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The purpose of this paper is to deal with the transfer of lean practices between different units in multi-plant organizations with different levels of adoption of lean practices. It investigates how certain influential contextual variables – i.e. lean standards development, lean transfer team composition, source characteristics, recipient national environment and corporate lean programme deployment – can influence stickiness in the different phases of lean transfer process.

This paper opted for the multiple-case study method and examines six lean transfer projects at a dyadic level, that is, between a source and a recipient unit. The authors focussed on companies with headquarters in Europe with an attested experience in lean and which had recently and successfully transferred lean to subsidiaries in the USA and China.

The paper provides empirical insights about how stickiness in lean transfer projects changes during the initiation, implementation/ramp-up and integration phases. It identifies three lean transfer approaches (local, global, global and shared) and provides a set of propositions that explains how sociocultural traits of recipient environment (China vs USA) and lean transfer approach affect stickiness in each phase.

Literature on stickiness in lean transfer is at an early stage and very fragmented. Unlike previous contributions in the field, this paper provides an interpretation of the dynamics of stickiness in lean transfer at a micro-level (i.e. for each single phase of the lean transfer process). In addition, it develops a fuller understanding of the influence of context on lean transfer by adopting a configurational view, i.e. studying the joint effect of contextual variables on stickiness, which is a novelty in the lean transfer literature.

The desirability of transferring manufacturing logic and practices to service operations, strongly advocated by Levitt (1972; 1976) in two classic Harvard Business Review articles two decades ago, is now commonly challenged by both service researchers and practitioners. We defend a “production‐line approach to service” by arguing that services can “reindustrialize” by applying revised, progressive manufacturing technologies. We describe how services businesses such as Taco Bell, Southwest Airlines, and Shouldice Hospital have mastered what we call “lean” service ‐ the application of lean manufacturing principles to their own service operations. Overall, services tend to be innovation laggards, compared to manufacturing. Looking ahead, mass customization can be viewed as the convergence of service and manufacturing logic.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the transfer of lean manufacturing/production from the Japanese manufacturing industry to the construction sector in the west.

Research literature from the fields of lean manufacturing/production and lean construction was reviewed. This revealed a number of characteristics that are specific to lean construction, most notably the recognition that critical research findings have been slow to emerge but appear to be gaining momentum.

In the transition from manufacturing to construction the process losses appear to be related to critical aspects and the challenges surrounding practical application to a different context. Lean is highly interpretive and there is no shared definition or understanding of what is meant by lean, lean production, and lean construction. The focus has been mainly on production system design, planning and management, and implementation. This narrow focus has meant that some important issues concerning the wider aspects of lean have been overlooked. There is a need for a “back to basics” discussion on many other aspects of the approach, such as whole‐life value and waste identification.

The work is limited to an extensive literature review.

The extensive literature review makes an original contribution to the lean construction field and provides a valuable resource for researchers.

Over the last decade, some Mexican public organisations have begun to enter into a dynamic in which issues such as service quality, ongoing improvement, and internal and external customer orientation are becoming essential to their day‐to‐day management. The purpose of this paper is to present a successful example of how Lean‐Kaizen is implemented in the human resource service process of a Mexican public service organisation.

The research method adopted is the case study. Research is carried out in a Mexican public service organisation, and adopts a retrospective focus. Four methods are used to gather data: direct observation; participative observation; documentary analysis; and semi‐structured interviews.

The Lean‐Kaizen approach helps this public service organisation to improve cycle times in the human resource selection and hiring process. Various enablers and inhibitors are also identified during implementation.

Research is based on a single case study. However, rather than seeking empirical generalisation, it tries to examine how the Lean‐Kaizen approach can be successfully implemented in a service process.

The research is effectively a guide for practitioners (public managers) wishing to apply or already applying Lean‐Kaizen in their service processes.

A review of academic and practitioner literature on the subject indicated that implementation of the Lean‐Kaizen approach has hardly begun to be explored. It is also significant that in Mexico and Latin America, examples of the transfer and implementation of this kind of approach are practically non‐existent in academic literature on the subject.

Developing a lean supply chain is a continuous improvement effort, so it requires tracking the implementation progress by assessing the achieved level of leanness. However, lean supply chain practices depend on firm-to-firm relationships and an assessment method should consider these network interactions. Given the absence of such a method, this study aims to propose an alternative approach for assessing the leanness level of supply chains.

The authors extracted 18 typical lean supply chain practices from the literature, constituting the leanness assessment parameters. Then, the authors developed an assessment method based on the graph-theoretic approach due to its properties of capturing the interdependencies between elements of a system. The authors tested the proposed method in an automotive supply chain, selecting the focal firm and three of its first-tier suppliers.

The authors positioned partial and overall results in a visual classification scale and the supply chain presented a moderate leanness level. After empirical testing, the proposed method demonstrated its practical feasibility.

This paper contributes to the literature with a novel approach for supply chain leanness assessment. However, to increase its generalizability, it would be beneficial to test the method in non-automotive supply chains, extending the assessment scope to downstream firms and second-tier customers and suppliers.

For practitioners, this paper provides a self-assessment tool to monitor the supply chain leanness and set priorities for improvement.

Besides tackling the interrelationships between firms, the proposed method considers the interdependencies between lean practices, providing partial and overall feedback to enable a systemic assessment.

This study describes how two organisations transitioned to teaching Lean online during and post Covid-19. This study aims to establish how Lean teaching and training can be designed and delivered effectively online without adverse effects on the student’s learning experience of Lean concepts.

A case study approach was used to review the design, application and results of the transition to online Lean teaching and training. Qualitative and quantitative methods were deployed to assess the results.

Online Lean learning and application were assured via the design of practical problem-based teaching environments, aided by using the virtual classroom as an obeya room and as a kaizen environment where students worked in teams. Students were enabled to learn and apply Lean tools practically and reflect on their learnings.

This study demonstrates that effective online design can ensure. Lean methods are understood without affecting the student's learning, classroom experience and grasp of concepts.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the first studies on implementing Lean training and education online during COVID-19 under the lens of both a training provider and university education viewpoint. The changes validated best practices for virtual Lean education and training in the organisations under study, maintained post-COVID.

This paper aims to study the relations between lean operations, lean principles in finance functions and the roles of finance functions.

The paper uses structural equation modeling to analyze data from 408 different firms in the Danish production and services sectors. A dyadic approach is applied, as a sub-sample of 107 chief operating officers in the responding firms is used to investigate the construct validity, reliability and average deviation index of the instrument measuring the roles of finance functions.

The paper finds that lean-operation firms emphasize four different yet interdependent roles of finance functions. The paper also finds that lean operation leads to firms’ finance functions adopting lean principles.

This paper characterizes lean-operation firms as contextually ambidextrous to predict relations between lean operation and roles of finance functions. The paper expands prior case study findings on the roles of finance functions in lean-operation firms, and the findings of the paper underline that finance functions continue to play an important role in these firms.

Decision-makers in lean-operation firms should not be hesitant with respect to integrating finance function workers into the lean operation. Furthermore, decision-makers should understand that a balanced emphasis of the roles of finance functions is necessary to avoid overemphasizing exploitation at the expense of exploration, or vice versa.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to provide large-scale evidence of the roles of finance functions in lean-operation firms and to show that lean principles diffuse to finance functions. Furthermore, the paper introduces a new instrument for measuring finance function roles, based on the competing values framework.

This study aims to explore the challenges in implementing and sustaining lean in garment supplier factories and the buyer–supplier role in mitigating lean barriers in a typical situation and pandemic.

Following a qualitative research approach and multiple embedded case study method, data were collected through in-depth interviews with senior managers of one lead buyer and their four key garment supplier factories in Bangladesh. Within and cross-case analysis, techniques were applied to understand the context-oriented lean challenges and buyer–supplier role in mitigating the challenges.

The study findings demonstrate that garment suppliers are less prepared and unsystematic in lean implementation having limited capabilities and less preparation. Moreover, they have limited support from buyers, less commitment from top management and employee resistance to implementing lean. Lean challenges become more intense because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, buyer–supplier responsible, cooperative and collaborative behaviour can mitigate lean challenges.

Whereas many stakeholders may be responsible for lean challenges, this study explores dyadic role between buyer and supplier only based on a single lead buyer and their four suppliers. Hence future studies could consider more buyers and suppliers for a holistic understanding.

This study could help buyers and suppliers understand the underlying causes of lean implementation challenges in garment supplier factories and their role in sustaining lean reducing the challenges, particularly in a pandemic.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, this study depicts how buyer and supplier can play their due roles to mitigate lean challenges in garment supplier factories in a pandemic situation.

This paper aims to develop the existing theoretical concept of a triad by informing it with the activity-resource-actor (ARA) model in a new empirical context of lean management (LM).

This conceptual paper draws on the industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) school of thought and the ARA model as theoretical lenses to inform research on triads in an LM context.

The authors find that closed buyer-supplier-supplier (BSS) and buyer-supplier-logistics service provider (BSL) triads, which we call “lean triads,” had a positive impact on LM. The authors display the drivers for closure – LM improvements (Table 2) and the properties of these “lean triads” (Figure 3).

The paper focuses only on closed triads and is based on previous empirical studies.

The authors demonstrate to lean managers the drivers for connecting their partners in BSS and BSL triads and show the importance of developing relationships on three layers between all three actors in both triads to improve a firm’s lean performance.

The authors contribute to the discussion within the IMP school of thought on the value of triads by enriching the understanding of a triad concept with the ARA model, which compounds a concept of a multilayered triad in an LM context.

The purpose of this paper is to study the attitudes of higher education employees to the change with Lean at public universities in Morocco in order to determinate the factors of resistance to change and to look for the motivating factors that encourage these employees to participate in change project with Lean.

A questionnaire sent to all administrative and technical staff of higher education at five public universities in Morocco during year 2019. This study has analyzed both a person-oriented approach and a variable-oriented approach and characterized by using Lewin’s change model to manage change with Lean.

The results show that individual, organizational and group factors have a positive impact on employees’ attitudes toward change with Lean but individual factors are more important than other factors.

The research is limited to universities in Morocco and mainly public universities. It is only interested in the first stage in the change process with Lean (unfreezing). Understanding employee attitudes, determining motivation factors and the causes behind resistance to change before embarking in change journey with Lean Higher Education (LHE) enables the public universities in Morocco (management) to better prepare for change by reducing resistance to change to create a favorable climate to implement LHE.

The majority of research works to date focus on implementation of LHE without giving interest to the preparation of the organizational change, this last is very much requested to determine the driving and restraining forces in order to reduce the resistance to change that is the main reason of failure of many change programs. This paper attempts to determinate the factors of resistance to change which allows to the public universities in Morocco to overcome them before moving to the changing stage.