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The scale of current demand on primary care services from people seeking help with common mental health problems places enormous pressure on the existing front line workers in general practice. The paucity of training opportunities and competing pressures to deliver improved services across a range of general practice targets remains a major challenge for primary care professionals. The impact of government policy, to improve both access to and choice of treatments, has raised public expectations.The commissioning of the graduate workforce, the graduate worker in primary care mental health (GWPCMH), commenced in 2002, in response to the publication of target numbers detailed in the Priorities and Planning Framework, (DoH, 2002). It signalled a determination to expand the workforce provision and improve the quality of care for service users with common mental health problems.This paper examines the scale of common mental health problems, the policy response and the commissioning process. Particular attention is given to examining the barriers that have been shown to affect implementation, identifying the key influencers and the resources required to train these workers.

An empirical study was conducted to determine the thermal fatigue behaviour of 1.27 mm pitch, J‐bend and gullwing surface mount solder joints, manufactured with four low‐temperature solders. Selected solder alloys were: 58Bi‐42Sn (wt %), 43Sn‐43Pb‐14Bi, 52ln‐48Sn and 40ln‐40Sn‐20Pb. Accelerated thermal cycling was used in conjunction with metallographic analysis and mechanical (pull) strength measurement to test their behaviour. The relative merit of each solder composition was determined by comparing it with 63Sn‐37Pb solder, subjected to identical testing conditions. The strength decreased linearly with increased number of thermal cycles for gullwing solder joints of all four solder alloys. The fatigue lifetime was relatively longer for 58Bi‐42Sn and 40ln‐40Sn‐20Pb than for other alloys, but significantly lower than that obtained with 63Sn‐37Pb solder. No discernible degradation of strength was observed with the J‐bend solder joints of any solder alloy, even after the completion of 6000 thermal cycles. Thermal fatigue resistance of the latter joints was attributed to a more favourable coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) mismatch. Solder joint cracking occurred only in gullwing components soldered with 52ln‐48Sn, 40ln‐40Sn‐20Pb and 43Sn‐43Pb‐14Bi alloys, after 1000 or 2000 thermal cycles. The crack initiated on the outside surface of the solder fillet, and appeared to propagate through both phases of the microstructure. The stress‐induced heterogeneous coarsening of the microstructure was evident only with 43Sn‐43Pb‐14Bi solder, although not as prevalent as that usually observed with eutectic Sn‐Pb solder. Fatigue cracks were absent from solder joints of 58Bi‐42Sn and 63Sn‐37Pb alloys.

The purpose of this study is to categorize and analyse the drivers and barriers of Lean Manufacturing (LM) and subsequently, based on the structural model develop a house of lean management which will give an idea to the academicians and practitioners about the factors that are critical to implement lean practices in an organization.

A list of drivers and barriers was prepared based on the literature review and opinions from experts. Total Interpretive Structural Modelling (TISM) was utilized to build a structural hierarchy of the drivers and barriers of LM. The structural hierarchy was utilized to build the house of lean management.

Based on the hierarchy developed, the elements (drivers and barriers) of LM are classified into three groups: bottom-level, middle-level and top-level elements. To develop a house of lean management, bottom-level of elements were considered as a foundation, middle-level elements were considered as pillars and top-level elements were considered as a beam. Finally, foundation, pillars and beam of the house were used to support the roof (which is value to customers and profitability to firm).

The outcome of this research can assist researchers as well as practitioners to enhance the significant drivers and to reduce the impact of hazardous barriers for the better implementation of lean practices.

This research is a novel approach, as it visibly demonstrates both the drivers and barriers, examines the interrelationships among them in order and shows them pictorially as the house of lean management.

The just‐in‐time (JIT) production system is notable for its emphasis on employee involvement and participation. However, we suggest that the role of participation that is most typically described in the organizational behavior (OB) literature does not match the type of participation practiced in JIT. We introduce a theoretical framework that accounts for these different perspectives: whereas the OB approach treats participation as an intervention and hence as an independent variable, the JIT approach sees it as a side effect of the JIT production system and hence a dependent variable. Understanding of the differences is essential in JIT implementation in the workplace if we are to avoid miscommunication, stress, and disbelief in the system.

Despite arguments that traditional product costing and variance analysis operate contrary to the strategic goals of advanced manufacturing practices such as just in time (JIT), total quality management (TQM), and Six Sigma, little empirical evidence exists that cost accounting practices (CAP) are changing in the era of continuous improvement and waste reduction. This research supplies some of the first evidence of what CAP are employed to support the information needs of a world-class manufacturing environment. Using survey data obtained from executives of 121 U.S. manufacturing firms, the study examines the relationship between the use of JIT, TQM, and Six Sigma with various forms of traditional and non-traditional CAP. Analysis of variance tests (ANOVA) indicate that most traditional CAP continue to be used in all manufacturing environments, but a significant portion of world-class manufacturers supplement their internal management accounting system with non-traditional management accounting techniques.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between inventory leanness and venture survival, and demonstrate the role of organizational environments in moderating this relationship from three dimensions: environmental complexity, dynamism and munificence.

Using a large panel data of more than 150,000 new Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprises between 2000 and 2007 in the manufacturing sector, the authors employ the method of survival analysis via an accelerated failure time model to explore the non-linear relationship between inventory leanness and the likelihood of survival. Moreover, the moderation model is applied to examine the moderating role of organizational environments.

At its core, this paper demonstrates the inverted U-shaped relationship between inventory leanness and the likelihood of survival. Furthermore, the authors find that environmental complexity and dynamism can negatively moderate this relationship, whereas environmental munificence acts the exact opposite.

Managers need to realize the trade-off between inventory leanness and venture survival. Collectively, more than 90 percent of new Chinese ventures have great potential to improve the likelihood of survival by implementing inventory leanness management. In addition, firms ought to be fully aware of the internal management and the external environments.

This is the first study to confirm the inverted U-shaped relationship between inventory leanness and the likelihood of survival, and empirically verify the moderating role of environmental complexity, dynamism and munificence on this relationship.

The purpose of this study is to enhance the understanding of the complete process of framing and implementing operational excellence in the pharmaceutical industry to ensure higher regulatory compliance.

A literature search was conducted using preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines. Strategies were set with different keywords and certain assessment criteria for the inclusion and exclusion of articles. A total of 46 articles were considered for a full review.

This study describes the impact of implementing operational excellence in day-to-day operations and the driving forces to achieve the same. Seven commonly used enablers are described can be used in combination to develop and validate an assessment model. Case studies are summarized to schematize operational excellence programs for the scope of their industry.

This study is limited to Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers. It is implied toward small-scale manufacturers. It can be further extended to manufacturers from other regions.

This study guides quality assurance managers, regulatory agencies and other top management to implement operational excellence to ensure higher regulatory compliance. It guides to develop a roadmap to operational excellence in their scope. This study is applicable to any manufacturing industry bound to comply with pharmaceutical regulatory standards.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, at the time of publication, there are regulatory guidelines and some articles on various key enablers to achieve operational excellence. There is no published systematic review on achieving regulatory compliance by using operational excellence.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current level of supply chain practices (SCPs) in Indian manufacturing organizations.

The 15 SCPs are identified based on the literature support and opinion of industry experts and academia, and data were collected from 292 organizations. Data were analyzed using the statistical package for the social science software to see the current level/penetration of SCPs in Indian manufacturing organizations.

The practices, namely, organizational culture, customer relationship, information and communication technology, benchmarking and performance measurement, lean manufacturing, agile manufacturing, supplier relationship are highly penetrated practices in Indian manufacturing organizations. The practices, namely, outsourcing, information sharing, just in time manufacturing, green supply chain management are moderately penetrated practices, while the practices, namely, reverse logistics, postponement, vendor managed inventory, radio frequency are least penetrated practices in Indian manufacturing organizations.

Further study can be extended to see the of penetration practices applicable to service and agriculture sectors.

The result of this paper will enable the organizations to identify and direct their focus on the areas that requires improvement. Also, the organizations will become more aware of the SCPs that will help in boosting up their performance and competitiveness and indirectly boost the growth and contribute to India’s economic development.

This is the first kind of study which checked the level of selected SCPs in Indian manufacturing organizations.

With hybrid simulation techniques getting popular for systems improvement in multiple fields, this study aims to provide insight on the use of hybrid simulation to assess the effect of lean manufacturing (LM) techniques on manufacturing facilities and the transition of a mass production (MP) facility to incorporating LM techniques.

In this paper, the authors apply a hybrid simulation approach to improve an educational automotive assembly line and provide guidelines for implementing different LM techniques. Specifically, the authors describe the design, development, verification and validation of a hybrid discrete-event and agent-based simulation model of a LEGO® car assembly line to analyze, improve and assess the system’s performance. The simulation approach examines the base model (MP) and an alternative scenario (just-in-time [JIT] with Heijunka).

The hybrid simulation approach effectively models the facility. The alternative simulation scenario (implementing JIT and Heijunka LM techniques) improved all examined performance metrics. In more detail, the system’s lead time was reduced by 47.37%, the throughput increased by 5.99% and the work-in-progress for workstations decreased by up to 56.73%.

This novel hybrid simulation approach provides insight and can be potentially extrapolated to model other manufacturing facilities and evaluate transition scenarios from MP to LM.

Digital supply chains require nascent technologies like blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT). There is a need to develop a roadmap for the implementation of these technologies, as they require a huge amount of resources and infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the challenges of implementing blockchain-IoT integrated architecture in the green supply chain and develop strategies for the same.

After a thorough literature survey of Scopus-indexed journals and books, 37 barriers were identified, which were then brought down to 15 barriers after confirming with industry and academic experts using the Delphi method. Using the total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) method and cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) analysis, the barriers were modeled, and finally, strategies were formulated using a concept map to handle the barriers in the blockchain-IoT integrated architecture for a green supply chain.

This paper presents the research on barriers that can be considered for incorporating blockchain and IoT in the green supply chain. It was found from the TISM model that environmental concerns are Level-1 barriers and need to be addressed by developing appropriate technology and allocating funds for the same. An integrated ecosystem with blockchain and IoT is developed.

The focus of this study was on the challenges of blockchain and IoT; hence, it is required to extend the research and find challenges for different industries and also analyze the criteria using other multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods. Further research is required for the integration of blockchain-IoT with supply chain functions.

The transformation of a traditional supply chain into a green supply chain is possible with the integration of technologies. This research work and the strategies developed are useful to managers and practitioners working on technology implementation. Planning resources and addressing key barriers is possible with the concept maps and architecture developed.

Green supply chain management (SCM) is gaining importance in industry as well as the academic sector due to government Policies and norms worldwide for reducing emissions and encouraging environment-friendly production systems. Incorporating blockchain and IoT in a green supply chain will further digitize and increase transparency in supply chains.

We have done a categorization of all barriers based on the expert survey by academicians and industry experts from industries in India. The concept map helps in identifying possible solutions for the challenges and initiatives to be taken for the smooth integration of technologies in the green supply chain.