Purpose Building on organizational support theory and social exchange theory, the purpose of this paper is to study the impact of organizational support on employee performance (EP) in the context of flexible manufacturing. In particular, the authors aimed to investigate the mediating role of employee attitude between organizational support and EP, and the moderating role of organizational justice (OJ). Design/methodology/approach A total of 180 participants from 36 work teams employed in 7 large automotive manufacturing enterprises in China were surveyed using a questionnaire designed by the authors. Multiple linear regressions were used to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings The results revealed four new performance indicators of frontline workers in the context of flexible manufacturing: continuous learning, teamwork, problem solving and active work. Organizational support can be divided into reinforcing support and inhibitive support. Reinforcing organizational support has a positive effect on new performance of frontline workers, and a sense of belonging plays a strong mediating role between them. Inhibitive organizational support plays an important role in the sense of awe (SA) of employees, but the SA has no influence on new performance of frontline workers. OJ plays a strong moderating role between organizational support and employee attitudes. Originality/value This study is one of the first attempts to explore the performance of frontline workers in the context of flexible manufacturing and contributes to the existing literature on the relationship between organizational support and EP.

As an animal-derived food, pork provides Chinese consumers with important nutritional value. The frequent safety incidents related to pork-made food have led the government and public advocate that a traceability system is as an effective means of controlling food quality and safety. This paper thus introduces a mobile pork quality and safety tracing system based on 2D (two-dimensional) barcode (also known as QR code) technology. First, literature search and field observations are used to evaluate the business processes in pork supply chain and key traceability information in the system.Then, a mobile solution based on 2D barcode technology for information collection, transformation, and delivery is designed. Finally, a pilot implementation in Jilin Province's Meat and Meat Products Safety Traceability and Regulatory Digitization Project is reported. The traceability system was integrated with the government supervision system to achieve the supervision and traceability of pork from source to table. Implementation results reveal that the system can realize batch-based traceability of pork, which greatly decreases traceability system cost. Additionally, the information verification mechanism between upstream and downstream players, as well as the full participation of consumers, enterprises, and the government, significantly improve the credibility of the traced information.