How to foster Sustainable Continuous Improvement: A cause-effect relations map of Lean soft practices

Federica Costa, Leonardo Lispi, Alberto Portioli Staudacher, Matteo Rossini, Kaustav Kundu and Fabiana Dafne Cifone

Operations Research Perspectives, 2019, vol. 6, issue C

Abstract: Lean Management (LM) represents a complex socio-technical system where both technical and social practices should be consistently implemented and integrated in order to foster a Continuous Improvement (CI) culture. Despite initial gains in operational performances due to the implementation of the most common and well-established Lean techniques, the great majority of the companies approaching Lean Manufacturing fail in achieving sustainable outcomes in the long term, and most of them eventually come back to their traditional way of doing business. Recognized the pivotal role of soft practices, the purpose of this study is to investigate the role played by the human factor in fostering the establishment of a Sustainable Continuous Improvement (SCI) environment.

Keywords: Lean manufacturing; Continuous improvement; Lean sustainability; Soft practices; Critical success factors; DEMATEL (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:oprepe:v:6:y:2019:i:c:s2214716018301416

DOI: 10.1016/j.orp.2018.100091

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