C-Lean, an Integrated Approach to Achieve Circularity in Manufacturing Operations of SMEs

Purpose – The concept of Circular Economy has gained momentum both because its emergence is timely and that it proposes the solution that makes businesses more responsible, considerate and ethical. While the concept is straightforward to understand, its practical implementation is challenging, especially for manufacturing SMEs. Its popularity and adoption, mainly at the macro level is at rise, however, that is not the case at the micro and meso level (SMEs). Without the participation of SMEs in adopting Circular Economy, its full spectrum cannot be realised, since SMEs contribution to national GDP is nearly 50% globally. Therefore this research focuses on developing an integrated framework to achieve circularity in manufacturing operations of SMEs by combining the principles of Circular Economy and Lean, as they both focus on waste elimination and value creation/ preservation. The proposed framework (C-LEAN) utilises Lean tools and methods mingled with Circular Economy principles to achieve circularity as well as efficiency and effectiveness in manufacturing operations, especially at SMEs level. Design/ Methodology/ Approach – The framework’s design/ development is inspired by existing frameworks proposed by scholars. While the framework might seem a reflection of DMAIC, it, however, differ in its core nature/ purpose as the former focuses on problem-solving existing in operations, while for the proposed framework an operation might be functioning fine but would require a change to deal with bigger picture issues, such as resource scarcity and environmental damage. The conceptual framework is verified through Delphi study, where experts (both the academic and the practitioners) have been engaged to analyse the construct and practicality of the conceptual development. The framework has been modified/ updated in light of Delphi study’s results. Furthermore, the framework has been validated through a case study method with partial implementation, where its initial phases have been applied in two medium size manufacturing companies, to test its practical relevance. Findings – It was realised that there is both a massive lack of awareness/ understanding about Circular Economy as well as skills/ knowledge to identify the potential and adopt Circular Economy in the manufacturing operations among SMEs. However, at the same time, the existence of a Circular Economy practice was observed in a company where the purpose was solely for economic benefit, without any knowledge or intent of participating in Circular Economy goals. The analysis of companies pointed to potential improvements, that will lead towards achieving circularity in those respective companies. At the same time, the framework serves as a tool for the companies to continuously monitor and explore potential to improve their operations and achieve efficiency with effectiveness in a circular manner. Research implication/ Limitation – This research’s novelty lies in the fact that the convergence of Circular Economy and Lean has not been explored by scholars to its full extent and that no such framework has been developed earlier by combining the strengths of two concepts to benefit the management of manufacturing operations, especially at SMEs level. A major limitation is the partial implementation of the framework with the projected scenario of the potential outputs. The full implementation of the framework was not realistic, as it requires time to see the observable outcomes as well as changes in processes and capital to acquire resources. Practical implications – The proposed framework is of greater practical relevance as it is grounded in two concepts of Circular Economy and Lean, and benefits from the approach/ design of earlier developed frameworks. Moreover, an amalgamation of Circular Economy with Lean further affirms its relevance as Lean has been widely appraised and adopted among the manufacturing sector.N/

Lean manufacturing adoption in the transport and logistics sector of Thailand – An exploratory study

This paper investigates the adoption status of lean manufacturing (LM) in the transport and logistics sector of Thailand. A survey questionnaire was design, validated and distributed among Thai transport and logistics companies. In total, 120 useable responses were received and analysed using descriptive statistics. The results of the study indicate that the implementation of LM is relatively high, with PDCA, 5S and root cause analysis being the most implemented LM approaches and tools. However, the LM’s implementation was found to be mainly contained within individual departments or improvement projects, rather than being a company’s wide strategy. Main challenges to LM implementation included: organisational structure of companies, misalignment between goals of individuals and their companies,and lack of sustainment of a lean culture. Main benefits were the ability to identify and reduce waste, increased productivity and better organisation of workstations. On the other hand, lack of understanding, knowledge and expertise in LM were the main reasons for not implementing it, plus the use of technology-based tools instead of LM. Non-LM companies showed interest in adopting LM in the future, with JIT, Kaizen and Six Sigma being the most likely to implement. This study is among the very first of its kind. It offers academics, researchers and practitioners interested in LM and/or the transport and logistics sector with some initial evidence of the adoption of LM in this industrial sector of Thailand

Improving the reliability of warehouse operations in the 3PL Industry: an Australian 3PL case study.

Warehouses play an important value-adding role to provide a competitive edge, support business growth and efficiency throughout their supply chains. This paper explores warehouse operations (i.e. receiving, put away, picking, packing and shipping) and a series of challenges faced in managing warehouse operations in general and the 3PL industry in particular. Especially, the paper analyses the warehouse and logistics operations of an Australian 3PL company. By utilizing a mixed method approach both qualitative and quantitative data was gathered through in-depth interviews, direct observations and warehouse operations records. The collected data were then analyzed using thematic analysis. The data was screened and coded to further develop major themes to identify the problematic areas. This analysis helped to identify issues in operations related to the receiving process, missing, picking and locating items as well as human errors. While multiple approaches could be utilized to improve the operations, there yet remained a major challenge to manage operations within the planned budgetary limits. This research, therefore, provides some solutions/recommendations to improve the case company’s warehouse operations through staff empowerment, management process improvement, order dispatch and return process improvement, improvement in record keeping, and recruiting more personnel. These recommendations ensure company’s efficiency while balancing its challenges both in operations and budgetary constraints. This study thus provides an evidence to improve the reliability of warehouse operations through systematic process improvement.N/

The challenges of GSCM implementation in the UK manufacturing SMEs.

The importance of green supply chain management has long attracted the interest of both researchers and practitioners in the industry. As environmental concerns are becoming one of the major issues discussed in the 21st century, countries with manufacturing as its principal economy contributor are always on the lookout for innovations and new approaches to balance both environmental considerations and profit making. The UK, being one of the top manufacturing countries in the world already considered green initiatives among their manufacturers. According to reports from the industry, large and international manufacturing companies from the UK have successfully implemented some green initiatives with significant improvements across the supply chain. However, the adoption of green initiatives is mainly focused on large companies rather the real backbone of the UK manufacturing industry, which is the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper therefore sets out to determine the implementation level of green supply chain among the SMEs. The paper adopts a mixed methods based approach and findings are based on 57 survey responses and 5 semi-structured interviews from UK manufacturing SMEs. The findings show that the level of GSCM implementation among the UK manufacturing SMEs is low compared to large organisations. Cost of implementing GSCM practices emerged as a key challenge faced by the UK manufacturing SMEs which was followed by the lack of knowledge within the organisation. This study thus adds to the limited literature on the manufacturing SMEs and provides evidence from the UK manufacturing sector on the adoption of GSCM practices.N/

Measuring the financial impact of equipment performance improvement: ISB and IEB metrics

Equipment performance helps the manufacturing sector achieve operational and financial improvements despite process variations. However, the literature lacks a clear index or metric to quantify the monetary advantages of enhanced equipment performance. Thus, the paper presents two innovative monetary performance measures to estimate the financial advantages of enhancing equipment performance by isolating the effect of manufacturing fluctuations such as product mix price, direct and indirect characteristics, and cost changes. The research provides two measures, ISB (Improvement Saving Benefits) and IEB (Improvement Earning Benefits), to assess equipment performance improvements. The effectiveness of the metrics is validated through a three stages approach, namely: (1) experts' binary opinion, (2) sample, and (3) actual cases. The relevant data may be collected through accounting systems, purpose-built software, or electronic spreadsheets. The findings suggest that both measures provide an effective cost-benefit analysis of equipment performance enhancement. The measure ISB indicates savings from performance increases when equipment capacity is greater than product demand. IEB is utilised when equipment capacity is less than product demand. Both measurements may replace the unitary cost variation, which is subject to manufacturing changes. Manufacturing businesses may utilise the ISB and IEB metrics to conduct a systematic analysis of equipment performance and to appreciate the financial savings perspective in order to emphasise profitability in the short and long term. The study introduces two novel financial equipment performance improvement indicators that distinguish the effects of manufacturing variations. Manufacturing variations cause cost advantages from operational improvements to be misrepresented. There is currently no approach for manufacturing organisations to calculate the financial advantages of enhancing equipment performance while isolating production irregularities

Lean manufacturing and environmental performance – exploring the impact and relationship

The relationship between Lean Manufacturing and Environmental Performance has attracted much debate but at the same time lack of empirical evidence leaves haphazard opinions on this matter. The objective of this paper is therefore to pro-vide some insight into the impact of Lean Manufacturing on Environmental Per-formance and the existing relationship of these two concepts. Four semi-structured interviews with industrial and academic experts provided a solid ground to suggest that the relationship does exist, despite the fact that these two concepts were developed independently from each other. Being the exploratory nature of this study and its purpose to ignite further research, it does not employ a quantitative approach. The results of this study can help managers to better un-derstand and concurrently tackle both the economic and environmental challenges faced by their organizations.N/

Impact of Lean, Agile and Green (LAG) on Business Competitiveness:An Empirical Study of Fast Moving Consumer Goods Businesses

The adoption/utilisation of Lean, Agile and Green (LAG) practices in both the manufacturing and service sector is rising. However, there yet remain a research gap to precisely evaluate the relationship between LAG practices and business competitiveness (e.g, achieving reduction in cost, lead time and environmental recyclable waste). This research aims to explore this relationship, specifically in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) businesses. The hypothesised relationships are tested with data collected from 96 FMCG companies. Structural Equation Modelling is applied to evaluate different channels of achieving business competitiveness through the adoption of Lean, Agile and Green. The findings suggest that competitive outcomes vary with the adoption of LAG practices in specific product life cycle stages. This implies that awareness of the product life cycle concept is essential. A combination of LAG practices for the sole purpose of reducing environmental waste is negatively related to environmental waste reduction. LAG practices are more efficiently adopted when the adopters are equipped with expert knowledge on the paradigms and their individual practices. This research has approached the attainment of competitiveness in the FMCG businesses by analysing management efforts that improve cost performance, lead time and environmental sustainability aspects of business operations. The research has also considered the product life cycle stages in analysing the impacts of management efforts.N/

Innovation and growth in family-owned Mexican SMEs

This paper studies the relationship between innovation and the level of growth in family-owned small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this is done within the context of Mexico. The conceptual framework of analysis is based on the hypothesis that innovation in products, processes and management systems contribute to the achievement of growth in family-owned SMEs. To test this hypothesis, a model of structural equation of second order was developed with data collected from 206 family-owned SMEs located in the state of Aguascalientes, Mexico. The empirical evidence provided by the analysissupports the hypothesis, showing that family-owned SMEs that increase their innovation activities will also significantly increase their opportunities for growth. This finding can be used to inform the business growth strategies formulated by the owners, or managers, of family-owned SEMs. These also indicate policy-makers that by designing effective policies and providing incentives to support innovation in family-owned SMEs, the government would not only contribute to the growth of these organisations but also to the growth of their regions and countries. Despite the importance of innovation and family-owned SMEs,evidence suggests that studies focused on investigating innovation in this type of organisations are very limited. This paper fills this gap by providing a refined understanding of the relationship between innovation and growth in family-owned SMEs

Blockchain technology for enhancing traceability and efficiency in automobile supply chain: a case study

A robust traceability system would help organizations in inventory optimization reduce lead time and improve customer service and quality which further enables the organizations to be a leader in their industry sector. This research study analyzes the challenges faced by the automotive industry in its supply chain operations. Further, the traceability issues and waiting time at different nodes of the supply chain are considered to be priority issues that affect the overall supply chain efficiency in the automotive supply chain. After studying the existing blockchain architectures and their implementation methodology, this study proposes a new blockchain-based architecture to improve traceability and reduce waiting time for the automotive supply chain. A hyper ledger fabric-based blockchain architecture is developed to track the ownership transfers in inbound and outbound logistics. The simulation results of the proposed hyper ledger fabric-based blockchain architecture show that there is an improvement in the traceability of items at different nodes of the supply chain that enhances the Inventory Quality Ratio (IQR) and the mean waiting time is reduced at the factory, wholesaler, and retailer, which thereby improves the overall supply chain efficiency. The blockchain embedded supply chain is more capable to eliminate the risks and uncertainties associated with the automotive supply chain. The benefits of adopting blockchain technology in the automotive supply chain are also described. The developed blockchain-based framework is capable to get more visibility into goods movement and inventory status in automotive supply chains

Developing a strategic sustainable facility plan for a hospital layout using ELECTRE and Apples procedure

Today healthcare globally is growing at a rapid pace and despite the huge technological advancement, healthcare still faces primitive challenges and hence results in the poor service and facility to the needy. Layout planning acts as one major reason which requires improvements for the effective and efficient working of the healthcare facilities. This research aims at optimizing several quantitative criteria related to economic, technology and society which are taken into consideration for the decision-making during the evaluation, analysing and selection of the best layout for an existing healthcare facility. Critical areas for the improvement were found out using statistical analysis based on a survey questionnaire and Apple’s layout procedure is utilised to design the different possible layouts for an efficient facility. The seven criteria namely inter-departmental satisfactory level, the average distance travelled and the average time required for staff flow, the average distance travelled and the average time required for patient flow, the average distance travelled and the average time required for material flow were taken into consideration. The ELECTRE methodology was used as multi-criteria decision making based on decided seven criteria for comparing the different layout by methodical and orderly thinking.N/