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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 imperative to conserve resources and minimize operational expenses has spurred a notable increase in the adoption of lean manufacturing within the context of the circular economy across diverse industries in recent years. However, a notable gap exists in the research landscape, particularly concerning the implementation of lean practices within the pharmaceutical industry to enhance circular economy performance. Addressing this void, this study endeavors to identify and prioritize the pivotal drivers influencing lean manufacturing within the pharmaceutical sector.

The outcome of this rigorous examination highlights that “Continuous Monitoring Process for Sustainable Lean Implementation,” “Management Involvement for Sustainable Implementation” and “Training and Education” emerge as the most consequential drivers. These factors are deemed crucial for augmenting circular economy performance, underscoring the significance of management engagement, training initiatives and a continuous monitoring process in fostering a closed-loop practice within the pharmaceutical industry.

The findings contribute valuable insights for decision-makers aiming to adopt lean practices within a circular economy framework. Specifically, by streamlining the process of developing a robust action plan tailored to the unique needs of the pharmaceutical sector, our study provides actionable guidance for enhancing overall sustainability in the manufacturing processes.

This study represents one of the initial efforts to systematically identify and assess the drivers to LM implementation within the pharmaceutical industry, contributing to the emerging body of knowledge in this area.

Proper identification of the key motivating factors (or key drivers) is needed to ensure successful adaption and implementation of the lean concept for construction projects. However, there lacks a study investigating the complex interrelationships existing among the key drivers contributing to Sustainable and Successful Lean Construction (SSLC) implementation for such projects. To address this shortcoming, this study aims to uncover the main critical key drivers towards the implementation of SSLC for the very first time by capturing the complexity of this vexing problem.

In this study, a new hybrid framework is developed through the integration of Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Social Network Analysis (SNA). The novel developed framework is called the DSNA approach.

Considering the case of Malaysian construction projects, the developed DSNA gives the following major outcomes: (1) Most important critical key drivers are seen to be optimization, continuous improvement, and, improve company culture, and (2) For SSLC adoption, the critical drivers impacting other key drivers are seen to be “improve teamwork”, “reduce leadership conflict”, and “improve company culture”, thereby demanding more attention.

The outcomes of this study give insight for decisions and policymakers in the construction industry regarding critical key drivers and their complex interrelationships towards the further adoption of SSLC, promoting the sustainability paradigm within the respective sector.

This paper not only presents a list of critical drivers and the corresponding association among them towards SSLC adoption, but also proposes DSNA as a novel approach for uncovering the complex interrelationship existing in an intricate problem, improving the intricate process of decision-making.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a statistically reliable and valid model of lean manufacturing (LM) implementation drivers for the Indian ceramic industry through an empirical study.

The research methodology is based on the empirical study of the Indian ceramic industry through a questionnaire specifically developed for the study through literature review and discussions held with practitioners. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling techniques have been used to propose and validate the model. SPSS and AMOS statistical tools have been used for the statistical analysis of the data.

The study identified 12 drivers for the LM implementation in Indian ceramic industry. Further, these 12 drivers have been categorized into internal, policy and external drivers (ED). Structural model affirms that ED are positively related to policy drivers (PD) and PD are positively related to internal drivers.

This study provides casual relationships among the various drivers, which can be leveraged by the managers for the easy and effective implementation of LM in their organizations. It is expected that the model will help the decision makers during LM implementation in taking informed decisions in prioritizing and sequencing the implementation strategy. The results of the research may apply to other industries as well, but this needs to be validated by collecting data and analysing its results.

The results provide insights into motivating factors that should be focused on while taking lean decisions. The correlation results among drivers will enable the policy makers in government and industry to strategically leverage the resources for the successful implementation of LM in the industry.

This research empirically develops a model of drivers for LM implementation. The novelty of the study is the causal relationship among the drivers which can be used for decision making to implement lean easily and effectively. Moreover, the categorization of the drivers into internal, external and policy categories and driving/driven relationship among these categories provides the top management an incisive insight into broad improvement areas.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an interpretive structural modeling (ISM) model to investigate the critical success factors (CSF) and the extent of CSF's influence in the implementation of lean industry 4.0 in manufacturing supply chain.

The study has been carried out with the help of the latest literature followed by brainstorming sessions with experts. The experts were the managers from the industries, assistant professors, and research scholars from academia working in this domain. Finally, a structured model is formed using ISM methodology for the analysis of the CSFs followed by matrice d'impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment (MIAMAC) Analysis for the validation of the model.

The study identifies robotics, virtual and augmented reality and cloud computing as the main CSFs which are responsible to drive all the identified CSFs. However the CSF professional training and development (PTD) has been identified as the weakest driver but having the highest dependent power.

The study has included nine CSFs and the contextual relationships between the CSFs are based on the knowledge and experience of the experts, which may be biased. Moreover, the paper has covered the ISM approach, and the same thing can be validated using the fuzzy-ISM and other multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques.

This investigation of the CSFs in the lean industry 4.0 is original and the identified CSFs are the result of the literature reviews and an extensive discussion from the experts. The paper uses the complete experience of the respective experts to make this work more effective and original.

Considering lean thinking inside and beyond the organisation's boundaries, in the extended supply chain, this paper aims to fill a literature gap clearly stating some outsourcing practices as lean practices and establishing a deployment evolution parallel between both practices.

A literature review was carried out collecting cases of lean deployment in healthcare, from both scientific and grey literature. Cases were classified according to lean deployment taxonomy in healthcare settings, showing some differences in lean journey stages in 15 countries.

There is an alignment between SCM thinking in healthcare and lean thinking that places a SCM decision as outsourcing as a lean practice serving not only strategic intent but solving operational efficiency. There is a match between different outsourcing drivers (transactional, strategic and transformational) and lean maturity levels. The main constraint to deployment of both lean and outsourcing practices are cultural differences.

Understanding lean and outsourcing different deployment maturity levels under the national cultural umbrella can open new perspectives to study lean sustainability factors and better outsourcing relationships in healthcare organisations.

This paper presents a merger between the state‐of‐the art of both lean and outsourcing practices in healthcare settings and suggests an outsourcing and lean evolving pathway.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an effective framework for implementing Lean strategies in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).

Based on the integration of LM tools and techniques with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) criteria a systematic Lean implementation framework for manufacturing SMEs has been proposed. The core values, drivers and tools of the proposed framework were further developed based on case studies in three SMEs in the KRI.

Proposed framework is able to provide a simple pathway for SMEs to systematically implement Lean techniques in seven functional areas in order to create Lean culture in the organisation. Business performance measurement in terms of profitability, customer satisfaction, employee’s satisfaction, competitiveness growth and ergonomic improvement is presented in favour of evaluating Lean outcomes appropriately. It also presents the experience of small firms in implementing Lean programmes to show that Lean is valid in SMEs.

The framework concentrates only on the internal issues of the organisation, while external variables such as national culture and external support are excluded.

The framework assists improvements in SMEs that either initially attempt to start Lean journey or those that are at more advanced levels towards excellent-Lean manufacturing. The framework can also be used as a self-assessment model to determine the degree of Lean readiness.

To the best knowledge of the author, it is the first framework that integrates Lean techniques with MBNQA criteria to support Lean implementation in SMEs. It is also the first study regarding Lean-excellence in the KRI.

Scarcity of resources and ever-changing customer demand has driven the manufacturing organization to opt for an integrated sustainable-green-lean-six sigma-agile manufacturing system (ISGLSAMS). The purpose of this study is to identify and rank the various drivers for the adoption of ISGLSAMS for the more sustainable development of the industries.

Using a survey questionnaire, data were collected for the 14 ISGLSAMS drivers, identified through the literature review, from 108 Indian manufacturing industries. The sign test is used to check the relevance and significance of drivers. ISGLSAMS drivers are ranked based on the median and standard deviation. A multiple regression model was employed to investigate the effects of other drivers on the highest-ranked driver to strengthen the understanding of the drivers.

Competition, customer demand, technological changes, supply chain pressure, cost benefits, incentives, top management commitment and future legislation are found the strongest drivers for ISGLSAMS. For administering the competition for ISGLSAMS policymakers must focus on the availability of organization resources, customer demand, future legislation, incentives, supply chain pressure and technological developments.

The study contributes to a better understanding of ISGLSAMS drivers. Through this study government, stakeholders and policymakers may plan the policy, roadmap and strategies to drive the manufacturing organizations for the adoption of ISGLSAMS for more sustainable development of industries in India.

This work contributes to the identification and prioritization of the drivers for the more sustainable manufacturing system, i.e. ISGLSAMS (7 Rs based, i.e. 6 Rs of sustainability with 7th R, reconfiguration). The research also contributes to the (1) ISGLSAMS literature (2) the awareness and demand of (a) ISGLSAMS (b) reconfigurable, sustainable and modular products (c) redesign, recovery and refurbishing of the product to increase the product life cycle.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how synergies between lean and green supply chain practices emerge. In particular, the authors explore which practices identified in the literature are actually implemented in a synergic way and determine what synergic results they bring.

An in-depth case study of the Brazilian subsidiary of a large multinational company was conducted using interviews, in-plant observations and document analysis.

The majority of the practices (26 out of 31) bring synergic results to lean and green performance. Synergies can emerge spontaneously (rather than being strategized) even when the implementation of green and lean practices is compartmentalized in different areas, with no department or supportive management team to treat them in a joined way. The strongest synergic results are found in practices related to suppliers and customers because these supply chain actors act as bridges between the lean and green areas.

The authors did not have access to the company customers and suppliers. This restriction made the analysis of drivers skewed towards the perspective of the focal company and the way they framed their interactions. Second, the assessment of synergies was in the majority of cases qualitative.

Empirically, it is the first time that all synergic practices identified in the literature are explored through a case study. Theoretically, the authors developed a model of determinants of lean and green synergies based on constructs emerging from the data; behavioural literature in synergies and research on synergies in mergers and acquisitions.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze lean strategic practices being implemented in manufacturing facilities throughout Pennsylvania and West Virginia and identify the difficulty in implementing those lean practices.

A skip logic questionnaire was developed into multiple sections for analysis; demographics of respondents, identification of the knowledge and practice of lean methods, interpretation of lean application, strategic direction of lean methods, measurements of expertise, and difficulties for practicing lean. The questionnaire was sent to 327 manufacturing facilities where 51 usable responses were collected for the study.

Lean manufacturing is a widely recognized and practiced business philosophy as a significant percentage of manufacturers have implemented some variation of practice. However, the extent of knowledge does not mirror awareness. The application of lean manufacturing practices is not readily appropriate for every company, but adopting the concept of customer-focussed waste reduction to maximize value can be universally applied as waste reduction was the most prominent practice pursued. Lean practitioners found that poka-yoke and installing new process equipment have the highest degree of benefits from implementation while 5S and eliminating waste were the least difficult practices to implement. In general, the management personnel of the companies have an influential effect on lean manufacturing pursuance. This is illustrated by the fact of high agreement between facilities that resistance to change from employees is the most prominent difficulty for implementation followed by limited technical knowledge of lean manufacturing at operational and conceptual levels.

The research findings are from a subset of manufacturing companies in Pennsylvania and West Virginia and may not represent all of the companies on a national level. The results must be interpreted in the context of the data acquisition approach due to the extent of the sample size involved, the procedure for how data were collected, and assuming that each lean strategic practice has the same weight to calculate the facility lean index.

The results provide insight about the effect of facility size and years of lean practicing for various lean strategic practices. The most beneficial and least difficult lean strategies, their implementation level, and the real challenges for implementing lean were also identified to help both lean practitioner and non-practitioner for the lean journey.

The research investigates current lean strategic practices pursued by manufacturers throughout Pennsylvania and West Virginia and identifies obstacles to implementation of lean practices. Lean manufacturing is widely sought after as a continuous improvement program, but success is divided. This study characterizes lean manufacturing comprehension while identifying knowledge areas of strengths and deficiencies. There lacks an established structure for lean practices to pursue. Therefore, this study provides manufacturers a measure for comparing their position for refined decision making.