Search results

Current studies show that the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodology is used all over the world, by different types of companies in different countries. However, this is not yet the case for certain developing countries such as Morocco, where this methodology is still being discovered and applied and where also the relationship between the adoption of this methodology and sustainable performance is not yet clear. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate the impact of LSS tools, used by industrial companies in Morocco, on the three dimensions of performance: economic, social and environmental.

This study used partial least squares-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to conduct an empirical examination of the impact of LSS tools used by Moroccan manufacturing industries on their sustainable performance. Data were collected using a semistructured questionnaire, with a total of 121 valid responses collected for this study.

The results showed that the adoption of LSS tools has a positive effect on the sustainable performance of these industries. The analysis of the collected data also revealed that this effect is most significant when it comes to social performance, followed by environmental and finally economic performance. It was also found that Lean Management tools have a greater impact than Six Sigma tools.

The results of this study may encourage Moroccan industries that are new to LSS to adopt it, as it proves to have positive results not only on the economic aspects of the firm but also on the improvement of employee well-being and the protection of our planet’s environment. In addition, this study gives them an idea of the tools that are most widely used in their Moroccan context, thus facilitating the choice of tools with which they can begin to embed a continuous improvement mindset.

Although several studies have already analyzed the relationship between the LSS approach and sustainable performance, these studies have generally focused on developed countries that are well advanced in the use of these tools. Hence, the originality of this study is its relevance to the Moroccan context, which still needs more studies in the fields of continuous improvement and sustainability.

India liberalized its economy in 1991, which resulted in intense global competition, quality-conscious and demanding customers. Additionally, significant technological advancements lead to enhancements in products and processes. These forced Indian organizations to adopt innovative business strategies in the past 30 years. Meanwhile, the Lean Six Sigma methodology has significantly grown with vast applicability during the past 30 years. Thus, the purpose of this study is to develop the learning on Lean Six Sigma methodology in the Indian context through investigation of literature.

A three-stage systematic literature review approach was adopted to investigate the literature during the present study. In total, 187 articles published in 62 journals/conference proceedings from 2005 to 2022 (18 years) were shortlisted. The first part of the article summarizes the significant milestones towards the quality journey in the Indian context, along with the evolution of the Lean Six Sigma methodology. The second part examines the shortlisted papers on Lean Six Sigma frameworks, their applicability in industrial sectors, performance metrics, outcomes realized, publication trends, authorship patterns and leading researchers from the Indian perspective.

Lean Six Sigma has emerged as a highly acclaimed and structured business improvement strategy worldwide. The Indian economy has seen remarkable growth in the past decade and is one of the fastest-growing economies in the 21st century. Lean Six Sigma implementation in India has significantly increased from 2014 onward. The study revealed that researchers have proposed several different frameworks for Lean Six Sigma implementation, the majority of which are conceptual. Furthermore, the balanced applicability of Lean Six Sigma in manufacturing and service sectors was observed with the highest implementation in the health-care sector. Additionally, the widely adopted tools, techniques along with performance metrics exploring case studies were reported along with a summary of eminent and leading researchers in the Indian context.

This study is confined to reviewed papers as per the research criteria with a significant focus on the Indian context and might have missed some papers due to the adopted papers selection strategy.

The present study is one of the initial attempts to investigate the literature published on Lean Six Sigma in the Indian context, including perspective on the Indian quality movement. Therefore, the present study will provide an understanding of Lean Six Sigma methodology in the Indian context to graduating students in engineering and management and entry-level executives. The analysis and findings on Lean Six Sigma frameworks, research approach, publications details, etc., will be helpful to potential research scholars and academia. Additionally, analysis of case studies on Lean Six Sigma implementation by Indian industries will assist the managers and professionals in decision making.

The paper aims to provide a door-to-door holistic perspective on the state of a production system based on several metrics and their relationships, to utilize a combination of tools and techniques and to develop a unique model for production system assessment. The study addresses the limitations of narrow approaches by proposing a new metric as a single indicator of the production system’s overall state.

The research methodology adopted is design science research. It proposes a framework that combines value stream mapping, simulation and fuzzy logic to study the impact of different lean interventions on the overall state. An offsite construction facility was used as a case study. Data were gathered using methods such as ethnography, interviews, time and motion studies, shopfloor observations, video surveillance and database exploration.

The paper highlights how some interventions can have local improvements but lead to negative impacts on the overall system state. It emphasizes the importance of having a holistic approach to analyze and improve the true state of a production system.

The study excludes impacts of the supply chain and assumes the system to be confined within the shopfloor. Researchers are encouraged to include those variables in future studies.

The study presents a practical framework and tool that can be tailored to any production system and be used to improve its performance.

This paper proposes a unique framework and a new metric for system state assessment and improvement.

The main purpose of this study is to explore different aspects of the Green Lean Six Sigma (GLSS) approach, application status and potential benefits from a comprehensive review of the literature and provide an avenue for future research work. This study also provides a conceptual framework for GLSS.

To do a systematic analysis of the literature, a systematic literature review methodology has been used in this research work. From the reputed databases, 140 articles were identified to explore hidden aspects of GLSS. Exploration of articles in different continents, year-wise, approach-wise and journal-wise was also done to find the execution status of GLSS.

This study depicts that GLSS implementation is increasing year by year, and it leads to considerable improvement in all dimensions of sustainability. Enablers, barriers, tools and potential benefits that foster the execution of GLSS in industrial organizations are also identified based on a systematic review of the literature.

The study’s uniqueness lies in that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind that depicts the execution status of GLSS, and its different facets, explores different available frameworks and provides avenues for potential research in this area for potential researchers and practitioners.

Evidence indicates that the Indian economy has grown enormously in recent years. and Lean Six Sigma (LSS) has evolved globally as a structured business improvement strategy with diverse applicability in the last fifteen years. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the status of LSS implementation in Indian industries using a survey research technique.

A survey questionnaire was devised from the literature, containing 25 questions to assess respondents’ awareness of the LSS methodology and gain insights on aspects associated with LSS adoption in Indian industries. The survey questionnaire was validated and was conducted using randomly sampled respondents from the Confederation of Indian Industries membership database. The collected data were statistically analyzed using IBM SPSS and MS Excel.

The findings attest that adopting LSS is not so encouraging and extremely poor in small- and medium-scale Indian industries. ISO 9001 emerged as a prominent quality improvement program. It is learnt that consultants play a pivotal role in bringing awareness and skills building while implementing LSS. Results endorse top management commitment and involvement, and resistance to change as leading success factors and challenges, respectively. Further, it is revealed that respondents were highly satisfied after the adoption of LSS.

The findings of this study were derived from 183 responses and should be generalized cautiously.

This paper provides valuable insights on the present status covering the issues related to L:SS implementation in India. These results can motivate the managers of Indian industries for wide adoption of the LSS methodology. In addition, the findings of the paper may assist the researchers providing direction to carry out further research in LSS in the Indian context.

The purpose of this paper is to study the interaction of main marine organisms on localized corrosion of 316L stainless steel in the Dalian Sea area.

The steel plate was immersed in the Dalian Sea area for nine months to observe the biofouling and localized corrosion. The local potential distribution on the steel plate covered by marine organisms was measured. The local electrochemical measurements were performed to facilitate understanding the interfacial status under different biofouling conditions. The local surface morphologies and corrosion products were characterized.

The localized corrosion of stainless steel is mainly induced by the attachment of barnacles on the steel. The mussels have no influence on the localized corrosion. The cover of sea squirts could mitigate the localized corrosion induced by barnacles. Both crevice corrosion and pitting corrosion were found beneath the barnacle without the covering of sea squirts. The pitting damage was more serious than the crevice corrosion in the Dalian Sea area. The probing of sulfur element indicates that the potential growth of sulfate-reducing bacteria at barnacle center.

The above findings revealed that the interaction of marine organisms has significant influences on the localized corrosion of stainless steel. The influences of macro-fouling and micro-fouling on localized corrosion are discussed.

This paper aims to analyze and give directions for advancing research in stock market volatility highlighting its features, structural breaks and emerging developments. This study offers a platform to research the benchmark studies to know the research gap and give directions for extending future research.

The author has performed the literature review, and, reference checking as per the snowballing approach. Firstly, the author has started with outlining and simplifying the significance of the subject area, the review illustrating the various elements along with the research gaps and emphasizing the finding.

This work summarizes the studies covering the volatility, its properties and structural breaks on various aspects such as techniques applied, subareas and the markets. From the review’s analysis, no study has clarified the supremacy of any model because of the different market conditions, nature of data and methodological aspects. The outcome of this research work has delivered further magnitude to research the benchmark studies for the upcoming work on stock market volatility. This paper has also proposed the hybrid volatility models combining artificial intelligence with econometric techniques to detect noise, sudden changes and chaotic information easily.

The author has taken the research papers from the scholarly journal published in the English language only and the author may also consider other nonscholarly or other language journals.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this research work highlights an updated and more comprehensive framework examining the properties and demonstrating the contemporary developments in the field of stock market volatility.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic literature review and its analysis concerning a possible framework, compatibility, drivers and barriers for integrating three manufacturing strategies – Lean, Green and Six Sigma. In particular, analyzing current proposals and identifying the literature gaps in the existing literature from which future research directions and challenges have been suggested for developing a specific integrated framework for the Indian manufacturing industry.

This study explores manufacturing strategic area in depth through literature review, which will point out to the better understanding of the compatibility and impact of these initiatives through the conceptual framework, on the performance of the manufacturing organization.

The review of shortlisted articles indicates that Lean, Green and Six Sigma (LGSS) strategies help the manufacturing organizations to compete in global markets through the impact of a sustainability strategy for their business. Various researchers provide evidence of challenges like cost reduction, quality improvement, on-time delivery, changing needs of the customers and scarce resources that can be overcome through these strategies to achieve overall business objectives.

In this research, only works of literature related to LGSS and sustainability have been studied so information related to linking between these strategies in manufacturing industries is limited.

Help the manufacturing practitioners to deploy three strategies simultaneously in an environment when the linking among LGSS methods in manufacturing industries has not been established. Hence simultaneous deployment of these three strategies helps the organization to boost its operational and environmental performance.

The strategies, LGSS, will be adopted in the operational management to reduce both waste and pollution which will definitely help to society. It will highlight the need for cost effective and easy to implement solutions as well as brand building, which is one of the top incentives for LGSS, highlighting the importance of public perception of how companies operate.

An integrated framework of the LGSS will help the Indian manufacturing industries to improve performance and competitiveness in the global market.

The purpose of this paper is to answer this question by discussing the practicality of implementing microreactor technology towards large-scale renewable energy generation, as well as provide an incentive for future researchers to utilize microreactors as a useful alternative tool for green energy production. However, can microreactors present a viable solution for the generation of renewable energy to tackle the on-going global energy crisis?

In this paper, the practicality of implementing microreactor technology toward large-scale renewable energy generation is discussed. Specific areas of interest that elucidate considerable returns of microreactors toward renewable energy production are biofuel synthesis, hydrogen conversion and solar energy harvesting.

It is believed that sustained research on microreactors can significantly accelerate the development of new energy production methods through renewable sources, which will undoubtedly aid in the quest for a greener future.

This work aims to provide a sound judgement on the importance of research on renewable energy production and alternative energy management methods through microreactor technology, and why future studies on this topic should be highly encouraged. The relevance of this opinion paper lies in the idea that microreactors are an innovative concept currently used in engineering to significantly accelerate chemical reactions on microscale volumes; with the feasibility of high throughput to convert energy at larger scales with much greater efficiency than existing energy production methods.