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Spurred by the globalization of competition, organizational learning and continuous improvement have attracted a great deal of research and managerial interest in recent years. Notwithstanding the growing literature on these topics, there is still considerable conceptual ambiguity about organizational learning and continuous improvement among researchers. The paper clarifies the underlying processes through which organizations “learn,” highlights the role of learning in continuous improvement programs, and shows how an organization may go about building a continuous improvement culture. Specific tools and techniques of organizational learning which may be used in continuous improvement programs are also discussed.

Although lean thinking is deemed to be a gold standard of modern production management, a lot of scepticism still remains regarding its applicability in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this paper is to understand the perception of lean in SMEs and establish the relationship between lean adoption and operational performance.

With the help of a survey, data were collected from 425 SMEs in India and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Operational performance of the firms was found to be positively related to lean implementation.

This study also furnishes practitioners with a better understanding of lean thinking in SMEs and its impact on performance.

This review paper reveals the literature on ultrasonic, chemical-assisted ultrasonic and rotary ultrasonic machining (USM) of glass material. The purpose of this review paper is to understand and describe the working principle, mechanism of material removal, experimental investigation, applications and influence of input parameters on machining characteristics. The literature reveals that the ultrasonic machines have been generally preferred for the glass and brittle work materials. Some other non-traditional machining processes may thermally damage the work surface. Through these USM, neither thermal effects nor residual stresses have been generated on the machined surface.

Various input parameters have the significant role in machine performance characteristics. For the optimization of output response, several input parameters have been critically investigated by the various researcher.

Some advance types of glasses such as polycarbonate bulletproof glass, acrylic heat-resistant glass and glass-clad polycarbonate bulletproof glass still need some further investigation because these materials have vast applications in automobile, aerospace and space industries.

Review paper will be beneficial for industrial application and the various young researcher. Paper reveals the detail literature review on traditional ultrasonic, chemical assisted ultrasonic and rotary USM of glass and glass composite materials.

Global competition has intensified pressure on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to implement lean. Recently, the debate has converged to the role of lean implementation barriers (LIBs). The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this debate by exploring the LIBs in SMEs through three case studies.

A case study approach was employed followed by interpretive structural modelling (ISM) to model the interrelationship among the LIBs.

This study reveals that lack of management commitment, leadership and resources are the key barriers to lean implementation in SMEs in India. Furthermore, poor communication between different levels of the organisation and inadequate dissemination of the knowledge of lean benefits also creates hindrance in lean implementation. Managerial implications of the identified barriers for lean implementation in SMEs have been discussed.

The research regarding lean implementation in SMEs is scarce. This study is the first attempt of its kind to identify the lean barriers in a small industry setup through mathematical analysis.

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems have gained wide popularity for their role in manufacturing organizations for creating, managing and distributing product data. These systems are one of various enterprise systems which are required for smooth functioning and meeting the scaling up requirements organization. However, with introduction of cloud technology and other industry 4.0 initiatives, there has been focus on moving the on-premises IT application to the cloud. Such a move needs to be carried out by identifying and evaluating various challenges. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

The challenges identified through literature review have also been confirmed to be present via interview, system observation and documentation review through case study-based validation in an automotive component manufacturing industry.

The article identifies needs and challenges of cloud PLM systems and presents a generic framework for developing an approach for cloud PLM journey for an organization. The article also provides an approach for resolving the different challenges to realizing the designed system.

The simplified generic framework has been presented for use by industry professionals and researchers for designing cloud PLM systems that would fulfill expectations of different levels of stakeholders.

Adoption of blockchain technology (BT) leads to shrinking supply chains, produces a better quality product, saves product development time and increases the customized offering to the customer. Since it is a new and growing area of research, researchers and practitioners are not entirely aware of challenges in the adoption of BT in supply chain (SC). Therefore, the objective of this research is to provide an overview of BT in SC and modeling of challenges in the adoption of BT in SC.

Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) is used to model the challenges of adoption of BT in SC. Challenges are identified by the literature review and verified by expert's opinions.

This study presents some key challenges, i.e. to develop trust within SC management system, obey the governance rules and regulations of institution while implementation of BT in SC, provide transparency of data, obtain tamperproof data to avoid fraud, improve coordination and information sharing among the SC partners, choose a profit-earning product SC for adoption of BT, adopt societal changes and train the participants to strengthen behavioral intention towards adoption of BT in SC. Additionally, interrelationships among the challenges have been identified. This work discusses potential implications based on challenges and provides a platform for the adoption of BT in SC.

The interrelations of the challenges will provide valuable understandings for developing BT solutions in SC to the practitioners.

A supply chain (SC) involves many stakeholders, directly or indirectly, for satisfying consumers’ requirements. SC management is restricted by a lack of information sharing among stakeholders as parties of SC do not have direct communication and/or are not willing to share private and competitively sensitive information. In the SC, the bullwhip effect (BWE) is an undesirable phenomenon that aggravates the SC performance and increases the overall cost of SC. The main culprit of BWE is the lack of SC coordination among the parties, which results from wrong and lack of information sharing. Blockchain technology (BT) has the main characteristic of distributed shared ledger that makes all parties in the SC network able to access data. This paper aims to develop a BT model and implement it into the SC.

A blockchain is developed consisting four SC stakeholders and an integrated development environment has been used for coding in Python.

The analysis of the impact of the adoption of BT in SC shows the reduction in BWE.

In SC, BT can be considered as an effective tool to share the demand data among all SC partners. Sharing of such data will improve SC planning and reduce the BWE.

Research in agri-fresh food supply chain quality (AFSCQ) has been given less consideration in developing countries as compared to developed countries and its role in achieving organizational sustainability has not been researched yet. Thus, this study aims to determine and combine numerous significant factors to establish a framework for managing AFSCQ practices favorable to organizational sustainability in the Indian context.

To accomplish this, all-inclusive framework of AFSCQ has been established through succeeding phases of data collection, analysis using structural equation modelling along with refinement of data. The collection of data for this study was from the Indian food industry, which relates to agri-fresh food products.

The AFSCQ practices are conducive to enrich organizational sustainability, and then enhance economic, social and environmental performance indirectly. The study established relationships among the AFSCQ practices promising to enhance organizational sustainability.

AFSCQ practices have a huge impact on organizational sustainability by means of practices that sum up activities along the whole supply chain. The organizational sustainability consists of economic, social and environmental sustainability.

Blockchain technology (BT) is setting world-shattering standard in all type of transactions in business. BT has the prospective to drastically transform supply chain (SC). The main challenge is to enhance trust among the SC stakeholders. This paper aims to identify and prioritize the factors and its challenges that influence the adoptability of BT in SC. The prioritization of these factors will be helpful to the practitioners to decide the strategy of implementing the BT in SC.

The factors influencing adoption of BT are identified from the review of literature and expert opinion is used to rank the factors influencing the adoptability of BT in SC using grey relational analysis (GRA).

We identified and prioritized key factors: inter-organizational trust and relational governance as organizational challenge, data transparency and data immutability as technological challenge, interoperability and product type as operational challenge and social influence and behavioral intention as social challenge that influences adoptability of BT in SC.

The priority of these factors will guide future researchers and industry practitioners to plan rational and financial strategy for implementing BT in SC.

This paper aims to discuss the concept of leanness and provide an effective assessment tool for measuring leanness of small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

A hybrid interpretive structural modelling–analytical network process (ISM-ANP) approach is used to develop leanness index for SMEs. The parameters for leanness are extracted from the literature survey, and the inter-relationships among them are identified through ISM approach. Further, the ANP tool is used to derive the weights of the parameters, and the leanness index is developed for SMEs.

A leanness assessment model is developed, which considers the interdependencies among leanness parameters. Continuous improvement, Just in Time and active management participation, respectively, get first, second and third ranks for leanness measurement in SMEs.

This study is based on the expert’s opinion, and it may tend to be biased. However, future study will be performed as empirical research to catch more explicit concept and more insights of leanness in context of SME sector.

This paper provides guidelines to the managers of SMEs for measuring the leanness index and planning for future. This leanness index gives information regarding the degree of lean adoption in the organization.

The proposed model has been developed by the expert opinion of academicians and practitioners. The proposed model can provide guidelines and directions for managers for leanness assessment in SME context.