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This report highlights the current understanding of personality disorders with specific emphasis on service provision in the context of recent policies and guidelines issued by the Department of Health. It gives an overview of the wide range of perspectives of various stakeholders. It explores the key aspects of collaboration and the implications of a collaborative approach to delivering services for people with personality disorders. It also makes recommendations for implementation and identifies the organisations involved in the process of collaboration.

There is an increasing emphasis on strengthening links between the primary and specialist services in order to provide more effective care for patients. The aim of this paper is to focus on a study to engage frontline, secondary care clinicians in a process of reflection on the role of link workers and to identify their view of priorities.

The paper adopts a mixed method study involving focus groups (qualitative method with deductive approach) followed by a survey (quantitative method with an interpretative approach).

The essential role of link workers in managing clinical throughput/flow and improving communication with general practitioners is highlighted. In contrast, crisis intervention and relapse prevention were identified to be of least importance, probably indicating the role of crisis teams and community teams in fulfilling these functions, respectively.

It has become apparent through this evaluation that there may be a need to strike a balance between the emphasis upon greater integration of this role with community mental health teams and closer collaboration with general practitioners.

The study is part of a service evaluation undertaken with a view to evaluating the role of link workers.

Cummins Generator Technologies India Limited (CGTIL) was in the process of setting up a world-class factory at Ranjangaon based on “lean” production principles. The project team, however, went a step ahead and married “green” with “lean”. While lean is about taking the system inefficiencies out, the green is about harmony with nature. The case is about CGTIL's journey of deriving synergies between seemingly conflicting objectives of lean and green.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework to assess the sustainability of service supply chains (SC) based on the concept of the balanced scorecard and three dimensions of sustainability, namely economic, social, and environmental performance.

After reviewing the literature and interviewing the experts, the preliminary list of identified general criteria is categorized in the four perspectives. Then, to select the most important factors in hospital SC, 15 experts evaluated the identified criteria by questionnaires of Fuzzy Delphi Method. Then, interpretative structural modeling was applied to identify the interrelations between the perspectives and between the criteria.

The framework includes four perspectives, financial; service SC operations; stakeholders’ satisfaction in the direction of sustainability; and learning, growth, and innovation, to improve the SC for sustainability in the service industry. According to the results, the identified criteria are interrelated.

The paper provides an important reference to assess the sustainability of service SCs. It will be beneficial in strategic and operational decision-making in service industries.

Reviewing the literature shows that the concept of sustainability of service SCs is still immature. The paper is a preliminary effort to identify the general criteria of sustainability and their interrelations in the service sector. The presented general framework links the financial measures with the environmental and social measures. It helps to maintain the balance between the sustainability goals for the service SC managers. It can be modified and applied in different service sectors.

The purpose of this paper is to determine agile supply chain management (ASCM) among SMEs in manufacturing-related services sector. The study propose that entrepreneurial orientation (EO), participative management style, supplier relations, resource management, just-in-time (JIT) methodology and technology utilization (TU) are several drivers of ASCM – an effective management decision-making approach.

A total of 197 questionnaires were collected among SMEs to empirically test the proposed model. Structural equation modelling was employed using partial least squares approach to assess measurement and structural model for reflective and formative constructs.

The results reveal that EO, supplier relations, resource management, JIT methodology and TU positively influence ASCM while participative management style is not a predictor towards an effective ASCM. Moreover, EO was found to be a second-order formative construct comprising of innovativeness, risk taking and proactiveness, and ASCM is a first-order formative construct.

Prior literature regarding supply chain management (SCM) has focussed mainly on critical success factors of SCM and green SCM. Limited empirical studies have examined the influence of EO, participative management style, supplier relations, resource management, JIT methodology and TU on ASCM among SMEs in manufacturing-related services sector.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework of sustainable service supply chain management (SCM) processes and practices in the multi-dimensional construct. It tries to provide a template for those sustainability general key practices that can be scheduled and budgeted in different service sectors.

To provide an applicable framework, its adaptability to most service settings should be ensured. In this regard, at first, the related literature on service SCM processes and sustainability practices of SCM are reviewed. To modify and confirm the extracted list, it is distributed to experts. After summarizing experts’ opinions, an initial list of the sustainable service supply chain practices (SSSCPs) is provided. Finally, the Fuzzy Delphi Method is applied to construct the framework for hospital supply chain (SC).

It suggests that the SSSCPs can be constructed in terms of seven major processes: managing the sustainable supplier, sustainable employee, sustainable customer, sustainable service performance, sustainable service operations, sustainable external relations, and sustainable knowledge, information and technology.

The framework can be employed as a template of sustainability practices for individual member firms of service SCs to identify and implement the key practices toward sustainability.

Reviewing the literature indicates that determining what is unique about the sustainable SCM in the service sector is immature. The paper is a preliminary effort to identify the general sustainability practices, in incorporating all sustainability dimensions in service SC processes.

Simulation has attracted increasing attention in lean production research as a response to address the complexities of the production environment and difficulties of dealing with changes within a system. Considerable growth of using simulation to facilitate lean acceptance and implementation has been observed across different projects and sectors. However, a thorough review of the development and use of simulation in lean production research is limited.

This study aims to address this gap by reviewing 311 journal papers published in the past two decades on this specific research area and identify the state-of-the-art development and propose future research directions.

The review shows that current studies related to simulation in lean production research can be categorised into two major research streams, namely, simulation assisted lean facilitation and evaluation, and simulation-based lean education and training. Under the first research stream, a total of 19 application areas have been identified which applied both lean and simulation in their studies. The evolution of the simulation techniques used in these studies has been analysed as well. Meanwhile, four types of simulation games have been identified in the stream of simulation-based lean education and training and the impact and applicability of the different simulation and games have been discussed. A framework for engaging lean and simulation is suggested based on the review of the existing studies. The analysis in both streams also highlights the importance of stakeholder engagement and the utilisation of information technologies for future studies.

The findings of this study are expected to provide useful references for the future development and application of simulation in lean production research.

This paper conducted a broad and extensive review of simulation integrated lean production research. An in-depth examination of the retrieved papers was conducted through a structured and quantitative analysis to understand the current body of knowledge.