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The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of research on lean production (LP) since the concept was developed at the end of the 1980s with the aim of developing a model that permits an extended and comprehensive understanding of LP.

A literature survey of peer reviewed journal articles and paradigmatic books with managerial impact is employed as the research methodology.

The findings derived from the evaluation of the publications analysed have led to the creation of an extended model of LP. Specifically, two new groups of factors to be taken into account in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of LP are presented. Apart from internal aspects at the shop floor level and value chain elements, the model provided includes work organisation and the impact that the geographical context has on LP. In addition, the critical assessment of publications has allowed a number of specific aspects to be identified for which there is no empirical evidence.

This paper puts forward a new classification of literature identifying key aspects that should be included for LP development and management. It might represent new opportunities for rigorous and relevant research that would contribute to more transparent knowledge of LP being gained.

The purpose of this study is to estimate and extract various significant technology push (TP) strategies influencing sustainable development in Indian manufacturing industries. The study critically examines the effectiveness of TP strategies in manufacturing enterprises.

An extensive survey of 92 companies has been executed to identify improvements made by TP strategies to achieve sustainable development in manufacturing industries. The companies in the survey include medium− and large−scale manufacturing enterprises. The correlations between various TP strategies and sustainable development indicators are evaluated and validated using various numerical methods and tools.

The focus of the paper is on the distinguishable contributions made by TP strategies such as innovative capability; research and development; corporate strategy; and export orientation toward achieving sustainable development. The inter−relationships between different TP practices with sustainable development indicators have been evaluated to efficiently manage the objectives of growth and sustainability. The research concludes that two TP strategies, namely, corporate strategy and innovative capability, are found to be substantial in the present context. These strategies have emerged as a foundation for several development initiatives and actively support manufacturing industries in accomplishing sustainable development. however, enterprises need to work more actively on improving less significant issues of TP.

In the present investigation, contributions made by TP practices have been evaluated to accomplish sustainable development in Indian manufacturing industries. Hence, the results obtained may need some modifications before applying to other countries. Moreover, issue−wise independent modeling can also be performed to assess the importance of TP strategies under specific orientations.

The research gives priority to enhancement in the planning among various TP practices and sustainable development indicators in the industries to impart TP as an important practice to meet various challenges of competent markets worldwide.

It has been exhibited from the observations that adequate TP strategies can efficiently contribute toward recognition of sustainable development to compete in the highly progressive global market. The results of various inter−relationships among TP practices and sustainable development indicators represent the effectiveness of TP practices for accomplishment of social and organizational objectives.

It has been investigated in the present study that TP practices are significant initiatives taken by the manufacturing industries for performance improvement and sustainable development. The paper elaborates the study to find out TP issues that need to be assessed significantly to avail the advantages of sustainable development and to meet the challenges posed by global market. The inter−relationships among TP strategies and sustainable development indicators have been analyzed using various statistical tools and techniques, such as inter−item covariance test; Pearson’s correlation analysis; multiple regression analysis; analytic hierarchy process and canonical correlation analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the significance of various technology push (TP) and demand pull (DP) practices substantial for achieving sustainable development in Indian manufacturing industries. The research crucially examines the effectiveness of TP-DP practices in manufacturing companies.

An extensive survey of 92 companies in India has been executed to identify improvements made by TP-DP practices, to achieve sustainable development in manufacturing industries. The companies in the survey include medium- and large-scale manufacturing enterprises. The correlations between various TP-DP practices and sustainable development parameters are evaluated and validated using various numerical methods and tools.

The focus of the paper is on the distinguishable contributions made by TP-DP practices like innovative capability, research and development, corporate strategy, export orientation, stringent implementation of government regulations, transforming capabilities, unionized labor and customer attributes toward achieving sustainable development in manufacturing industries. The inter-relationships between different TP-DP practices with sustainable development parameters are evaluated to effectively manage the goals and objectives of industries related to sustainability and growth. However, it is also acknowledged that manufacturing firms need to work more actively on managing certain practices of TP-DP.

In the present investigation, contributions made by TP-DP practices are evaluated to accomplish sustainable development in Indian manufacturing industries. Hence, the results obtained may need some modifications before applying to other countries. Moreover, issue-wise independent modeling can also be performed to assess the importance of TP-DP practices under specific orientations.

The research gives priority to enhancement in the planning among various TP-DP practices and sustainable development indicators in the industries, to impart TP-DP as important practices to meet the challenges of competent markets worldwide.

It has been exhibited from the observations that adequate TP-DP practices can efficiently contribute toward recognition of sustainable development to compete in the highly progressive global market. The results of various inter-relationships among TP-DP practices and sustainable development parameters represent the effectiveness of TP-DP practices for accomplishment of social as well as organizational objectives.

The investigation shows that TP-DP practices are significant initiatives employed by the manufacturing industries for performance improvement and sustainable development. The paper peeks into the research to find out TP-DP issues that need to be assessed efficiently by companies to avail the benefits of sustainable development to meet the challenges posed by international markets.

The purpose of this paper is to aim at identifying the relationships between Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies and Lean Manufacturing (LM) practices.

A systematic literature review was conducted, in which 93 studies were analyzed according to their content and contextualization level.

In total, 9 I4.0 technologies and 14 LM practices were identified and categorized according to different levels of both value stream application and synergy. From the 126 pairwise relationships, 24 were classified as being of high synergy (e.g. relationship between Cyber-Physical Systems and value stream mapping), revealing the existence of a positive interaction between LPs and I4.0 technologies toward the achievement of a higher operational performance. Further, three future research opportunities were suggested: to validate the proposed synergies among LPs and I4.0 technologies; to distinguish the effects of relationships on all levels of flow; and to examine the effect of such relationships on operational performance.

With the emergence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the specificities on the relationship between LM and I4.0 still need further investigation. This paper provides a better understanding of existing literature related to I4.0, LM, and their relationship, as well as pointing out research gaps to encourage future works.

This study aims to assess the possibility of implementing lean practices in the Halal food supply chain, and the barriers to their implementation.

A survey was used to identify the perceived issues and attitudes towards implementing lean practices in the supply chain. The questionnaire was distributed to 300 Halal food firms in Malaysia. A total of 61 usable replies were received.

More than 70 percent of the firms reported that lean supply chain (LSC) has not yet been implemented in their firm. Data analysis shows that 14 percent of non-lean firms urgently need to implement lean manufacturing. Market competition and uncertainty was highlighted as an important barrier in implementing LSC among lean firms. In contrast, lack of customer awareness of LSCM practices was recognised as a major barrier in non-lean firms.

There is little documentation regarding the status of LSC implementation in the Halal food industries, and therefore identifying the necessity of its implementation and the important impediments was identified as a gap in the existing literature. This paper provides insightful information on the necessity of implementing lean manufacturing practices in Halal food supply chains.

Scholars in social sciences tend to use the term of path dependence without explaining exactly what they mean by it. Path dependence is a useful approach to understand the success or otherwise of the implementation of management innovation. The aim of this paper is to identify under which conditions it makes sense to talk about path dependence, and the relevance of using path dependence to the analysis of management innovation.

The path dependence literature in different contexts and knowledge areas within social science is reviewed using a narrative approach.

The concept of path dependence can be used to study management innovation, particularly when analyzing the introduction of new management practices. The authors argue that the order in which management practices are introduced has a profound effect on the outcomes for the organization. When the appropriate practices are introduced first, these create enhanced capabilities for the implementation of subsequent practices. If inappropriate practices are rolled out, they may severely impede management innovation and thus evolution and change of the firm.

This work highlights the need to conduct further research to understand the interaction between existing practices and the new ones. This study can be extended with an empirical work to corroborate the results presented here.

By reviewing the different definitions of path dependence that exist in the literature, this paper will stimulate a debate on the necessary and sufficient conditions of path dependence and encourage a greater level of clarity in the management innovation area.

The purpose of this paper is to holistically discuss, explore and synthesise the key literature on visual management (VM), an important, yet highly fragmented subject that is frequently referred in lean production accounts.

An extensive literature review was conducted to classify the current literature, to explore the different aspects and limitations of the current discussions on the subject, to clarify in what ways VM benefits manifest themselves in a workplace and to identify the future research focus.

VM is an important close-range communication strategy based on cognitively effective information conveyance. This strategy has been frequently discussed in the production management literature. However, the literature is fragmented as to the roles of VM in a production setting; the body of literature lacks integrated focus and cohesion with an abundance of related terminology from scholarly works and consultant books; a practical VM tools taxonomy and a visual workplace implementation framework were presented; there is poor clarity with regards to the functions (benefits) that VM may provide within organisations, nine conceptual VM functions were proposed; a wide array of future research directions related to VM was identified.

This paper synthesises the key literature related to VM, providing a conceptual picture of the current knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of internal benchmarking through the evaluation of quality management in two quality departments (Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC)) in a pharmaceutical company by utilizing total quality index (TQI).

In order to achieve the above-mentioned purpose a structured questionnaire was used to assess the gap between the ideal and current status of the quality management system. The mean differences between the current and ideal states for the eight critical factors were compared for the two departments using t-test.

There is difference in the actual and ideal scores on three out of eight critical factors between the QA and QC departments.

The internal benchmarking process which was applied in this case study can be applied in other pharmaceutical companies in order to improve the status of the quality management system and achieve competitive advantage.

Benchmarking of total quality management (TQM) can improve the performance of organizations. The benchmarking tool used in this study TQI is an information technology-supported tool that helps managers assess a TQM program by enabling the cost-effective measurement of key organizational processes. TQI measures the ideal and actual quality management along eight critical factors synthesized by Saraph et al. (1989).

Although lean popularity is rapidly growing, its implementation is far from problem-free and companies may experience difficulties in sustaining long-term success. On this premises, the purpose of this paper is to understand to what extent human factors, affected by the implementation of both hard (defined as technical and analytical tools) and soft (concerning people and relations) lean practices, play a key role in achieving long-term superior performance.

The analysis of the relationships between lean practices implementation, human factors and operational performance is carried out in a single exploratory case study. A retrospective approach is adopted to trace the changes of human and operational performance before, during and after the introduction of lean management (LM) implementation. In particular, a mixed method concurrent design merging results of a qualitative analysis with data collected from a survey is selected to provide a more realistic benefit in the exploration of the proposed research questions.

The results show a short-term direct relationship between the implementation of lean practices (hard and soft) and physical work environment and job characteristics, directly connected to operational outcome. In the long term, operational performance is influenced by employee behaviour outcome and conditioned by physical work environment and job characteristics with the mediating effect of individual characteristics.

The proposed model supports the building of a roadmap for LM implementation, taking into account the role of the human factors to achieve superior operational performance. Moreover, it helps managers to implement a monitoring system to check how social and technical components of a LM system evolve over time. Finally, it supports the definition of specific training programs, tailored for specific workers’ types.

This paper extends theory in LM, highlighting how hard and soft lean practices have to interact to enable a successful LM implementation.

Lean manufacturing (LM) practices and tools are among the key concepts that assist managers and engineers sustain competitiveness in an expanding global market. The purpose of this paper is to identify effective practices and tools of lean manufacturing implementation in an Iranian manufacturing industry.

This study used a quantitative method. Stratified random sampling and self-administrated questionnaires were sent to respondents in an Iranian manufacturing industry.

The final results indicate that processes and equipment, planning and control, supplier relationship, human resources and customer relations are significant practices in lean manufacturing in Iranian manufacturing factories. The results from this survey additionally show that lean tools such as Kaizen, 5S, setup time reduction, cellular manufacturing, continuous flow, equipment layout, product design simplicity and error proof equipment are crucial to lean manufacturing implementation.

This study focused solely on a manufacturing industry in Iran that deals with electrical, electronic, metal, plastic, rubber and other automotive components.

The findings of this study emphasize some implications and suggest that reducing cost is more effective and decreased inventory is less effective on lean manufacturing implementation. The current study results should assist quality mangers, product managers and director managers as well as academicians.

An investigation was carried out in this study based on the current situation of Iran’s manufacturing industry to empirically examine and evaluate the effect of lean practices and tools. Besides, a very limited number of studies have been done regarding the implementation of lean thinking and practices in Iran’s manufacturing industry.