Search results

This paper aims to explore the lean production paradigm as promoter of workers' creativity and thinking potential, and recognize this human potential as a fundamental asset for companies' growth and success, being a major factor to face the disturbing and unpredictable needs of current markets, providing companies with the necessary agility. The authors believe these thinkers are the base for an agile company and learning organization.

The objectives were achieved through a deep literature review, starting with the Toyota production system (TPS) origins. Some industrial lean case studies were also explored to show that the adoption of a lean culture promotes a pro‐active attitude and behavior that are so important for companies nowadays.

This paper explores the association between lean production and the promotion of thinkers. For a long period, and even nowadays, it is common to consider the worker as just another production factor that the companies explore to obtain the maximum utilization. This was a result from the distorted knowledge of the Taylor principles and the Ford assembly line model, seeing the worker as a gear in the “big machine”. Lean production was seen, for many years and by many authors, as an extension of this Taylorist/Fordist model but this paper highlights lean production as a work organization model where the worker assumes a position of thinker, continuously looking for improvement and continuously looking for wastes. By reducing wastes, the company will be prepared to accommodate changes and will attain agility.

This paper is mainly based on literature review and on some industrial case studies of lean implementations (recent or just a few years ago); a deep research is necessary on the cause‐effect relation between lean production adoption and promotion of thinkers.

Helping companies to recognize the importance of workers as thinkers will have relevant impacts through the reduction of waste and costs, improving quality and increase productivity and revenue. Also, for workers, this recognition means respect, self‐esteem and confidence, and, essentially, more satisfaction with work.

With lean production and agility, better products will quickly reach society, contributing thus to clients' satisfaction. Also, lean companies' CEO and workers looking for wastes will lead to a reduction of energy consumption, raw materials needs and gas emissions (reducing pollution of air, land and water), producing only what is needed. Being satisfied with their work they will be happier contributing to the raising of the country's happiness.

The authors are not aware of similar research. The paper is meant for those who are interested in improving their companies' operations and workers' relationships.

This editorial aims to introduce the theme of the special issue: “Lean vs agile from an organizational sustainability, complexity and learning perspective”.

The methodology of the editorial is that of a survey. In the first part it presents the relevance of the theme and in the second part it presents the papers included in the special issue, including their themes, findings and novel contributions.

The individual findings by the papers present significant new contributions in a deeper insight of the “lean” and “agile” philosophies, or approaches in, and to, organizations. It could be noticed that the controversies of the issue “lean vs. agile” still remain. However, it could be said that an eventual further investigation in the phenomenology of “lean” and “agile” will be more informed after consideration of the results presented in this special issue.

Further investigation should be undertaken on a more abstract “level” of the theories of “lean” and “agile” and their mutual relationship, such as theories about the internal processes of “lean”/“agile” users, general “lean”/“agile” theories, epistemology of “lean”/“agile”, and ontology of “lean”/“agile”, and relationship with learning organization and chaordic organization.

Readers, both theoreticians and practitioners, will find in this editorial a “guide” to the issues of their interest concerning the valuable explanations, ideas and tools, presented in the special issue, for both concrete applications in enterprises and organizations, and for further research and development of learning, complex and sustainable organizations, and towards new ideas and insights generation.

This editorial presents an analysis of the special issue on “lean vs agile”, contributing to the higher levels of the theories of “lean” and “agile” and their mutual relationship, namely to the theories about the internal processes of “lean”/“agile” users, general “lean”/“agile” theories, and epistemology of “lean”/“agile”.

The purpose of this study is to determine the current status of Sustainable Lean Six Sigma (SLSS) practices execution in the industries by identifying the research gaps and also methodologies that are applied by different researchers and practitioners.

To find the current status of SLSS practices all over world, the literature review of the articles available through SCOPUS data base is given in different categories such as a country-wise and year-wise publication of the articles, journal-wise publication of articles, case study implementation focus in industry and data analysis techniques used by the researchers.

The different methodologies applied by the researchers and practitioners have been explained and the gaps for further research are identified. The extensive review of articles of last 18 years revealed that there are various opportunities such as quantitative study, framework modeling on the SLSS, and implementation of developed models in different industries, etc. which are required to be explored.

In the present study, a review of 129 articles for the time span of January 2000 to February 2018 is considered. The SCOPUS database was used for selecting the articles for review. A total of 129 articles were considered for the literature review, and the case study implementation in different industries with the focused areas such as cost reduction, defect reduction, economic, environmental and social aspects was explained.

This paper aims to present a conceptual model, called LOOP, an acronym for Leadership, Organization, Operation and People, regarding the pull system implementation in Lean companies. Lean should be holistically implemented to achieve the performance for what it is known. Pull is one of the Lean thinking principles, and it is the production control system underneath the Lean philosophy. However, to implement pull, an organizational transformation in companies’ different areas is needed.

This model was developed following up a case study of a representative example of a multinational company which has been implementing Lean for a long time but without achieving a well-succeeded pull implementation.

Based on that, the authors developed the LOOP model that is an integrated framework with the goal to promote a Lean culture, which includes four dimensions: leadership, organization, operation and people.

Based on the LOOP conceptual model, a different, and hopefully more effective, perspective is presented, establishing some proposals for the four dimensions and for the production and control system selection criteria to implement Lean.

Since few studies have explored and advanced on the development of measures of knowledge waste, the purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a scale for measuring the waste of knowledge.

A research was carried out in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) divided into five distinct stages, three qualitative and two quantitative. For the quantitative steps, a sample of 223 responses was obtained for the exploratory part and another sample of 614 responses for the confirmatory part of the study. Data analysis procedures involved Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis to test and validate the proposed scale.

A fifteen-item scale divided into four constructs was obtained after refinement of the proposed scale and validation procedures (convergent and discriminant validity). The scale also has satisfactory levels of reliability.

The resulting scale was validated in a single institutional culture environment (HEIs in Southern Brazil). So it still should be tested in different organizational contexts and cross-culturally in different countries. The scale may be useful for decision-making improvement about knowledge management and waste reduction.

A scale with a practical and quick application is provided. Additionally, a classification of the waste of knowledge level was developed and it could be easily applied in different sectors or organizations.

The literature on waste of knowledge is limited and often confused with knowledge loss. This study provides a clear distinction between these topics, and it advances on the explanation and definition of knowledge waste. Also, it is the first study to offer a scale to measure the elements of knowledge waste.

This paper aims to assess the needs for a lean continuous improvement professional certificate and/or lean leadership cognate for a Doctorate of Education in leadership focused in three main research questions: “What do organizational leaders need from a Lean graduate programming?”; “What are the preferable methods of delivery for Lean teaching/learning?” and “What are the main learner outcomes and do how these impact organizational and continuous improvement outcomes?”

A survey to 37 organizational leaders in a North-American state was conducted via telephone and email that were returned to the researcher. The survey was designed to target a solid cross-section of organizational decision makers in regard to the need for and type of lean training desired, if at all, for employees. Using a mixed methods approach, the survey was designed to collect both qualitative and quantitative information.

Respondents indicated that lean continuous improvement thinking and lean process-project management were most the desirable content options. The method of delivery was not as clear with on-ground and online relying on job-embedded, project-based methods as most desirable approaches. Learner outcomes of mastery of lean content along with the ability to impact organizational and continuous improvement outcomes were favored.

Lean leadership education is valued learning by organizational leaders. As so, higher education institutions must be aware of matching better organizational needs with learning experiences. This paper presents a survey that intended to do this in an original way.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role that communication plays in the insurance industry, as well as its relational outcomes.

This investigation proposes a theoretical model tested using structural equation modelling. A questionnaire survey was developed to explore the relationships among communication, reputation, trust, commitment, loyalty and word-of-mouth (WOM). For this study, 744 valid questionnaires were collected from a sample of Portuguese car insurance holders.

The results show that communication directly influences reputation, trust and commitment. Communication also indirectly influences loyalty through reputation, trust, and commitment and communication indirectly influences WOM via trust and commitment. In turn, reputation influences trust and trust impact on relational commitment. Finally, loyalty influences WOM.

This investigation examines the mediating role of reputation, trust and relational commitment in the relationship among communication and loyalty and WOM, in a relational perspective. It fills a gap in the literature by exploring the importance of communication in the insurance industry. Thus, this study will be useful to decision makers in the insurance industry seeking to improve their insurance holders–insurance companies relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to develop microalgae vegetable‐based gelled desserts (similar to “dairy desserts”) prepared with pea protein isolate, Spirulina maxima and Diacronema vlkianum biomass, rich in essential fatty acids (omega‐3 polyunsaturated fatty acid's (PUFA)). The effect of microalgae concentration and gelling temperature on the colour, texture and fatty acid profile of the gels was investigated.

Pea protein isolate (4 per cent), κ‐carrageenan (0.15 per cent) and starch (2.5 per cent) were used to produce a gelled dessert that was further enriched with microalgal biomass (0.1‐1.0 per cent). The gels were prepared using different temperatures, ranging from 75 to 90 ^○C. Colour, total pigments (carotenoids), texture and fatty acid profile of the gels were evaluated.

The addition of Diacronema and Spirulina microalgal biomass to vegetable gelled deserts, results in a novel alternative food product, with PUFA's (e.g. EPA, DHA and GLA), with favourable texture characteristics, particularly for Diacronema, due to the structural reinforcement, representing a new food market niche.

Nowadays there is an increasing consumer demand for more natural food products, presenting health benefits. Microalgae are able to enhance the nutritional content of conventional food and hence to positively affect humans health due to their original chemical composition, namely as a source of long chain omega‐3 PUFA.

As far as the authors are aware the use of these microalgae in gelled desserts, in association with vegetable proteins, is an innovative food application.