Improving road transport operations through lean thinking: a case study

Lean and green in the transport and logistics sector – a case study of simultaneous deployment

“…However, studies focused on the improvement of the actual road transportation operations to gain both cost (Fugate et al, 2009) and environmental efficiency through the sequential or simultaneous deployment of the lean and green paradigms is limited. The works of Sutherland and Bennett (2007), Guan et al (2003), Sternberg et al (2013), Simmons et al (2004), Villarreal (2012), Taylor and Martinchenko (2006), Hines and Taylor (2000), Villarreal et al (2012), Villarreal et al (2013), Villarreal et al (2016a), Villarreal et al (2016b) and Villarreal et al (2016c) have focused on improving road transportation through the lean paradigm, but they have not considered the green dimension. On the other hand, although some literature exists in the area of green logistics (e.g.…”

A lean-TOC approach for improving Emergency Medical Services (EMS) transport and logistics operations

“…from loading the orders of goods to the transportation vehicles to unloading their returns from the market and closing administratively the route or shipment (Villarreal, 2012). TVSM has now been successfully employed by Villarreal et al (2016a), Villarreal et al (2016b), Villarreal et al (2017a) and Garza-Reyes et al (2017) to drive the improvements of transport and logistics operations. The VSM utilised in this work is a TVSM's modified version that is denoted as the Ambulance-VSM (A-VSM) hereafter, see Section 4.…”

“…Different practical strategies to improve transport and logistics operations have been proposed by Villarreal et al (2016a; and Villarreal et al (2017a). Taken into consideration these, a brainstorming session was set up and run to generate suitable improvement strategies applicable to this project (Garza-Reyes et al, 2016b).…”

“…It is only until recently that the empirical application of lean principles, methods and tools has been explored to improve logistics operations. For instance, Villarreal et al (2017a) combined two lean-based principles and tools, i.e. transportation value stream mapping (TVSM) (Villarreal, 2012) and the seven transportation extended wastes (STEWs) (Sternberg et al, 2013), to enhance the road transport operations of a leading Mexican brewing organisation.…”

Creating a competitive advantage in the global flight catering supply chain: a case study using SCOR model

“…Any reduction in service quality thus impacts the industry critically. Moreover, case study seemed to be an appropriate method of research for critically examining a particular phenomenon of industry for which quantitative research method are unviable, as evidenced by Eisenhardt (1989), Voss, Tsikriktsis, and Frohlich (2002), Gunasekaran, Ngai, and Cheng (2007), Villarreal et al (2017) AQ2 ¶ and Sternberg and Harispuru (2017). Thus a qualitative case-study-based research in measuring operational excellence of in-flight catering through the application of SCOR model is found to be of paramount importance for sustaining competitive advantage.…”