Barriers in Green Lean implementation: a combined systematic literature review and interpretive structural modelling approach

Abstract

Green Lean has recently emerged as an alternative strategy for organizations to pursue both operational and sustainability excellence. The interest on this approach has rapidly risen in both academic and industry circles. However, despite this interest, very limited research has focused on its implementation, and no research has investigated the barriers that hinder the success of such activity. This study investigates the Green Lean implementation barriers and their contextual relationships and effects on the integration and deployment of this approach. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR), Interpretative Structural Modelling and fuzzy Matriced' Impacts Croise's Multiplication Appliqée a UN Classement (MICMAC) analyzes were carried out. Fifteen barriers were extracted from the SLR and then validated in consultation with industry and academic experts. The Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) method was used to understand the relationship between the fifteen barriers and to develop a hierarchical model of these. The different barriers were classified into 'linkage' and 'dependent' barriers by using MICMAC analysis. The results suggested that all the identified barriers play an important role, and hence can equally act as a significant hurdle to the implementation of Green Lean projects. This study can help managers and policy makers in better understanding these barriers. Thus, they can be assisted in managing and prioritizing barriers towards the successful implementation of Green Lean initiatives for better financial and environmental performance.

A lean and cleaner production benchmarking method for sustainability assessment: A study of manufacturing companies in Brazil

“…On the other hand, another set of practices that have contributed to sustainability are those of Lean Manufacturing (LM) (Garza-Reyes, 2015a). In this line, recent studies have demonstrated that LM can be a significant contributor to address current sustainability issues (Cherrafi et al, 2017a;Nadeem et al, 2017;Cherrafi et al, 2016;Garza-Reyes et al, 2016;Chiarini, 2014;Jabbour et al, 2013). Consequently, Lean and Green initiatives have been merged to deploy operational strategies that aim at not only helping organizations to achieve their economic objectives but also improve their sustainability performance (Garza-Reyes, 2015b).…”

“…Green Lean, has recently taken relevance in the scholarly literature (e.g. Verrier et al, 2016;Cherrafi et al, 2017a;Cherrafi et al, 2016;Garza-Reyes, 2015a; Garza-Reyes, 2015b) due to the synergetic characteristics of Lean and Green and the positive results associated to their integration.…”

“…However, very little about this synergy has been reported in the scholarly literature (Silva et al, 2017;Bergmiller and McCright, 2009), especially compared to the now relatively extensive literature on Green Lean (e.g. Abreu et al, 2017;Verrier et al, 2016;Cherrafi et al, 2017a;Cherrafi et al, 2016;Garza-Reyes, 2015a;Garza-Reyes, 2015b).…”

Using the FAHP, ISM, and MICMAC Approaches to Study the Sustainability Influencing Factors of the Last Mile Delivery of Rural E-Commerce Logistics

“…Many applications of the ISM have been identified by a variety of researchers in various areas, such as identifying the critical success factors for safety management, the factors influencing e-diplomacy implementation, assessing contributory factors in potential systemic accidents, and analyzing the influencing factors of food safety [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. The ISM is also applied in the supply chain, but there are few applications in logistics [37,38].…”

A domain model for capturing knowledge of the Lean approach

“…Lean can be considered as "a way"; "a process"; "a set of principles"; "a set of tools and techniques"; "an approach"; "a concept"; "a philosophy"; "a practice"; "a system"; "a program"; "a manufacturing paradigm"; or "a model". Lean can be considered as a strategy (Cherrafi et al, 2017) or methodology (Laureani & Antony, 2017;Tasdemir & Gazo, 2018). Tiamaz and Souissi (2017) have analyzed the Lean models and concluded that these Lean models interpret the Lean in different ways.…”