Multi-plant improvement programmes: a literature review and research agenda

Lean service: a contingency perspective

Many firms launch consolidated lean initiatives across all their service units, but because services differ, mandated lean practices may have a poor fit with the receiving unit. Whereas plenty of research has investigated the fit of lean implementation at the service industry level, this is the first to delineate how standard lean service practices fit different service types. Taking a contingency theory perspective, we study a leading European utility company comprising distinct service types. Using purposeful sampling, we interview 36 employees from 15 different teams representing three different service types – professional services, service factories and service shops – and 11 employees from the headquarters who are supporting these units in their lean transformation journeys. We also collect secondary data, including lean programme documentation and audit data. We find that one size does not fit all for lean service; there are important nuances to the relevance of standard lean service practices across different service types. Ten propositions are put forward suggesting how standard lean practices need to be adapted to fit the context of different service types. The findings reject the idea that all service units can progress along the same trajectory in lean service programmes. This paper informs managers how lean service programmes can be tailored to increase the fit with different service types.

What makes an effective Quality Improvement Manager? A qualitative study in the New Zealand Health System

PURPOSE

Quality improvement is an international priority, and health organisations invest heavily in this endeavour. Little, however, is known of the role and perspectives of Quality Improvement Managers who are responsible for quality improvement implementation. We explored the quality improvement managers' accounts of what competencies and qualities they require to achieve day-to-day and long-term quality improvement objectives.

DESIGN

Qualitative exploratory design using an interpretivist approach with semi-structured interviews analysed thematically.

SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS

Interviews were conducted with 56 quality improvement managers from 15 (out of 20) New Zealand District Health Boards. Participants were divided into two groups: traditional and clinical quality improvement managers. The former group consisted of those with formal quality improvement education-typically operations managers or process engineers. The latter group was represented by clinical staff-physicians and nurses-who received on-the-job training.

RESULTS

Three themes were identified: quality improvement expertise, leadership competencies and interpersonal competencies. Effective quality improvement managers require quality improvement experience and expertise in healthcare environments. They require leadership competencies including sense-giving, taking a long-term view and systems thinking. They also require interpersonal competencies including approachability, trustworthiness and supportiveness. Traditional and clinical quality improvement managers attributed different value to these characteristics with traditional quality improvement managers emphasising leadership competencies and interpersonal skills more than clinical quality improvement managers.

CONCLUSIONS

We differentiate between traditional and clinical quality improvement managers, and suggest how both groups can be better prepared to be effective in their roles. Both groups require a comprehensive socialisation and training process designed to meet specific learning needs.

Innovative ecosystem: the role of lean management auditing

The auditing of organizations’ activities plays a crucial role in ensuring the direction chosen by top management and identifying early signs of upcoming changes and threats. The audit assesses the efficient use of resources and processes and promotes corporate credibility, which is essential from investors’ perspectives, particularly in ecosystems of innovations. Meanwhile, little is known about lean auditing, which is crucial in achieving effective processes. This paper summarises the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of auditing. The research’s primary purpose is to identify types of waste in auditing and formulate the principles of lean auditing. The systematic literature review and approaches for solving the problem based on grounded theory and triangulation of methods enabled the resolving of research problems. This article analyses the internal auditing standards and guidelines and uses in-depth interviews with 19 internal auditors from different Polish public organizations from 2017 to 2020. The choice of a qualitative approach resulted from the research phenomenon’s open nature, with very few studies. It created a need for a reflective approach with respondents simultaneously being key informants and experts. The results of an empirical analysis showed that internal auditors little knew about the lean concept in audit processes. However, they noticed the benefits of using the lean concept in the audit. The research enabled the development of the model of lean auditing. It could help improve the audit process, which is particularly important from the innovation ecosystem perspective. Besides, one determined the waste of auditing and formulated the principles of lean auditing. The research results develop the audit theory and are helpful for practitioners. Improved internal audit better meets stakeholders’ expectations regarding the spending of funds and implementation of tasks.

When should global manufacturers invest in production network upgrades? An empirical investigation

Purpose

In this paper, the authors empirically investigate under which conditions production network management is effective to improve manufacturers' financial performance. For this, the authors explore contingencies between production networks and the three key dimensions of organizational environment.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey with senior managers was conducted for this research. The authors used a hierarchical regression analysis to test interaction effects and draw on follow-up interviews with chief operating officers (COOs) and senior managers to elaborate and explain the found associations.

Findings

Results indicate that manufacturers' financial performance is only associated with their network capability level if they operate in hostile competitive environments. In moderate competitive environments, improvements in the network capability level are not associated with greater financial performance. In particularly munificent environments, such production network upgrades are even associated with the opposite effect.

Practical implications

Results highlight in which organizational contexts upgrading production networks has positive performance implications and under which circumstances it is ineffective or even counterproductive.

Originality/value

The authors draw on unique survey data to add quantitative evidence to the predominantly conceptual and qualitative literature on global production networks. This is also one of the first studies to connect the topics of production networks and organizational environment.

A holistic model for inter-plant knowledge transfer within an international manufacturing network

Purpose

This paper aims to provide a holistic view to support the choice of appropriate strategy for conducting a knowledge transfer (KT) project in an international manufacturing network (IMN) environment. It proposes a model that includes multiple aspects of a KT project along with guidelines on each aspect.

Design/methodology/approach

To achieve the research goals, multiple case study method was adopted. Data have been collected by conducting semi-structured interviews regarding five KT projects in three multinational corporations. Data were triangulated by means of comparisons to complementary data acquired through observations and archival documents.

Findings

The results of this paper detail the key issues of five KT projects. Furthermore, the paper proposes an aggregated model comprising the main aspects and strategies for a KT project within an IMN.

Research limitations/implications

Despite the abundant research on KT area, not many research projects provide holistic views on KT process. The focus has rather been sectional and concentrated on each specific aspect within the KT.

Practical implications

The paper guides practitioners to identify multiple aspects in KT that will eventually increase the odds for successfully performing such projects.

Originality/value

The proposed learning network model improves the performance of KT projects by providing a holistic view including several factors that the organization should emphasize to succeed with inter-plant KT.

Plant role and the effectiveness of manufacturing practices

Purpose

Many firms today operate international manufacturing networks (IMN) of plants, which may serve different purposes and have different levels of competences. This diversity influences the effectiveness of different manufacturing practices, which has not yet been explored in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between plant role and the “goodness” of its manufacturing practices.

Design/methodology/approach

Data are used from a sample of 471 plants from the sixth edition of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey.

Findings

The findings show that plants with higher competences use more practices successfully than less competent plants. Furthermore, more competent plants tend to strengthen their differentiation performance, while less competent plants focus on and achieve cost performance improvements instead.

Practical implications

The associations between plant role, manufacturing practices and performance provide important input for the global design of a firm’s IMN as a whole, and the development of local plants within the network.

Originality/value

The “goodness” of manufacturing practices has not been investigated in the plant role literature; the effect of plant role on the “goodness” of manufacturing practices has not been studied in the OM contingency literature. This paper shows that while the role of a plant in a firm’s IMN hardly affects the efforts it puts into implementing different manufacturing practices, it has an important moderating influence on the performance implications of these practices.

The transfer process of lean practices in multi-plant companies

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to deal with the transfer of lean practices between different units in multi-plant organizations with different levels of adoption of lean practices. It investigates how certain influential contextual variables – i.e. lean standards development, lean transfer team composition, source characteristics, recipient national environment and corporate lean programme deployment – can influence stickiness in the different phases of lean transfer process.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper opted for the multiple-case study method and examines six lean transfer projects at a dyadic level, that is, between a source and a recipient unit. The authors focussed on companies with headquarters in Europe with an attested experience in lean and which had recently and successfully transferred lean to subsidiaries in the USA and China.

Findings

The paper provides empirical insights about how stickiness in lean transfer projects changes during the initiation, implementation/ramp-up and integration phases. It identifies three lean transfer approaches (local, global, global and shared) and provides a set of propositions that explains how sociocultural traits of recipient environment (China vs USA) and lean transfer approach affect stickiness in each phase.

Originality/value

Literature on stickiness in lean transfer is at an early stage and very fragmented. Unlike previous contributions in the field, this paper provides an interpretation of the dynamics of stickiness in lean transfer at a micro-level (i.e. for each single phase of the lean transfer process). In addition, it develops a fuller understanding of the influence of context on lean transfer by adopting a configurational view, i.e. studying the joint effect of contextual variables on stickiness, which is a novelty in the lean transfer literature.

Linking QFD and the manufacturing network strategy

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to integrate the manufacturing site and network perspectives for the purposes of strategy fulfilment, which has rarely been jointly discussed. By doing this, the site and network perspectives are broken into their constituents and linked to one another.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper provides qualitative research; it conducts a comprehensive literature review and merges the results with the concept of the quality function deployment to link the relevant dimensions. The developed framework is discussed based on a single case study.

Findings

The proposed framework relates the network and site perspectives in different dimensions, which range from the strategic dimension to the network and site dimensions. The paper, furthermore, offers the groundwork of developing relationship maps of the site and network capabilities, network configuration and coordination, and the structural and infrastructural dimensions.

Research limitations/implications

The paper contains a single case study and lacks foundation with a broader data set.

Practical implications

The results support the decision-making process of the manufacturing network managers who assess, design, and develop their manufacturing networks and attempt to gain transparency by using different levels of analysis.

Originality/value

The paper is the first attempt to show how the different network and site capabilities contribute to strategy fulfilment, to link the configuration and coordination dimensions of the manufacturing network level, and to link the structural and infrastructural dimensions on the site level. Thus, the authors add to multilevel research in operations management because the authors provide a combined framework for the network- and site-level analysis.

Research in urban logistics: a systematic literature review

Purpose

The last decades have witnessed an increased interest in urban logistics originating from both the research and the practitioners’ communities. Sustainable freight transports today are on the political, social and technological agenda of many actors operating in urban contexts. Due to the extent of the covered areas and the continuous progress in many fields, the resulting body of research on urban logistics appears quite fragmented. From an engineering management perspective, the purpose of this paper is to present a systematic literature review (SLR) that aims to consolidate the knowledge on urban logistics, analyse the development of the discipline, and provide future research directions.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper discusses the main evidence emerging from a SLR on urban logistics. The corpus resulting from the SLR has been used to perform a citation network analysis and a main path analysis that together underpin the identification of the most investigated topics and methodologies in the field.

Findings

Through the analysis of a corpus of 104 articles, the most important research contributions on urban logistics that represent the structural backbone in the development of the research over time in the field are detected. Based on these findings, this work identifies and discusses three areas of potential interest for future research.

Originality/value

This paper presents an SLR related to a research area in which the literature is extremely fragmented. The results provide insights about the research path, current trends and future research directions in the field of urban logistics.

International manufacturing network: past, present, and future

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to examine, and present a comprehensive review of, the existing literature on the international manufacturing network (IMN).

Design/methodology/approach

– The original data set used for reviewing the IMN literature consisted of 107 articles selected from 21 journals: more specifically, 40 articles are concerned with plant-level analysis, and 67 articles are related to IMN-level analysis. The literature is simultaneously reviewed by two researchers. The relevance and contribution of each reviewed paper is discussed and mutually agreed upon.

Findings

– The paper highlights the different concepts related to IMN and traces the evolution of IMN-related research. Based on two levels of analysis (i.e. plant and network), this paper further reviews and discusses the IMN-specific literature in detail to determine the number of IMN articles published across the journals, the dominant methodologies employed, and the research focus reflected in IMN studies. A research trajectory is finally developed to provide an integrated and intuitional view on the development of IMN research.

Originality/value

– This is the first effort that has been made towards thoroughly investigating the existing literature on IMN, aiming to trace different concepts related to IMN from a historical perspective, to review and discuss the IMN-specific literature in detail, to provide an overview of the evolution trajectory of different existing IMN research themes, and to propose future research directions. Keeping in mind the growing importance of IMN for practitioners as well as the academic community, this study provides a timely overview of existing and emerging IMN research themes.