The outcomes of providing lean training to strategic suppliers: a Swedish case study

Managing TQM's soft side: an explorative study of social care multiservice organizations

Purpose

This paper explores total quality management (TQM) soft domain efficacy in social care organizations to determine the extent to which an organization's project success may stem from soft TQM critical success factors (CSFs).

Design/methodology/approach

Non-structured interviews were conducted with 16 managers overseeing the prosthetic device regeneration project of the Italian local health unit (located in Salerno) to explore which soft factors could contribute to the success of a social care multifunctional organization.

Findings

Organizations' handling of certain projects, such as pivoting on soft TQM issues, may allow them to be configured as multiservice organizations. Therefore, a conceptual model of a multiservice social care organization is proposed.

Practical implications

From a managerial perspective, this study presents an interesting success case of a multiservice social care organization with a total annual expenditure of €20 million on prosthetic assistance. Preliminary data show a 13% reduction in public expenditure for Salerno's local health unit via a refurbishment project.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to the soft TQM literature debate: although Italian local health professionals appear aware of soft TQM issues' implementation and consciously apply them in their organization and projects, this occurs more with specific CSFs emerging from the literature. Therefore, this article paves the way for further quantitative and theoretical investigations on the adoption of TQM soft issues in social care organizations' performance measurement.

Country-related future research agenda of Lean Manufacturing–A systematic literature review

Purpose

Many future research proposals of Lean Manufacturing (LM) are presented in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to determine these future research proposals of LM which are country-related and classify them.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic literature review (SLR) of peer-reviewed journal articles in LM was conducted. A total of 145 articles published in 34 journals during 2010–2020 were collected from four major management science publishers namely, Emerald Online, Elsevier/Science Direct, Springer Link and Taylor and Francis. The country-related future research proposals of LM identified in the literature were classified according to, firstly, the continent of the country of reference, and secondly, some form of natural affinity of these proposals creating meaningful themes. The quality tool “affinity diagram” was applied to classify the country-related future research proposals of LM.

Findings

The country-related future research proposals of LM, which are increasing in the literature over time, refer mostly to studies to be conducted in several continents/countries and to multinational studies. Conducting studies specifically in Asia, Europe, South and North America, Africa and Australia–New Zealand is also suggested. The plethora of the country-related future research proposals of LM were classified, based on the affinity of their content, into 18 meaningful themes. These themes were also classified based on their affinity into two broad categories, namely “themes concerning the LM approach itself” and “themes concerning factors outside the LM approach”.

Research limitations/implications

The restricted number of the databases searched and the subjectivity of classifying the large number of the country-related future research proposals into themes are the main limitations of the present SLR. Based on these limitations, future literature review studies can be carried out.

Practical implications

Useful proposals are provided to researchers of several countries for conducting original and country-specific research studies which can enrich the knowledge of the implementation of LM under the specific circumstances of a country for the benefit of practitioners.

Originality/value

This study goes beyond previous literature review studies on LM by focusing exclusively on the LM future research agenda which is country related. The analytical presentation of the country-related future research proposals as well as the formulation of clusters of these proposals make the present SLR study substantially different from those carried out worldwide so far.