multiple roles and behaviours in a well-balanced way in order to deal with the contextual demands of the change project.

The paper includes implication for developing and training leaders, as well as followers, to have effective and multiple leadership skills and be able to apply them in different contexts, both by switching from vertical to shared, and vice versa, and by having the capability to respond with appropriately behaviours to a wide range of situations, that could also be mixed and opposing more than linear.

The paper fills a gap in research about the interactions between vertical and shared leadership dynamics, through a qualitative study, during a change management project.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the application of documentation and recording techniques for World Heritage conservation using the case studies of the Petra Archeological Park (PAP) in Jordan and the Silk Roads Cultural Heritage Information System (CHRIS) in Central Asia. In the PAP case study, these techniques could aid in the assessment of risks faced by World Heritage properties and threats to the integrity of the Outstanding Universal Values (OUV). With respect to the Silk Roads CHRIS case study the Geospatial Content Management System (Geo‐CMS) proposed aims to improve information management and collaboration among all stakeholders.

Integrated surveying techniques and information management systems together with active stakeholder participation can be used as conservation and management tools. In the case of PAP, using a systematic documentation tool (MEGA‐J) to conduct site condition and risk assessment of cultural heritage and combining photographs, maps and GPS measurements within a GIS platform allows for identifying the location and intensity of risks, and the degree of vulnerability within the PAP boundaries and buffer zone. In the Silk Roads CHRIS project the Geo‐CMS brings together data from different fields, e.g. geography, geology, history, conservation, to allow for a holistic approach towards documentation, protection and management of a number of diverse sites to be combined in serial transnational World Heritage.

The study provides insight into how digital technologies can aid in heritage documentation and conservation, including stakeholder involvement and training. Moreover, by means of the two case studies it can be shown that a combination of digital technologies allows for an efficient mapping of buffer zones and risks and how a Geo‐CMS can form a common platform to manage large quantities of information of different origin and make it accessible to stakeholders in transnational projects.

This paper discusses the use of digital technology and the participation of stakeholders in heritage conservation and documentation when dealing with complex World Heritage properties, e.g. serial transnational and archaeological ensembles at high risk.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a benefits realisation road‐map for ERP usage in the context of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs).

Direct interviews were used to collect data from a random sample of 48 MBA students and 87 business managers (CIO/IT directors and CFO roles).

The ERP benefits road‐map suggests that a long‐term vision is required in order to obtain a successful realisation of the potential benefits that ERP could bring. Thus, this analysis suggests that ERP benefits realisation dimensions are interconnected, and that managers should perceive ERP benefits realisation as a continuum cycle along the ERP post‐implementation. Furthermore, new ERP updates and maintenance projects must take into account the results of ERP benefits realisation auditing to review ERP configuration, correct possible mistakes, and improve the efficiency of some expected ERP benefits.

Although the study focuses on the factors that influence ERP benefits realisation, it fails to differentiate between some factors that may influence the realisation of these benefits, such as size and type of company, ERP system implemented, and organisational context.

The results may help to improve the understanding of ERP success and satisfaction levels, both expected and perceived, from ERP stakeholders. The findings also suggest that auditing the realisation of ERP benefits is a crucial stage in ERP usage phase.

The paper contributes to the current literature in the benefits of ERP systems by defining a benefits realisation road‐map to achieve the ERP benefits identified in the literature.

To provide an overview of research published in the management accounting literature on methods for cost management in new product development, such as a target costing, life cycle costing, component commonality, and modular design.

The structured literature search covered papers about 15 different cost management methods published in 40 journals in the period 1990–2013.

The search yielded a sample of 113 different papers. Many contained information about more than one method, and this yielded 149 references to specific methods. The number of references varied strongly per cost management method and per journal. Target costing has received by far the most attention in the publications in our sample; modular design, component commonality, and life cycle costing were ranked second and joint third. Most references were published in Management Science; Management Accounting Research; and Accounting, Organizations and Society. The results were strongly influenced by Management Science and Decision Science, because cost management methods with an engineering background were published above average in these two journals (design for manufacturing, component commonality, modular design, and product platforms) while other topics were published below average in these two journals.

The scope of this review is accounting research. Future work could review the research on cost management methods in new product development published outside accounting.

The paper centers on methods for cost management, which complements reviews that focused on theoretical constructs of management accounting information and its use.

This paper aims to respond to the call to help organisations to systematically engineer their customer experiences. Its objective is to investigate how organisations actually go about designing and improving their customer experiences.

A total of four organisations were chosen for this exploratory study; one business‐to‐business company, one business‐to‐consumer company, one utility, and one public sector organisation. This longitudinal study over a period of four years collected data from participant observation, discussions, internal reports and from secondary data.

Despite the differences between the four organisations they appear to have taken, independently, the same approach to bring about improvements to their customer experiences. This paper proposes a ten‐stage “road‐map” to improvement which develops the existing models.

Main limitations were that the in‐depth, longitudinal study covered just four organisations and from a mix of sectors. Additional work is needed to further test the findings in more organisations.

This study identifies the critical importance of mindset change in the design of customer experience improvement programmes and the ways in which customers can be directly engaged in the design and improvement process. Importantly, it provides a road‐map that organisations can use as a base for improving their customer experiences. It also suggests that it is useful to have clear objectives in three areas: customer; staff; and cost‐efficiency; and use them to assess the benefits of improving the customer experience.

The study organises the current literature on the customer experience, distinguishes between “service” and “experience”, and provides a research‐based road‐map for improving the customer experience.

Identify breakthroughs that must occur and a step‐by‐step process that will enable organizations to achieve improved and sustained results.

A systematic process that reveals why organizations fail to achieve improvements, breakthroughs that must occur first before improvements are attempted, and a road map that leads to sustained results.

Global predicaments are wider in scope and more difficult to overcome. In dealing with unpredictable change, six reasons were found that prevent sustained improvements. The article shows why and how management must be proactive in meeting competition by creating a competitive level of quality and efficiency that will determine whether their organizations are leaders, followers or failures.

The systematic process detailed in this document will address the six specific breakthroughs that must occur first before any formal improvement steps can be taken to assure sustained results. A comprehensive five‐step road map process will then show in detailed sequence how to identify and achieve positive and cultural changes that will sustain major organization‐wide benefits.

The purpose of this study is to explore the agile project management (APM) approach through the contextual ambidextrous lens by overcoming the traditional perspective that separates projects within the opposite planned-exploitation- and emergent-exploration-oriented forms.

This study uses a grounded approach to five different agile-oriented companies for discovering how agile adoption shows both emergent (exploration-oriented) and planned (exploitation-oriented) tensions in a perspective that connects, rather than separates, them.

This study discovers five main categories, namely, approach, objectives, boundaries, leadership and feedback, that capture the tensions between planned and emergent issues of agile projects. The identified variables interact with different intervening conditions of the APM attributes (i.e. road map, product backlog, team backlog and solution delivery), activating different response actions (“exploitation embedded in exploration” and vice-versa), requiring, as a consequence, the need for contextual ambidexterity.

This study identifies different implications based on real project contexts, as the importance of a more complete picture of the APM approach, which also considers the combination of planned and emergent aspects of projects and, as consequence, the needs for dual capacities (T-shaped skills) both at project management and team levels.

This study identifies, in real project contexts, the relevance of integration between the corporate level and the agile project team. This implies the search for constant dialogue, with feedback exchange spread across all levels, also enabled by an integrated leadership approach.

This study highlights agile tensions in a real-world project context by describing how APM connects both explorative and exploitative aspects of change within the same APM initiative, in order to manage such tensions, which differs from previous studies that consider APM in alternation with a linear project management approach as stage-gate.

The purpose of this study is to explore the required changes, outline business potential and envisage the key steps that a networked manufacturing industry needs to take to reach more sustainably performing manufacturing in the future.

The paper utilises a visionary road-mapping approach to study the required changes and the business potential related to sustainable development in the manufacturing industry.

The results were summarised in three sub-roadmaps empowerment of stakeholders, increase efficiency and creation of new performance criteria. On the basis of the summary of the sub-roadmaps, the framework was configured to describe the opportunities and challenges of sustainable business development in the European manufacturing industry.

A clear implication of this study is that a more system-oriented approach, new models for collaboration between network actors and transparently shared network-level KPIs are required before further steps towards a sustainable manufacturing industry can be taken. In addition, sustainability-driven business models are required to specify these changes concretely.

The presented sub-roadmaps and framework summarising them could provide new insights to business practitioners exploring business potential of sustainability.

Understanding about the road-mapping process as tool that enables interaction and envisioning between different stakeholders could also have social implications supporting shared industry-level learning processes.

Studies of sustainability within the manufacturing industry have focused mainly on green issues in supply-chain management or corporation-level governance models and reporting practices. The paper presents a broader view of sustainable development and recognises networked business as part of the solution.