From Lean 5S to 7S Methodology Implementing Corporate Social Responsibility Concept

Jon Fernández Carrera, Alfredo Amor del Olmo, María Romero Cuadrado, María del Mar Espinosa Escudero and Luis Romero Cuadrado
Additional contact information
Jon Fernández Carrera: Design Engineering Area, Industrial Engineering School, National Distance Education University (UNED), 28040 Madrid, Spain
Alfredo Amor del Olmo: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technical School of Engineering–ICAI, Comillas Pontifical University, 28015 Madrid, Spain
María Romero Cuadrado: Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences, National Distance Education University (UNED), 28040 Madrid, Spain
María del Mar Espinosa Escudero: Design Engineering Area, Industrial Engineering School, National Distance Education University (UNED), 28040 Madrid, Spain
Luis Romero Cuadrado: Design Engineering Area, Industrial Engineering School, National Distance Education University (UNED), 28040 Madrid, Spain

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 19, 1-17

Abstract: Introducing methodologies that promote innovation and continuous improvement in organizations is no longer optional; therefore, organizations are increasingly using methodologies based on Lean principles. Among them, the 6S tool stands out from the rest, commonly used to establish and maintain a high-quality environment, which it has capacity for due to its status as a kaizen process. Thus, this research seeks to evaluate the relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility and the Lean 6S tool and, in the end, create synergies between them in order to enhance the 6S tool’s capabilities. To achieve this, a literature review and analysis of Lean 6S and CSR were performed, and a survey was also proposed to further the understanding of the relationship. With the analyzed sample, it can be confirmed that a relationship exists between the level of implementation of Lean tools and the level of development of CSR policies; therefore, companies that have implemented Lean tools such as 6S are organizations concerned with sustainability, and the hypothesis that organizations that apply Lean also have a high implementation of CSR is validated. Future work should further develop this relationship so that sustainability is no longer considered as implicit in the application of Lean tools but rather as part of them. This research proposes to develop the 6S tool toward the 7S tool to facilitate the inclusion of a CSR policy in a procedural and simple way.

Keywords: sustainability; CSR; Lean; Lean manufacturing; 5S; 6S; 7S (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/19/10810/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/19/10810/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:19:p:10810-:d:645930

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().