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This editorial aims to introduce the theme of the special issue: “Lean vs agile from an organizational sustainability, complexity and learning perspective”.

The methodology of the editorial is that of a survey. In the first part it presents the relevance of the theme and in the second part it presents the papers included in the special issue, including their themes, findings and novel contributions.

The individual findings by the papers present significant new contributions in a deeper insight of the “lean” and “agile” philosophies, or approaches in, and to, organizations. It could be noticed that the controversies of the issue “lean vs. agile” still remain. However, it could be said that an eventual further investigation in the phenomenology of “lean” and “agile” will be more informed after consideration of the results presented in this special issue.

Further investigation should be undertaken on a more abstract “level” of the theories of “lean” and “agile” and their mutual relationship, such as theories about the internal processes of “lean”/“agile” users, general “lean”/“agile” theories, epistemology of “lean”/“agile”, and ontology of “lean”/“agile”, and relationship with learning organization and chaordic organization.

Readers, both theoreticians and practitioners, will find in this editorial a “guide” to the issues of their interest concerning the valuable explanations, ideas and tools, presented in the special issue, for both concrete applications in enterprises and organizations, and for further research and development of learning, complex and sustainable organizations, and towards new ideas and insights generation.

This editorial presents an analysis of the special issue on “lean vs agile”, contributing to the higher levels of the theories of “lean” and “agile” and their mutual relationship, namely to the theories about the internal processes of “lean”/“agile” users, general “lean”/“agile” theories, and epistemology of “lean”/“agile”.

This paper aims to explore the divergences and commitments between the lean, agile, resilient and green paradigms while investigating the effect of paradigms' practices within supply chain attributes.

A conceptual model with lean, agile, resilient and green practices and supply chain management attributes is proposed. Causal diagrams were used to represent the relationships between paradigm practices and supply chain attributes. The four diagrams were aggregated to build the conceptual model.

The conceptual model allows for the identification of synergies and divergences resulting from the paradigms practices implementation. The synergies between paradigms are related to “information frequency” and “integration level” increasing as well as reduction of “production lead time” and “transportation lead time”. However, other supply chain attributes such as “capacity surplus”, “inventory level” and “replenishment frequency” are affected in opposite directions by some paradigms creating divergences.

The model relationships were established using an anecdotal approach derived from the literature review, reflecting only a partial view of supply chain dynamics. More research related to other supply chain attributes and/or paradigm practices, and validation of the proposed relationships is suggested.

The proposed model can be the basis for further research in lean, agile, resilient and green paradigms, contributing to a more sustainable and competitive lean supply chain with the necessary agility toward a quick response, resiliency to disruptions, and harmonization with the ecologic and environmental aspects.

To the authors' knowledge this paper is the first to provide an understanding about the tradeoffs among lean, agile, resilient and green supply chain paradigms.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current spare parts replenishment system of the Army. This exercise is being done with an aim to assess the capability of the current system to implement a time separated lean-agile system of spare parts replenishment.

The paper is based on a survey conducted on people in managerial ranks, working in the field of military logistics. The survey is thereafter summarised to ascertain the current status of spare parts replenishment system in the Army. The findings of the survey are elaborated at the end of the paper.

The strengths of the current spare parts replenishment system are highlighted. This is followed with the weaknesses of the system in implementing a dynamic lean-agile replenishment system.

The paper is aimed at assessing the capability of the current spare parts replenishment system and its ability to adapt to a novel replenishment system that is lean in peacetime to save money and agile during war to increase reliability of equipment achieved by a certainty of supply. The survey conducted on the persons actually involved in this logistics reveals areas that need emphasis in order to achieve such a time separated lean-agile replenishment system.

In the modern manufacturing environment, it is imperative to apply the manufacturing concepts of lean, agile, resilient and green, collectively known as LARG manufacturing, to achieve excellence in which lean manufacturing eliminates wastes; agile manufacturing makes processes fast, efficient and flexible; resilient paradigm deals with countering the uncertainty while green manufacturing improves environmental performance. The objective of this study is to develop an integration framework that synergizes LARG manufacturing with Industry 4.0.

Through a literature review, the authors have explored the possibility of collaboration between constituents of lean, agile, resilient and green manufacturing with the facets of Industry 4.0.

The authors have developed a comprehensive integration framework that has been divided into 11 phases and 31 steps in which the various Industry 4.0 facets have supplemented the lean, agile, resilient and green paradigms.

This investigation and adoption of technologically intensive automation shall provide clarity to practitioners regarding the synergy of LARG manufacturing & Industry 4.0, so that fast and efficient manufacturing processes can be achieved.

The framework provides detailed insight towards implementation of LARG practices in a manufacturing organization in coalescence with Industry 4.0 practices.

This paper aims to respond to the high cost of facility management-enabled building information model (FM-BIM) creation and maintenance, a significant and under-researched barrier to adoption for existing buildings. The resultant approach focuses on only value-adding content (“Lean”) developed flexibly and iteratively in collaboration with end-users (“Agile”).

Five case studies were developed for university and hospital buildings in collaboration with end-users, guided by the process presented. These informed the refinement of a robust and flexible approach to increase BIM functionality with minimal geometry, focusing instead on the development of specific parameters to map semantic information necessary for each desired FM use.

The resulting BIM provided a breadth of model functionality with minimal modeling effort: 15 hours average implementation time per supported FM use. This low level of effort was achieved by limiting geometry to where it is necessary for the FM use implementation. Instead, the model incorporated the majority of geometry by reference and focused on semantic and topological parameters to house FM information.

This study provides the basis for a new ontology structure focused on defining the rules for hosting asset management data (host entity, parameter type and characteristics) to reduce the reliance on complex geometric model development.

By prioritizing highly beneficial applications, early investment is minimized, providing quick returns at low risk, demonstrating the value of FM-BIM to end-users.

The Lean-Agile approach addresses the known research gap of low-effort, flexible approaches to FM-BIM model creation and maintenance and its effectiveness is analyzed through five case studies.

Armies around the world face the dilemma of reaching the right size of the logistics chain, without compromising the effectiveness of it. The stocking of spares for maintaining the equipment and the vehicles of the army is done with just in case philosophy which results in huge inventories that have associated holding and carrying costs. Material managers of the army must learn lessons from the industry about rightsizing their inventories. Concepts like lean and agile must find place in managing spares of army. Both these concepts have their inherent positives which must be exploited by making use of them at the opportune time. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper starts with discussing the case study of spare parts supply of army. The paper then presents a framework where both lean and agile methods of managing inventory can be used in army. The paper also brings out salient aspects of both these concepts as relevant to spares management in army. The paper also proposes use of automation incorporating MIMOSA database and Ontology-based knowledge repositories.

The paper brings out the fact that both lean and agile supply chains can be used for spares replenishment in army. The paper also gives out a framework to implement the concept.

This concept has been used in the field of healthcare, however, this paper is original in its approach to use it for the army spare parts replenishment. Use of Ontology and MIMOSA as proposed in the paper is also an original attempt.

This research enlarges the debate on the operations management strategies pursued by manufacturing companies. The purpose of this paper is to focus on issues concerning servitisation and customisation, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and Lean-agile, supply chain orchestration, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and Lean for design management.

A questionnaire of eight questions which stemmed from a literature review was completed by 152 senior operations managers from 120 large European manufacturing companies. Responses were scaled from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The results were tested for reliability using Cronbach’s α test. The questions were tested through a one-sample t-test.

The 152 respondents consider servitisation and standardisation to be a trade-off. They consider integration of ERP strategies with Lean and agile systems and customised products/processes to be difficult. Furthermore, suppliers’ orchestration is considered not that suitable for manufacturing companies and suppliers’ CSR performance measurement excessive. By contrast, a CSR internal performance measurement is helpful for increasing sales. The respondents also indicate that there is a lack of Lean tools for design and development processes and Six Sigma is the only strategy for improving quality performance in design and development processes.

The findings are applicable only to the manufacturing sector. The findings of this research indicate many avenues of research for scholars.

The findings can be very useful for manufacturing operations managers deciding their future strategies on operations.

Findings related to servitisation and customisation, ERP and Lean-agile, supply orchestration for manufacturing companies and Lean and agile for product design are original and open a valuable debate.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the existing knowledge about the relationships between advanced manufacturing technology (AMT), lean manufacturing (LM), agile manufacturing (AM), and business performance.

A questionnaire-based survey was performed to collect data from 189 Iranian automobile part manufacturers. Statistical analysis of hypothesized relationships was conducted via partial least squares structural equation modeling.

AMT significantly contributes to the development of both LM and AM. These manufacturing systems can co-exist in one system, and LM is a precursor to AM. LM contributes to operational performance whereas AM improves marketing performance and financial performance.

Relying on the cross-sectional data of this research, and lack of generalizability of findings are key limitations. An interesting direction for future research would be to empirically offer a hybrid lean-agile approach and further map the mechanism through which this hybrid approach can be achieved in practice.

Both LM and AM are information-intensive and highly supported by AMT. They contribute to different aspects of business performance. Pursuing both cost-leadership strategy and product mix flexibility is viable via hybridizing the lean and agile systems.

This study is among the first to address issues related to the lean-AM relationship among developing countries. This study is unique in the sense it shows the mechanism through which the value of AMT is truly transformed to performance improvement.

With the emergence of the concepts of lean, agile and leagile paradigms for supply chains, organizations have little idea as to which model suits them based on the their supply chain's ability to counter risks and take on the challenges of the fast changing customer preferences. This paper aims to map supply chains on these two dimensions.

A model is proposed by which suitable supply chain strategy can be selected based on customer sensitivity and risk alleviation competency dimension. Graph theoretic approach is applied to quantify these dimensions for three case supply chains.

The proposed model was tested for three Indian SMEs clusters and suitable supply chain strategy was suggested.

It is recommended that the model be tested for those supply chains which have established themselves as lean, agile or leagile entities.

Suggested model would help organizations to select suitable supply chain strategy based on customer sensitivity and risk alleviation competency and the transition required in tune with the market requirements in which they operate. Also the areas which need improvements from the perspective of risk alleviation competency or customer sensitivity can be easily delineated.

Mapping supply chains based on quantification of customer sensitivity and risk alleviation competency dimension is a novel effort in the area of supply chain management.