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The various quality improvement (QI) frameworks and maturity models described in the health services literature consider some aspects of QI while excluding others. This paper aims to present a concerted attempt to create a quality improvement maturity model (QIMM) derived from holistic principles underlying the successful implementation of system-wide QI programmes.

A hybrid methodology involving a systematic review (Phase 1) of over 270 empirical research articles and books developed the basis for the proposed QIMM. It was followed by expert interviews to refine the core constructs and ground the proposed QIMM in contemporary QI practice (Phase 2). The experts included academics in two academic conferences and 59 QI managers from the New Zealand health-care system. In-depth interviews were conducted with QI managers to ascertain their views on the QIMM and its applicability in their respective health organisations (HOs).

The QIMM consists of four dimensions of organisational maturity, namely, strategic, process, supply chain and philosophical maturity. These dimensions progress through six stages, namely, identification, ad-hoc, formal, process-driven, optimised enterprise and finally a way of life. The application of the QIMM by the QI managers revealed that the scope of QI and the breadth of the principles adopted by the QI managers and their HOs in New Zealand is limited.

The importance of QI in health systems cannot be overstated. The proposed QIMM can help HOs diagnose their current state and provide a guide to action achieving a desirable state of quality improvement maturity. This QIMM avoids reliance on any single QI methodology. HOs – using the QIMM – should retain full control over the process of selecting any QI methodology or may even cherry-pick principles to suit their needs as long as they understand and appreciate the true nature and scope of quality overstated. The proposed QIMM can help HOs diagnose their current state and provide a guide to action achieving a desirable state of quality improvement maturity. This QIMM avoids reliance on any single QI methodology. HOs – using the QIMM – should retain full control over the process of selecting any QI methodology or may even cherry-pick principles to suit their needs as long as they understand and appreciate the true nature and scope of quality.

This paper contributes new knowledge by presenting a maturity model with an integrated set of quality principles for HOs and their extended supply networks.

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.

With the growing need for employees to be innovative, public-sector organizations are investing in employee training. This study aims to examine the effects of a combined Lean Six Sigma and innovation training, using action learning, on public-sector employees’ creative role identity and innovative work behavior.

The authors studied a public service agency in Singapore in which a five-day Lean Innovation Training was implemented, using a combination of Lean Six Sigma and Creative Problem-Solving tools, with a simulation on day one and subsequent team-based project coaching, spread over six months. The authors administered pre- and postintervention surveys among all the employees, and initiated group interviews and observations before, during and after the intervention.

Creative role identity and innovative work behavior had significantly improved six months after the intervention, enabled through senior management’s transformational leadership. The training induced managers to role-model innovative work behaviors while cocreating, with their employees, a renewal of their agency’s core processes. The three completed improvement projects contributed to an innovative work culture and reduced service turnaround time.

Starting with a role-playing simulation on the first day, during which leaders and followers swapped roles, the action-learning type training taught all the organizational members to use various Lean Six Sigma and Creative Problem-Solving tools. This nimble Lean Innovation Training, and subsequent team-based project coaching, exemplifies how advancing the staff’s creative role identity can have a positive impact.

Shared leadership is an effective mechanism for managing project teams. Its performance-enhancing benefits have been demonstrated in many studies. Nonetheless, there is an obvious silence about how to promote shared leadership in Lean Six Sigma (LSS) project teams. To address this deficit, the purposes of this study are to investigate the influence of shared leadership on LSS project success and to explore how team psychological safety, project task complexity and project task interdependence influence shared leadership.

A multi-source, time-lagged survey design with a four-month interval was conducted. To do this, the authors collected data from 71 project teams (comprising 71 project managers and 352 project members) using LSS approaches in the manufacturing and service industries.

The findings show that shared leadership positively influences LSS project success. The authors also found that team psychological safety fosters the development of shared leadership and, more importantly, these effects are stronger when the tasks are more complex and more interdependent.

These findings advance our understanding of the factors that enable shared leadership and equip LSS project managers with practical techniques to improve shared leadership for the success of their projects.

This study extends the theory of shared leadership to the context of LSS project management and is among the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to theoretically propose and empirically validate how to promote shared leadership in LSS project teams.

The purpose of this study is to examine the critical failure factors (CFFs) linked to various types of process improvement (PI) projects such as Kaizen, Lean, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma and Agile. Proposing a mitigation framework accordingly is also an aim of this study.

This research undertakes a systematic literature review of 49 papers that were relevant to the scope of the study and that were published in four prominent databases, including Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science and EBSCO.

Further analysis identifies 39 factors that contribute to the failure of PI projects. Among these factors, significant emphasis is placed on issues such as “resistance to cultural change,” “insufficient support from top management,” “inadequate training and education,” “poor communication” and “lack of resources,” as primary causes of PI project failures. To address and overcome the PI project failures, the authors propose a framework for failure mitigation based on change management models. The authors present future research directions that aim to enhance both the theoretical understanding and practical aspects of PI project failures.

Through this study, researchers and project managers can benefit from well-structured guidelines and invaluable insights that will help them identify and address potential failures, leading to successful implementation and sustainable improvements within organizations.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first study of its kind to examine the CFFs of five PI methodologies and introduces a novel approach derived from change management theory as a solution to minimize the risk associated with PI failure.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) within the construction sector are highly vulnerable to disruptions caused by political and economic decisions or even pandemics. This study evaluated the current operations of selected SMEs providing engineering design and consultancy services against Toyota Production System (TPS) lean tool. The purpose is to juxtapose SME operations and processes with TPS to ascertain the level of their operations conformity to the established TPS lean thinking tool.

This study used a qualitative data collection and analysis approach to evaluate the current processes of participating SMEs against Liker's 14 management principles of TPS. The data collected were analysed using thematic analysis to identify patterns and themes that emerged from the qualitative data.

The analysis revealed that focus on short-term goals, immediate profit and duplication of effort resulting from insufficient collaboration is currently creating waste in participating SMEs' operations. Hence, the implementation of TPS was recommended as a lean tool and a framework based on TPS lean tool was developed for improving the operations of SMEs.

The study is limited to SMEs operating only as consultants providing project planning design within the construction industry. Data collection is limited to qualitative even though observations would improve the outcome of the study.

The study advances contemporary issues in promoting lean implementation in construction sector and developed an improved framework based on the TPS to enhance the performance of SME construction businesses.

The application of integrated project delivery (IPD) in conjunction with building information modeling (BIM) and Lean Construction (LC) as the efficient method for improving collaboration and delivering construction projects has been acknowledged by construction academics and professionals. Once organizations have fully embraced BIM, IPD and LC integration, a measurement tool such as a maturity model (MM) for benchmarking their progress and setting realistic goals for continuous improvement will be required. In the context of MMs literature, however, no comprehensive analysis of these three construction management methods has been published to reveal the current trends and common themes in which the models have approached each other.

Therefore, this study integrates systematic literature review (SLR) and thematic analysis techniques to review and categorize the related MMs; the key themes in which the interrelationship between BIM, IPD and LC MMs has been discussed and conceptualized in the attributes; the shared characteristics of the existing BIM, IPD and LC MMs, as well as their strengths and limitations. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews (PRISMA) method has been used as the primary procedure for article screening and reviewing published papers between 2007 and 2022.

Despite the growth of BIM, IPD and LC integration publications and acknowledgment in the literature, no MM has been established that holistically measures BIM, IPD and LC integration in an organization. This study identifies five interrelated and overlapping themes indicative of the collaboration of BIM, IPD and LC in existing MMs' structure, including customer satisfaction, waste minimization, Lean practices and cultural and legal aspects. Furthermore, the MMs' common characteristics, strengths and limitations are evaluated to provide a foundation for developing future BIM, IPD and LC-related MMs.

This paper examines the current status of research and the knowledge gaps around BIM, IPD and LC MMs. In addition, the highlighted major themes serve as a foundation for academics who intend to develop integrated BIM, IPD, and LC MMs. This will enable researchers to build upon these themes and establish a comprehensive list of maturity attributes fulfilling the BIM, IPD and LC requirements and principles. In addition, the MMs' BIM, IPD and LC compatibility themes, which go beyond themes' intended characteristics in silos, increase industry practitioners' awareness of the underlying factors of BIM, IPD and LC integration.

This review article is the first of a kind to analyze the interaction of IPD, BIM and LC in the context of MMs in current AEC literature. This study concludes that BIM, IPD and LC share several joint cornerstones according to the existing MMs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how successful lean six sigma (LSS) manifests in the Australasian (Australian and New Zealand) context relative to the context in the USA in terms of LSS project definition, structure and practices.

In-depth investigation through case studies – 12 Australian/New Zealand cases and 4 US cases – on the implementation mechanisms of successful LSS initiatives.

A significant difference was found between Australasian and US definitions of an LSS project. However, firms in both regions followed similar project selection, initiating and execution practices. LSS reporting structures were found to be well-established in US organizations, but none of the Australasian organizations were found to be equipped with such a structure, although the effectiveness of LSS implementation success remained unaffected.

Sufficient uniformity of LSS was found across two regions implying its usefulness/generalizability, but the findings are based only on 12 cases.

The paper provides the groundwork to develop a unique LSS model for Australasian organizations to improve processes in an effective and efficient manner.

This paper explores Lean Six Sigma principles and the DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) methodology to propose a new Lean Six Sigma 4.0 (LSS 4.0) framework for employee occupational exams and address the real-world issue of high-variability exams that may arise.

This study uses mixed methods, combining qualitative and quantitative data collection. A detailed case study assesses the impact of LSS interventions on the exam management process and tests the applicability of the proposed LSS 4.0 framework for employee occupational exams.

The results reveal that changing the health service supplier in the explored organization caused a substantial raise in occupational exams, leading to increased costs. By using syntactic interoperability, lean, six sigma and DMAIC approaches, improvements were identified, addressing process deviations and information requirements. Implementing corrective actions improved the exam process, reducing the number of exams and associated expenses.

It is important to acknowledge certain limitations, such as the specific context of the case study and the exclusion of certain exam categories.

The practical implications of this research are substantial, providing organizations with valuable managerial insights into improving efficiency, reducing costs and ensuring regulatory compliance while managing occupational exams.

This study fills a research gap by applying LSS 4.0 to occupational exam management, offering a practical framework for organizations. It contributes to the existing knowledge base by addressing a relatively novel context and providing a detailed roadmap for process optimization.