Lean supply chain planning: Simulation of lean techniques integration

Lean Supply Chain (LSC) has become a strategic configuration in order to satisfy customer's expectations efficiently and effectively. LSC concept is the implementation of Lean principles and techniques outside single company boundaries, creating the flow and making SC reacting instead of foreseeing. Supply Chain Planning (SCP) is a part of SCM management strategy that allows managers to align operations of different companies and so improve operations efficiency and effectiveness. Lean Supply Chain Planning (LSCP) is a new SCP model that is growing interest among both academics and practitioners, but it is not well studied yet. This paper aims at providing a theoretical and practical guidelines about Lean techniques implementations impact in SCP. To reach it, a Discret-event-simulation (DES) simulation model of a three-echelon and multi-product supply chain has been set. This research focuses on three principles of Lean production: identifying the value, creating flow to the customer and pull. The results achieved demonstrate that LSCP techniques have a positive impact on inventories levels and in particular, they demonstrate synergy among techniques so that total benefit is greater than the sum of benefits of single technique implementations

An improvement's project model to foster sustainable continuous improvement

Continuous Improvement programs are constantly applied amongst companies to reach competitive advantages. However, it is known that companies struggle to sustain benefits of continuous improvement projects in long-Term periods. Indeed, there is not a common shared framework assessing which are the managerial variables that can guarantee improvement's projects success. This research presents a model and a pool of improvement's projects could be framed and carried out accordingly. The model and its enabler mechanisms foster the importance that the outstanding literature assign to human focused factors and soft practices to sustain continuous improvement benefits in the long-Term period. This study presents a first assessment analysis of the model, even if not statistically valid, highlighting its enablers and barriers for a correct application. Then, based on the first data collected on a sample of improvement's projects framed with the model described, the study draws some considerations about which are the critical success factors for improvement's projects

How Industry 4.0 and Lean Management Are Interrelated with Green Paradigm

Recently, sustainability has been tackled several times due to the impending climate change the earth is facing. Numerous techniques have been applied to reverse the direction companies were going into. In this paper, it is explained the importance that Lean Manufacturing tools and Industry 4.0 technologies can have on the sustainable side of a company. The aim of this work is to fill the scientific gap related to studies deepening the combination of these different paradigms, Industry 4.0-Lean-Green, which have been scarcely investigated together. Thus, a Systematic Literature Review has been performed to detect which were the key variables of these three fields and then, it was studied what their interaction was. This study is giving the opportunity to understand the main variables of Industry 4.0 and Lean manufacturing on which companies have to act in order to have an impact on green variables and their overall sustainability

A study of a kanban based assembly line feeding system through integration of simulation and particle swarm optimization

With increase in differentiation and decreasing batch size of products, feeding the assembly line at regular intervals is considered to be a critical problem in today's manufacturing sector. Yet no clear solution has been developed for this problem; therefore, the main focus of this research is to discuss the different aspects of line feeding, the latest trend in literature, and to propose an innovative method to support solving the problem. A discrete event simulation model is developed and a mathematical model based on particle swarm optimization is used to support the simulation. The hybrid model is finally applied to practical situations. Results show how different settings of kanban influence the performance of the assembly line feeding system. The biggest novelty item is certainly the recognition of the trade-off between kanban size and number of kanban and the importance of investigating its behaviour during the design of the system. (C) 2019 by the authors; licensee Growing Science, Canad

Investigating the influence of lean manufacturing approach on environmental performance: A systematic literature review

The growing emphasis on environmental sustainability has drawn considerable attention from both academia and industry practitioners. Factors such as escalating energy costs, heightened environmental degradation, and a burgeoning market demand for eco-friendly practices have compelled businesses to reassess their strategies through a green lens. Given that Lean principles are rooted in optimising operations to minimise waste across design and production processes, their synergy with the green paradigm is evident. However, despite the intuitive connection between Lean methodologies and environmental sustainability, the scholarly exploration of their impact remains largely underdeveloped. This research seeks to bridge this gap by conducting a comprehensive systematic literature review to dissect the current understanding of Lean manufacturing practices and their influence on environmental sustainability performance. The selected papers were meticulously screened and grouped into three clusters using the PRISMA diagram methodology. The primary objective was to discern the tangible effects of Lean practices on eco-efficiency performance and explore integrating Lean manufacturing principles with broader sustainable manufacturing approaches. A structured matrix was created to categorise and visualise the identified impacts gleaned from the initial articles. Nevertheless, the review revealed significant gaps in understanding, particularly regarding the factors that shape the efficacy of Lean manufacturing tools in enhancing eco-efficiency performance. The findings underscore the need for further research to unravel these complexities and delineate the mechanisms through which Lean practices contribute to environmental sustainability. Several avenues for future research have been delineated, focusing on how Lean manufacturing practices can be leveraged to support eco-efficiency performance effectively. While the preliminary findings shed light on the promising intersection between Lean principles and environmental sustainability, they also underscore the imperative for continued scholarly inquiry to unlock the full potential of Lean methodologies in fostering a greener industrial landscape

Order review and release in make-to-order flow shops:analysis and design of new methods

Increased customization has strengthened the importance of make-to-order companies. The advent of lean management and the introduction of smart and flexible technologies has enabled many of these companies to create flow shop routings. Order review and release (ORR) research, which originally focused on job shops, has started paying attention to flow shops. However, the results have not provided clarity on the best ORR method for flow shops. This study aims at developing such a method by applying a modular design approach. It identifies the relevant elements of ORR methods for flow shops, combines them into new methods and evaluates them in a simulation study. The simulation results demonstrate that performance in pure flow shops can be strongly improved by applying the right combination of workload measures, load balancing, and order dispatching. Specifically, the results show that (1) classical workload measures are still as effective as novel measures that have been suggested for flow shops, (2) balancing workloads explicitly through optimization at the order release stage strongly improves performance, and (3) shortest processing time dispatching is highly effective in flow shops as it avoids starvation of stations. In-depth analyses have been executed to unravel the reasons of performance improvements. As such, the article provides clarity on the improvement potential that is available for ORR in flow shops, while the new modular methods provide a first step in exploiting this potential