Learning on Lean Production: A Review of Opinion and Research within Environmental Constraints

Abstract

Despite of its type, location or principal market base, today the manufacturing enterprises are bound to adopt sustainable practices like lean principles, integration of processes and inter-organizational collaborations to meet their corporate goals. The majority of studies usually discuss either a system or a subcomponent of the production systems and manufacturing strategies in literature w.r.t. lean production; but the rational (what, why, how) behind each production activity seems to be missing. This paper addresses a comprehensive assessment of the literature on lean production in relation to the green concept, for its significance, feasibility and need for organizations to sustain in the global market. Findings of the review reveal that lean principles along with green model can improve the process flow & employee morale and lower the environmental regulatory non-compliance risk. Further, the environmental and human health risks are often not explicitly considered in lean initiatives that can affect customers & stakeholders throughout the product life cycle, and the manufacturing enterprises working with lean strategies have the possibility of costs sub-optimization and waste reduction from a lifecycle viewpoint.

Implementation of Production Process Standardization—A Case Study of a Publishing Company from the SMEs Sector

“…Therefore, the case study shows that SW and line balancing can have a positive impact for many SMEs in the manufacturing sector. Further, the present findings are consistent with those reported by Mor et al [19], Rahul and Kaler [45], More et al [21], Bhardwaj et al [46], Mor et al [47], and Garg et al [48], where simple techniques have been implemented among SMEs to promote greater production and efficiency. As a practical value, these results, as well as the method and techniques applied, can be used as an improvement reference by SMEs in massive production processes with multiple operators.…”

“…SW is probably the most known method for performing a specific job, which in turn makes it the safest and most efficient method for complying with timely, orderly, and quality deliveries [20]. SW is the set of specific directions that are needed to manufacture a product in the most efficient way, which allows defining the best methods and sequenced tasks for each process and operator, therefore, reducing wastes [19,21,22]. SW defines how each task or job must be performed by each operator in the production system, hence, preventing employees from executing random tasks [19,23] that can adversely affect lifecycle times.…”

Framework of Stakeholder Reactions on Sustainability Risk Mitigation Practices and Sustainability Performance in Supply Chains

“…Moreover, Kern et al (2012) identified that the traditional risk management process (identification, assessment, mitigation) is also sufficient in the SC context. In addition to the risk management approach, for example Mor et al (2016), identifies that in the lean production, by establishing clear environmental goals and rules for acting accordingly, can improve the employee morale and compliance with environmental regulation.…”

Integration of SWOT-AHP Approach for Measuring the Critical Factors of Dairy Supply Chain

“…The optimal effectiveness is required in the dairy sector to achieve better product quality and food safety [4,5]. Food producers, as well as processors, need to focus on the effective marketing strategies to target the rural market [6][7][8]. An analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach allows the top management to measure the level of uniformity in finding the decision problems [9].…”