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The purpose of this paper is to present current state of understanding on jet electrodeposition manufacturing; to compare various experimental parameters and their implication on as deposited features; and to understand the characteristics of jet electrodeposition deposition defects and its preventive procedures through available research articles.

A systematic review has been done based on available research articles focused on jet electrodeposition and its characteristics. The review begins with a brief introduction to micro-electrodeposition and high-speed selective jet electrodeposition (HSSJED). The research and developments on how jet electrochemical manufacturing are clustered with conventional micro-electrodeposition and their developments. Furthermore, this study converges on comparative analysis on HSSJED and recent research trends in high-speed jet electrodeposition of metals, their alloys and composites and presents potential perspectives for the future research direction in the final section.

Edge defect, optimum nozzle height and controlled deposition remain major challenges in electrochemical manufacturing. On-situ deposition can be used as initial structural material for micro and nanoelectronic devices. Integration of ultrasonic, laser and acoustic source to jet electrochemical manufacturing are current trends that are promising enhanced homogeneity, controlled density and porosity with high precision manufacturing.

This paper discusses the key issue associated to high-speed jet electrodeposition process. Emphasis has been given to various electrochemical parameters and their effect on deposition. Pros and cons of variations in electrochemical parameters have been studied by comparing the available reports on experimental investigations. Defects and their preventive measures have also been discussed. This review presented a summary of past achievements and recent advancements in the field of jet electrochemical manufacturing.

The paper aims to identify key human and operational focused barriers to the implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM). It develops a comprehensive structural relationship between various barriers to successfully implement TQM for sustainability in Indian organizations.

With the help of expert opinions and extant literature review, we identified the case of TQM failure companies and barriers to implement TQM effectively. Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) and fuzzy MICMAC techniques are employed to develop a structural model and the identified barriers are categorized based on their dependence and driving power in the various categories.

From the intensive case analysis, we identify fourteen barriers that constrain the successful implementation of TQM. The findings also provide a hierarchy of barriers in which the absence of top management involvement and ineffective leadership are the human barriers having the highest dependence.

The critical inputs show the implementation of TQM in the firms being more proactive and well prepared in the selected five companies. The study's emphasis on barriers will help organizations in implementing TQM for better sustainability in an organizational context.

In the successful implementation of TQM, barriers need to be identified because failure has often eliminated the organizations from the market. Thus, TQM is the source of strength to achieve higher productivity, profitability, and sustainable business performance. The barriers must be identified to improve organizational performance to contribute to sustainable development.

COVID-19 pandemic has exposed that even the best of the developed nations have surrendered to the devastations imposed on the global supply chains. The purpose of this study is to explore how COVID-19 has exaggerated the supply chain of production and distribution of Taiwan-based face masks and also investigate the conscientious factors and subfactors for it.

In this study, an analytical hierarchy processes (AHP)-based approach has been used to assign the criterion weights and to prioritize the responsible factors. Initially, based on 26 decision-makers, successful factors were categorized into five main categories, and then main categories and their subcategories factors were prioritized through individual and group decision-maker’s contexts by using the AHP approach.

The results of this AHP model suggest that “Safety” is the most important and top-ranked factor, followed by production, price, work environment and distribution. The key informers in this study are stakeholders which consist of managers, volunteers, associations and non-governmental organizations. The results showed that good behavior of the employees under the “Safety” category is the top positioned responsible factor for successful production and distribution of face masks to the other countries with the highest global percentage of 15.7% and using sanitizers to protect health is the second most successful factor with the global percentage of 11.7%.

The limitations faced in this study were limited to only Taiwan-based mask manufacturing companies, and it was dependent on the decisions of the limited company’s decision-makers.

The novelty of this study is that the empirical analysis of this study has been based on a successful Taiwan masks manufacturing company and evaluates the responsible factors for the production and distribution of Taiwan masks to other countries during COVID-19.

The study aims to identify organizational variables of quality 4.0 for an Indian manufacturing company in the case of digital transformation. Furthermore, the organization enhances its quality 4.0 performances to its success based on the degree of relevance of these variables, insight into these variables and sub-factors to prioritize them.

Initially, two rounds of the survey were conducted with 11 decision-makers from the company made to receive organizational variables scores and prioritize the factors and sub-factors. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based research methodology has been proposed to assign the criterion weights and prioritize the identified variables.

The results of this AHP model demonstrate that “Committed Leadership” is recognized as the top positioned variable and most significant organizational variable, followed by Collaboration and Quality culture, which are developed at the next level. These essential organizational variables with their sub-categories' priorities are identified as contributing attributes.

The findings facilitate quality 4.0 in the digitalization era, which take into contemplating the current state of the business. Furthermore, the understanding of variables provides insightful guidance to analyze, solve complex problems and assess the efficacy of quality 4.0 in digital transformation.

The novelty of this study is to pinpoint, and evaluate the responsible organizational variables and prioritize them that lead to high productivity and competitive advantage considering the AHP method.

This study aims to present a study on the supply chain process of a Myanmar-based pharmaceutical company (named ABC Pvt. Ltd. in this study) that produces pharmaceutical products across Myanmar and aims of bringing quality medical products and best care for Myanmar people’s health. The study aims to identify the key supply chain challenges and manage the opportunities executed by this pharmaceutical company to improve the supply chain process during the COVID-19 outbreak.

This work used a case study and conducted semistructured interviews with the manager, senior managers and senior staff of the ABC Company to improve the supply chain process and develop a comprehensive structural relationship to rank them to streamline the uncertainties, real-time information and agility in a digital supply chain using grey relational analysis (GRA) method.

From the data analysis and results, “Impact of political factor,” “Delay in import process” and “Weak internet connection,” and “Weak knowledge of the use of digital platform,” “Poor information sharing in online by employees” and “Information flow from top management to operational level” have been identified as top and bottom three key challenges, respectively. “Inventory management,” “Selection of transport method” and “Operational cost”, and “Marketing and brand Innovation,” “Online delivery of products” and “E-commerce enablement (Launching applications, tracking system)” are identified as the top and bottom three managing the opportunities, respectively.

The findings of the study help to supply chain decision-makers of the company in their establishment of key challenges and opportunities during the COVID-19 era. As a leading company, it always tries to add value to its product through a supply chain system, effective management teams and working with skillful decision-making toward satisfying the demand on time and monitoring the supplier performance.

The novelty of this study is to identify the key supply chain challenges and opportunities by the GRA method to rank them, considering the case of Myanmar pharmaceutical manufacturing company as a case-based approach to measuring its performance during the COVID-19 outbreak era. This work will assist managers and practitioners help to the company to provide optimal services to its consumers on time in this critical situation.

The purpose of this paper is to review Lean Six Sigma (LSS) literature and report different definitions, demographics, methodologies and industries.

This paper highlights various definitions by different researchers and practitioners. A total of 235 research papers has been reviewed for the LSS theme, research methodology adopted, type of industry, author profile, country of research and year of publication.

From the review, four significant LSS classifications were identified that deal with the spread of LSS in different industries followed by observation for classification.

LSS is a strategy for success, but it did not examine its presence in various Industries. From this paper, readers can understand the quantum of its spread before implementing LSS. For academicians, it will be a comprehensive list of papers for research.

This paper reviews 235 research papers for their year, author profile, research methodology and type of industry. Various characteristics of LSS definitions and their theme are also reviewed.

The purpose of this paper is to report a case study carried out to assess the agility and identify obstacles to agility in a supply chain. A human perception-based framework is used for the calculation of agility. The case study was carried out in a North India-based manufacturing organization.

In this study, the concept of a multi-grade fuzzy logic approach is used. Using this concept, the overall agility index has been determined. The fuzzy logic approach has been used to overcome the disadvantages such as impreciseness and vagueness using a scoring method.

From the analysis, it is observed that the organization on which the study was performed is “very agile.” After evaluating the agility level, the fuzzy performance importance index is calculated, which helps to identify the barriers of agility in the supply chain. These barriers help decision makers to implement appropriate improvement measures for improving agility level. Overall, 11 barriers were identified in the study.

Managers of the contemporary manufacturing organization have to measure the agility level of the organization and identify barriers to agility in order to survive in a competitive environment. The obstacles identified in this study are used to improve the performance of the organization. The enterprise should improve on the weak areas in order to achieve the highest agility level.

The agile supply chain (ASC) enablers proposed by previous researchers are not sufficient for the evaluation of agility of a supply chain. There are a few more ASC enablers such as customer satisfaction, flexibility and adaptability that also play a vital role in making a supply chain agile. Adding these three ASC enablers, a total of seven ASC enablers along with their attributes are being considered for the development of a conceptual model.

The purpose of this paper is to capture the status of implementation of Six Sigma in various manufacturing industries and also examine the success of the Six Sigma by using different performance indicators.

The methodology of critical review involves the selection and classification of 112 research articles on the implementation of Six Sigma in different manufacturing industries. The selected articles are categorized by the following: articles distribution based on the year of publication, publication database, various journals, contribution of authors, continent, scale of industry, implemented approaches, focused industry, tools and techniques used in phases of Six Sigma methodology, and performance indicators used in Six Sigma implementation. Then after, future scopes of research opportunities are derived based on significant findings.

The literature revealed that: Very few work was undertaken on the implementation of Six Sigma in various manufacturing industries like ceramic, paper, gems and jewelry, cement, furniture, stone, fertilizer, forging, paper and surface treatment industries. Most of the researchers have considered very few performance indicators to identify the improvement after Six Sigma implementation. But, there is no clue regarding overall improvement in different perspectives after the implementation of Six Sigma. The financial indicators, personnel indicators, process indicators and customer indicators are useful to measure the overall improvement after the implementation of Six Sigma in the manufacturing sector.

The study was carried out on the implementation of Six Sigma methodology in various manufacturing industries, and various performance indicators were identified while implementing the Six Sigma methodology. Case studies pertaining to service industries were not covered here.

Very little research has been carried out to measure the overall success of implementing Six Sigma methodology in manufacturing industries. This paper will provide value to students, researchers and practitioners of Six Sigma by providing insight into the implementation of Six Sigma in manufacturing industries.

This paper aims to discuss the concept of leanness and provide an effective assessment tool for measuring leanness of small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

A hybrid interpretive structural modelling–analytical network process (ISM-ANP) approach is used to develop leanness index for SMEs. The parameters for leanness are extracted from the literature survey, and the inter-relationships among them are identified through ISM approach. Further, the ANP tool is used to derive the weights of the parameters, and the leanness index is developed for SMEs.

A leanness assessment model is developed, which considers the interdependencies among leanness parameters. Continuous improvement, Just in Time and active management participation, respectively, get first, second and third ranks for leanness measurement in SMEs.

This study is based on the expert’s opinion, and it may tend to be biased. However, future study will be performed as empirical research to catch more explicit concept and more insights of leanness in context of SME sector.

This paper provides guidelines to the managers of SMEs for measuring the leanness index and planning for future. This leanness index gives information regarding the degree of lean adoption in the organization.

The proposed model has been developed by the expert opinion of academicians and practitioners. The proposed model can provide guidelines and directions for managers for leanness assessment in SME context.

The advent of recession at the beginning of twenty-first century forced many organizations worldwide to reduce cost and to be more responsive to customer demands. Lean Manufacturing (LM) has been widely perceived by industry as an answer to these requirements because LM reduces waste without additional requirements of resources. This led to a spurt in LM research across the globe mostly through empirical and exploratory studies which resulted in a plethora of LM definitions with divergent scopes, objectives, performance indicators, tools/techniques/methodologies, and concepts/elements. The purpose of this paper is to review LM literature and report these divergent definitions, scopes, objectives, and tools/techniques/methodologies.

This paper highlights various definitions by various researchers and practitioners. A total of 209 research papers have been reviewed for the research contribution, research methodology adopted, tools/techniques/methodologies used, type of industry, author profile, country of research, and year of publication.

There are plethora of LM definitions with divergent objectives and scope. Theory verification through empirical and exploratory studies has been the focus of research in LM. Automotive industry has been the focus of LM research but LM has also been adopted by other types of industries also. One of the critical implementation factors of LM is simultaneous adoption of leanness in supply chain. LM has become an integrated system composed of highly integrated elements and a wide variety of management practices. There is lack of standard LM implementation process/framework.

The paper reviews 209 research papers for their research contribution, research methodology, author profile, type of industry, and tools/techniques/methodology used. Various characteristics of LM definitions are also reviewed.