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Lean implementation has become popular over the past three decades in the industry and is becoming more prevalent in, service organizations. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of social and technical Lean practices on sustainable performance (i.e. economic, environmental and social) in service organizations.

The methodology includes the analysis of global results obtained from 139 managers from the service sector.

The results demonstrate that Lean practices have a positive effect on the three perspectives of sustainable performance, regardless of the company size and duration of Lean implementation. Furthermore, both social and technical Lean practices have a similar impact on environmental and economic performance, but their impact on social performance differs, since social Lean practices have a stronger impact on social performance.

This study has a significant contribution to Lean practitioners in service sectors, as it demonstrates that efforts to apply Lean practices can benefit economic results as well as environmental and social performance.

Majority of existing studies focused on the isolated impact of Lean on one of the triple bottom line performance aspects and with a scarcity of studies within the context of services. The intersection of these three strategic areas – Lean, sustainability and services – has not been extensively addressed. There is also a lack of studies that observe sustainability in environmental, social and economic performance, mainly in the service sector.

This article presents a novel case study that analyzes the applicability of DoE in the curling sport in order to improve their own performance and the performance of its athletes. Specifically, this study analyzes the most important factors to increase accuracy and precision in the draw game with curlers' opinions. It was decided to use the “Last Stone Draw (LSD)’ as an appropriate play situation.

Specifically, this study analyzes most important factors to increase accuracy and precision in the draw game with curlers opinions from the German Curling association. Three research techniques were used in this study: case study, interviews and a well-designed experiment. The analysis through the use of DoE includes a measurement system analysis, an initial variance test between two players, a screening and a characterization experiment.

The results obtained from DoE suggest that the factors routine, stress, release, balance, and the previous play situation have a substantial impact on the score of the player's draw game. However, no factor has a statistically significant impact on the average distance to the center of the target. Moreover, the DoE analysis also concludes that the accuracy and precision of the player's performance is not affected equally by all analyzed factors, but they turn into highly significant when examining their relationship to the other factors.

The findings of this study can be beneficial to other sports events in improving the performance. Moreover, DoE has proved to be an invaluable tool for many people in the German Curling Association in understanding the factors which influence the curlers performance and also factors which do not affect the curlers performance.

This research attempts to contribute to the existing sports management literature by identifying a way in which DoE can be an effective tool in non-manufacturing settings for identification of most important factors which influence the curling performance.

Industry 4.0 is a new trend among organizations. Some organizations have been early adopters or later adopters of Industry 4.0. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how performance effects vary between early and late adopters of Industry 4.0.

This study applies a qualitative research methodology using grounded theory. 14 senior management professionals who have implemented Industry 4.0 participated in this study through a theoretical and snowball sampling approach. These professionals were from manufacturing and service sectors, from North America, Europe and Asia. The study used semi structured open-ended interviews to capture the organizational performance on operational, financial, environmental and social dimensions.

The findings were analyzed in terms of four broad themes which emerged from the interviews. In operational performance the operational and implementation cost will be higher for early adopters. The late adopters may enjoy the advantage in terms of improved business models. In terms of financial performance, the early adopters may see a marginal increase in profit and increased stock price compared to late adopters. The performance on the environmental dimension will see early adopters enjoying material efficiency, energy savings and an improved image of the company compared to late adopters. In social performance, the early adopters will provide a better quality of work life, safer manufacturing environment. However, the resistance from labor unions will be higher for early adopters compared to late adopters.

Organizations must decide the timing of implementation of Industry 4.0. This study will act as a guide wherein they can decide to be an early adopter or late adopter based on knowledge of the resulting performance consequences.

This is the first paper that studies the performance effects of early versus late adopters of Industry 4.0.

The purpose of this empirical research is to understand the application of Lean practices (technical and social) and tools in the service sector, whose implementation is less studied, despite its economic relevance. The study aims to extend previous studies that focused on the relationship between Lean and operational and financial performance, and analyzing the impact on sustainability, encompassing economic, social and environmental perspectives.

A pilot survey was conducted with Lean experts in European service companies. The authors have utilized various professional contacts on LinkedIn and a satisfactory response rate was obtained for analysis.

The results of the study showed that there are several motivating factors for the implementation of Lean, the highlights being improving customer satisfaction, efficiency, delivery and cost reduction. The most frequently used Lean tools are related to the identification of improvement opportunities and causes of problems. The pilot survey also made it possible to identify the greater use of technical practices than social practices. The sustainability performance analysis showed that the better performance of service companies is in the economic dimension.

The authors have identified no empirical studies linking Lean and sustainable performance in the service sector. This study bridges this cognitive gap through a pilot study and therefore makes an original contribution to the current literature.