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This paper adopts a multi-tier perspective and aims to explore challenges of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in collaborative manufacturing amid the emergence of dedicated B2B platforms. Original equipment manufacturers welcome formation of demand-driven collaborations between SME suppliers to facilitate ramp-up of production capacity. While being potentially beneficial to suppliers, such collaborations face various barriers.

An exploratory study of 17 suppliers within the European Union’s aerospace industry was undertaken. The study comprised two stages. In the first stage, suppliers’ answers to self-administered interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. In the second stage, interactions between the barriers were determined through interviews with experienced SME collaboration facilitators. The authors apply system dynamics modelling to analyse the links between barriers and identify re-enforcing and balancing loops of other factors.

The authors establish five major groups of barriers to collaboration impeding: market transparency, access to orders, partner trust, contracting and (e) data sharing and coordination. The authors model application of four enablers that facilitate barrier removal for technology-enabled supply chains: digital platforms, supplier development, smart contracts and Industry 4.0.

The study is limited by the data collection from the aerospace industry; validation of the models in other low-volume high-variability manufacturing sectors is needed.

The reader will learn about the barriers which impede demand-driven SME collaboration within manufacturing supply chains, interrelationships between these barriers and suggestions about how to remove them. SME cluster managers will find managerial implications particularly interesting as they will help them to overcome collaboration concerns and better prepare cluster members for Industry 4.0.

The models developed within this study can be used to explore the effects of intervening at critical points in the model to create virtuous improvement cycles between key barriers and related variables in the model. This can help decision-making and policymaking in the area of supply chain integration.

There is currently a lack of studies about how the existing barriers amplify and de-amplify themselves and what the managerial approaches to tackle the barriers are. It is unclear how far companies will go in terms of information sharing, given the trust levels, power dynamics and governance structures evident in supply chains. This study contributes by explaining the reinforcing interaction between the barriers and showing ways to overcome these using enablers.

Significant interest in Integrated Management Systems (IMS), as a key area within ISO-related Management System Standards (MSS) literature, has been evident from both academia and industry over the past three decades. This study aims to map the evolution and current state of IMS research and propose possible directions for future studies.

A comprehensive content and bibliometric analysis of 846 documents from the Scopus database across the period 1995 to 2023 was conducted. This included performance analysis to track publication trends and identify key contributors, and content analysis to specify dominant research methodologies and the MSS most commonly integrated. Furthermore, science mapping techniques—such as co-authorship networks, keyword co-occurrence analysis, and bibliographic coupling—were utilized to outline the collaborative networks and the conceptual and intellectual structure of the field.

The study identifies three principal IMS research themes: the practical implementation of IMS, their role in promoting sustainability and social responsibility, and their impact on continuous performance improvement. It also highlights the field’s evolution and key research constituents—including influential works, prolific authors, leading academic institutions and countries, and top publishing journals. It further reveals that IMS research exhibits strong collaboration across authors and countries, and a rich methodological plurality, notably with a marked increase in empirical surveys in recent years. Additionally, it identifies the most frequently referenced MSS for integration, prominently featuring ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001/OHSAS 18001.

This study is original in its application of a dual analytical approach—bibliometric and content analysis—to provide a holistic overview of IMS research. It offers new insights into the integration of diverse MSS and proposes several promising paths for future research. Among the most prominent are standardizing IMS fundamental specifications, conducting more empirical research with advanced methods to evaluate the effects of MSS integration, providing practical support for organizations in IMS implementation through tailored methodologies and tools, and exploring the potential of Industry 4.0 and 5.0 technologies to advance IMS practices.

The purpose of this paper is to report the results from a survey carried out among Portuguese companies with their management systems (MSs) certified according to, at least two of the following standards: ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001. In addition, the results from a second survey conducted amid a group of experts that pointed out several aspects that impact on the integration level will be dissected.

The phenomenon of MSs integration is hardly transferable to a contained environment so some of the common research methods traditionally adopted include case studies, surveys, interviews and observation in situ. The findings from two surveys online among Portuguese companies and Portuguese experts are reported in the current paper.

The results suggest that a set of common characteristics is present on the majority of the surveyed companies. On first hand, there is evidence of an effective integration of the policies and the existence of an integrated system manager on the organizational structure of the companies. On the other hand, results suggest that training was provided to top management concerning integration issues, an integrating concept was taken into account during the implementation process and tools, and methods and objectives of the subsystems are aligned.

This paper addresses the issues raised in the mainstream scientific bibliography through the collection of information amidst Portuguese companies. At this stage, it is not possible to infer at which extent the conclusions may be transferable to other geographic contexts. The small number of companies that completed the survey precludes the statistical generalization of the findings but the analytical generalization is not impaired.

The authors believe that the conclusions of this paper may aid both practioneers and scholars in the understanding of a complex but manageable organizational phenomenon. In addition, through the contents of this paper companies may collect information regarding the pertinent issues to address when developing their IMSs.

In the past few years, management systems implementation and certification has become a common practice among different types of organizations. In this context, quality management systems certification, according to the ISO 9001 standard is in the spotlight, due to over than 1.000.000 certified organizations by the end of 2009. Quality management systems can be integrated with an increasing variety of other subsystems implemented according to other standards, including environmental systems, health and safety, social responsibility, R&D, risk, or human resources, and subsystems raised from specific standards designed for specific activity sectors (HACCP, automotive or aeronautics, medical devices, pharmaceuticals and software). Due to this evolution, careful attention should be taken on how these different subsystems have been and should be articulated, harmonized and integrated. Thus, this paper intends to approach different strategies to achieve integration, with several levels of intensity, depth and authenticity between the different subsystems, and report some final recommendations related with good practices assuring the efficiency and effectiveness of the integration process.

A case study methodology has supported this research. Three case studies were conducted on Portuguese companies that have an integrated quality, environmental and safety management system.

If the companies' strategy is to implement more than one management system, there is a clear advantage of doing it supported on an integrated approach, avoiding the development of organizational “islands” related to each subsystem. This organizational “archipelago” structure is completely far way from any global optimized solution, based on a holistic perspective.

Based on the conclusions that we were able to find out, this paper is an important contribution to the integrated management systems research area, because it states different integration approaches and levels of integration and what are the features that characterize each one of those approaches and levels.

The purpose of this paper is to dissect the diffusion of the number of organizations that implemented multiple management systems (MSs), considering the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 standards (quality, environment and safety) in the South European countries: Italy, Portugal and Spain. In addition, based on the data collected, forecasting models were developed to assess at which extent the multiple certifications are expected to occur in each studied country.

Data concerning the evolution of the amount of multiple MSs in Italy, Portugal and Spain were collected for the period between 1999 and 2015. The behavior of the evolution of the number of MSs over the years was studied adopting both the Gompertz and the Logistic models. The results obtained with these two models were compared and analyzed to provide a forecast for the next years.

The diffusion throughout the years of the number of MSs presents an S-shaped behavior. The evolution of the amount of MSs in countries with a lower saturation level are properly fitted by the Gompertz model whereas the Logistic model fits more accurately when considering countries with a larger saturation level.

The data related to the early years are not available in some of the countries. To overcome this shortcoming missing data were extrapolated from the data set provided by the annual ISO survey. Additionally, the integration level attained by each company was not assessed and, on this regard and in the scope of this paper, an integrated management system is understood as implemented when organizations have multiple MSs implemented.

The results provide a cross-sectional portrayal of the diffusion of MSs certifications in the South European countries and enable a forecast for the trend in the next years.

This study aims for the first time, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to analyze the diffusion of multiple MSs throughout the years.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it aims at the identification and assessment of the commitments towards sustainable development (SD) communicated to all interested parties (stakeholders) by top management; and second, mapping the profile of the organisations which prominently communicate those commitments.

The research methodology was supported on the content analysis of the organisations’ statements (disclosed on the institutional website) that sustain the strategy and policies (organisational culture). A total of 540 certified Portuguese organisations in Quality, Environment and Occupational Health and Safety (QEOHS) comprised the sample.

According to this research, it is possible to identify three main commitments towards SD addressing customers (consumers), human resources (employees) and continuous improvement. Furthermore, results suggest that commitments towards customers and human resources fit properly into the theoretical assumptions of the stakeholder theory and, in turn, the commitment towards continuous improvement fits accurately into the assumptions of the “normative isomorphism” of the institutional theory. Moreover, the results pointed out the characteristics of Portuguese organisations (QEOHS) that prominently communicate commitments towards SD: large business volume, located in Lisbon or Setubal, fall within the public business sector, are members of the BCSD Portugal and publish annual reports on the institutional website.

Solely organisations operating in Portugal and simultaneously encompassing three certified management subsystems (against the clauses of ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 standards) were considered throughout this study. So it is not possible to ascertain at which extent the conclusions are valid. However, although the statistical generalisation of the results may be precluded, there is not any peculiar reason preventing the analytical generalisation, namely, in organisations operating in countries with similar macro-characteristics of Portugal.

To the best of authors’ knowledge this is the first time that such a comprehensive, detailed and thorough analysis of the communicated commitments towards SD is carried out regardless the activity sector. The conclusions from this paper are useful both for practitioners and scholars. On one hand companies have now information on the more often communicated statements, while on the other hand academics and scholars will benefit from this research and hopefully be able to replicate it in other contexts.

This papers aims to study lattice structures in terms of geometric variables, manufacturing variables and material-based variants and their correlation with compressive behaviour for their application in a methodology for the design and development of personalized elastic therapeutic products.

Lattice samples were designed and manufactured using extrusion-based additive manufacturing technologies. Mechanical tests were carried out on lattice samples for elasticity characterization purposes. The relationships between sample stiffness and key geometric and manufacturing variables were subsequently used in the case study on the design of a pressure cushion model for validation purposes. Differentiated areas were established according to patient’s pressure map to subsequently make a correlation between the patient’s pressure needs and lattice samples stiffness.

A substantial and wide variation in lattice compressive behaviour was found depending on the key study variables. The proposed methodology made it possible to efficiently identify and adjust the pressure of the different areas of the product to adapt them to the elastic needs of the patient. In this sense, the characterization lattice samples turned out to provide an effective and flexible response to the pressure requirements.

This study provides a generalized foundation of lattice structural design and adjustable stiffness in application of pressure cushions, which can be equally applied to other designs with similar purposes. The relevance and contribution of this work lie in the proposed methodology for the design of personalized therapeutic products based on the use of individual lattice structures that function as independent customizable cells.

This paper aims to classify journal papers in the context of hybrid quality function deployment QFD and multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods published during 2004–2021.

A conceptual classification scheme is presented to analyze the hybrid QFD-MCDM methods. Then some recommendations are given to introduce directions for future research.

The results show that among all related areas, the manufacturing application has the most frequency of published papers regarding hybrid QFD-MCDM methods. Moreover, using uncertainty to establish a hybrid QFD-MCDM the relevant papers have been considered during the time interval 2004–2021.

There are various shortcomings in conventional QFD which limit its efficiency and potential applications. Since 2004, when MCDM methods were frequently adopted in the quality management context, increasing attention has been drawn from both practical and academic perspectives. Recently, the integration of MCDM techniques into the QFD model has played an important role in designing new products and services, supplier selection, green manufacturing systems and sustainability topics. Hence, this survey reviewed hybrid QFD-MCDM methods during 2004–2021.

This article offers a novel approach that brings together management, engineering and organizational behavior. It focuses on the understanding of organizational dynamics in an era of technological change, upholding the importance of organizational agility and of the cultural paradigm in the management of organizations.

In this work, the authors present the conclusions from a set of studies carried out in organizations operating in technical and technological industries. The authors assessed the capabilities of these organizations in terms of operational excellence maturity and its impact on the organizational culture and organizational agility.

Results show the importance of operational excellence either in developing or expanding organizational agility capabilities while reinforcing the cruciality of an excellence-oriented culture to sustain these efforts over time.

Increasingly unstable business environments have led to a growing interest in how to develop and maintain operational excellence in the face of continued and disruptive change. However, this interest has, so far, been advanced with little empirical evidence to support the corresponding predictions. This work offers the first practical evidence that continued focus and optimization of operations, with the right cultural alignment, helps organizations survive and thrive in increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environments.