Learning in the Digital Era

Public Service Organisations (PSOs) are facing continuing funding challenges and increased pressure to maintain and improve service delivery with fewer resources. One response, with the promise of improving efficiency rather than cutting services, has been to implement Continuous Improvement (CI) but success has been sporadic and unpredictable. The well documented CI methodologies, notably Lean and Six Sigma, have general agreement across practitioners and scholars alike, thus the reasons behind their potted success must lie elsewhere, in the culture or the environment perhaps? This work explores the wider contextual issues of CI implementation with the aim of providing guidelines to give a greater confidence of successful implementation. A structured literature review provided the initial conceptual framework that was further developed through a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews carried out with industry experts. This is supported by a case study with a UK health sector organisation. The research shows that emphasis should be placed on addressing logic and mindsets at an individual and organisational level in order to re-focus CI efforts and achieve sustainable process improvement culture. Particular attention should be placed on the role of leaders. This research takes a unique approach to CI in the UK PSO context, providing insights into the achievement of sustainable CI and a theoretical framework for evaluating PSO logic. It establishes a theoretical foundation for the evaluation of organisational learning in relation to sustainable CI in UK PSOs. It also makes practical recommendations to support PSO to reveal, evaluate and address organisational principles through interactive workshops and a preliminary pilot study. Research should continue to focus on the critical role of organisational learning and governing variables in relation to addressing PSO logic for sustained CI.

In the last decade, learning spaces have moved from the traditional classrooms and laboratories to sophisticated spaces that leverage on emerging technologies to facilitate and enhance active, social, and experiential learning. Engineering institutions around the globe are investing their resources in the creation of this spaces in order to provide students with a holistic training in line with the current demands in the job market. The present work identifies the main learning spaces implemented for engineering education and conducts and exploratory research about the role that Lean Thinking plays in their educational programs. The results suggest a clear distinction between Learning Factories and the group made of Fab Labs, Hackerspaces, and Makerspaces, which can be attributed to differences in governance and technical features. Learning Factories have successfully integrated Lean Thinking into their engineering curriculum, and while there is scarce literature concerning FLs, HSs, and MSs, there are elements in these spaces that can be considered lean enablers that could be exploited to integrate Lean Thinking into their research and educational activities.

Multi-national firms pursue enhanced marked positioning by production performance, profit realization and cost reduction. As such, a key strategy is to apply standardized management concepts such as lean and Toyota Production System, or more recently, to develop a Company-Specific production System (XPS). However, a fundamental challenge is how to document the financial impact of such programs. The promise of cost reduction is frequently discussed, often hidden behind other organizational initiatives, such as downsizing and restructuring. This study investigates a Norwegian multi-national in Process industry, producing silicon to the global market. The company has developed, implemented, and institutionalized its own XPS since 1991 and claims that this has directly contributed to extensive cost reduction and significantly strengthened competitive position. The company claims a cost-reduction of 5–7% of total production cost, year-on-year since 2013. This is supposedly the result of planned change activities related to the XPS implementation. We challenge this claim, assuming that such a significant and sustained cost reduction must be explained by other variables. Our findings, however, indicate that the XPS first created institutionalized learning and secondly that this ‘learning capability’ managed to link continuous improvement work directly to improving the cost level of the organization. Our data were controlled against downsizing, marked change, exchange rates, new investments, new technology and other contingency factors. The findings have implications for how firms might pursue business improvement. By using an XPS as catalyst for organizational learning, continuous improvement work might be linked more directly to financial performance for the company.

The application of continuous improvement initiatives such as Lean in Higher Education Institutes is an emerging topic for research, as these organizations are increasingly adopting the tools and methods to improve their quality practices. Nevertheless, Institutes of Higher Education differ significantly from business organizations, which limits the applicability of previous research findings. Using Q-methodology, the present study examines the prevailing perspectives on critical success factors of Lean at Dutch and Belgian Institutes of Higher Education. Findings show that Lean implementation at Institutes of Higher Education takes place bottom-up, with relatively little management involvement and commitment, and mostly involves supporting processes. This impedes the organizational culture change that needs to take place for Lean implementation to be sustainable in the long term, as successes are less visible to management, leading to less management involvement. However, as this is due to structural difference of Higher Education from other industries, it requires a different approach than the conventional, top-down approach prescribed in the literature. A bottom-up implementation of Lean is recommended, centered on improving university-wide supporting processes, promoting cross-departmental cooperation, and overcoming the silo mentality.

Bottlenecks limit value streams, extend lead times and thus cause high costs. ADaM24 provides a new approach to bottleneck problems by offering Advanced Data Management over 24 h for individual and organizational learning to eliminate bottlenecks (Langer et al. 2021). The basic principle to this new approach is to determine a standard day by recording it in minute intervals which are averaged over a longer period of time.When ADaM24 is deployed at a company, it reveals six previously undiscovered and characteristic patterns of waste. These are MURA patterns of human-machine interaction, which we call “ProductionCultural Biorhythm” or PCB due to their company-related specificity. Patterns and the expression PCB were first established by Langer et al. (2021) [1] and can be demonstrated across different industries and company sizes. The processes measured at companies show that the maximum possible capacity is actually never used, in particular at bottlenecks. ADaM24’s clear and easy to grasp graphical representations open up new opportunities for learning about how to make desirable behavioral changes. Moreover, it provides managers with new intervention options. Now time slots within 24 h can be selected for optimization projects, during which not only the radicality of an intervention, but also its improvement dynamics and implementation stability can be measured.Overall, the PCB topology offers a wealth of new approaches, such as the integration of AI or even the ability to continuously identify bottlenecks “now and next” in dynamic value streams.

The C19 forces university teachers to turn into the digital world in a short time. Although online teaching has been proven to be a successful approach for learning, the rapid change that we were subjected to make did not leave space for each of us to assess the impact of this change on the student. All that we knew was: We have to teach online. There is no other possible way right now! However, is it ok to teach online?Many educators had already faced this question and provided answers for it from different perspectives. However, the C19 did not give time to find answers. We needed to teach online from scratch, and we had little time to learn technologies and prepare or adapt the lessons online.Nevertheless, after a year of online teaching, there has been time to learn technologies and prepare online lessons. In addition, each of us can collect our data to compare both learning approaches from personal perspectives.Thus, this aims to purpose the Value Stream Mapping (VSM) as a lecturer tool to assess educational process from the lecturer’s perspective in both synchronic situations (online vs. face-to-face).The paper explains VSM as a lecturer’s self-assessment tool implementing an example in a specific teaching process. This process belongs to the teaching activities of the author. Therefore, the paper avoids generalizing possible answers to the research question. However, further research will require the results from the implemented tool to obtain a sufficient data set for generalizations.

In recent years, learning factories have proven to be an effective instrument for developing competencies, especially in lean production and digitization. The concept of learning factories has been enriched in the recent past by elements and training units in virtual reality (VR). This enrichment allows an expansion of the mapping abilities of different training environments and value streams in the context of lean education. Nevertheless, learning factory developers are faced with the challenge of selecting suitable scenarios in terms of content and scope. An approach for the competency-oriented and structured design of such scenarios will be presented in this publication and illustrated by means of an application example of the research project PortaL (Virtual action tasks for personalized, adaptive learning).

A logical first step for many manufacturers when embarking on a transformation towards digitalization of their production system is to acquire technologies that captures data in real-time to help monitor and improve machines and production performance. Nevertheless, the presence of real-time digital data will not in itself lead to significant improvement in production performance. It also requires manufacturers to enable shop floor workers to generate insights from these real-time captured data to frame and resolve problems. As such, this action research paper presents the outcome of a learning intervention’s first action learning cycle at the Danish Roof-top windows manufacturer VELUX. The intervention aimed to institute a lean learning system to enable the further successful digital transformation of the company’s production system.

The Toyota Wessels Institute for Manufacturing Studies (TWIMS) was founded in 2018 in South Africa. Its mandate is to develop manufacturing executive leadership capabilities in Africa.Academics that teach and engage on lean transformation journeys recognize that lean management systems are a foundational requirement for sustainable lean capability development. And yet, management practitioners (and consultants) often fail to recognize this. Rather, they see lean as a toolkit applied for quick organizational turnarounds and short-term operational or supply chain management gains.This paper explores the lean teaching methodology adopted at TWIMS which contextualises the short-term elements of lean within a long-term journey of continuous improvement. The paper explains that such teaching methodologies are vital if students are to implement lean strategies in their organisations that last beyond the initial gains created by short-term lean tools. Finally, the paper finds that TWIMS’ teaching methodology is successful in creating a more holistic comprehension of lean among students, which instils a greater appreciation for lean as a long-term strategy.

The paper “Learning a Lean Way” reflects on if and how students could improve their learning process by applying a Problem-Solving A3. Three different gains that could be achieved are focused. Applying A3s could heighten students’ awareness of their own contribution to their learning processes, the importance of being involved in a thinking process connected to learning, structure knowledge through a common language and sharing results in progress and at the end. Based on three student groups filled-in A3 formats, in addition to students’ reflections given in short interviews after course completion, four important results appeared 1) Students expressed that applying the Problem-Solving A3 had, to their surprise, heightened their awareness and understanding of how important own practices were to achieve improved learning. 2) All students seemed to have a quite clear understanding of what “good learning behavior” implies: preparation, actively participation in lectures and afterwork, but only to a minor extent did they usually practice this understanding. 3) In their root-cause analysis students gave many similar explanations as to why they didn’t act according to what they knew were the “good learning behaviours”. They focused on bad planning, low priority, deficient study techniques and class atmosphere. 4) Most students expressed reluctance to share experiences with their other classmates both during their filling-in sessions and after having completed their A3s. Overall results show that students own participation, reflections and tracking of own learning process improvements, through applying a Lean-thinking Problem-Solving A3, could be a valuable addition to increase students learning and thereby contribute to heightening quality in higher education.

Lean Production has its roots in the Toyota Production System, introduced before World War II, and is constantly evolving. Its importance as an organizational management model triggers the need to teach it in the academy. Promptly, Lean Education is being taught all over the world. However, teaching Lean using traditional expositive lectures is not effective, and many academics and practitioners are using active learning methodologies. Lean and Learning Factories, which are two concepts that come from the past, are more than alive nowadays. This paper presents a literature review regarding Lean Learning Factories, based on a scientific articles research at Scopus database. The review was conducted for the period from 1990 to 2021 and resulted in a total of 76 papers. Main findings revealed that the first articles within the context of Lean Learning Factories were published in 2006. The learning factories initiatives were developed by universities and the most used learning strategies are simulations and gamification. Also, the latest configurations of these are in Germany, Austria, and Croatia. The results revealed an increase in the number of publications since 2015, reaching 14 publications in 2020.

More and more often, companies that follow a lean implementation path realize that the results deriving just from the application of the most basic tools often guarantee temporary results that are only satisfactory in the short term. An aspect that is often overlooked, but essential for the effective achievement of a lean structure, consists in the training of operators and, more generally, of all actors in a given company. The aim of this paper is to understand how different training methods, such as the instructor-led classroom training, on-the-job training, vestibule training, and coaching lead to different learning results in the context of a lean implementation. The results are contextualized within the process mapping phase, specifically in the adoption of Value Stream Mapping at three different companies, for each of which a different training program was designed.

Experience of successful improvements in organizations based on lean methods shows that participation and involvement are the keys. Based on this, a university-level continuing course has been created that focuses on quality improvements. Students gain knowledge of various lean and quality tools, as well as of implementation processes. The students learn essential tools and implementation processes gradually, while at the same time using this knowledge.The course is structured in modules with intermediate work steps, where the intention for students is to use their knowledge in quality improvement projects at their workplace. The underlying idea is that the course modules correspond to the Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) methodology. The exam consists of submitting a folder with reports from the intermediate work steps and a final report.This course has been offered and completed twice, with the third in progress as of this date. We describe the background for our choice in quality and process tools as well as the examination form. In addition, results from a survey among the participating students on their opinions of the course content, structure, and examination form, are presented.We conclude that students who take this further education in parallel with their regular work are of great benefit to their employers, as the course is module-based, and the participants work on a project at their workplace. In addition, the students appreciate interweaving theory and knowledge training. The course grades are determined on a final report based on sub-assignments where the students do an academic reflection on their improvement project.

This research discusses how lecturers in an Irish university transferred their classroom-based blended learning Lean Six Sigma modules to online delivery. The transfer from a practical classroom environment to an online classroom needed to be seamless in the students Lean active learning experiences. The output of the paper is to discuss the designing of appropriate delivery methods and practical examples, games, scenarios, exercises in a flipped online classroom. Problem-based learning is ideal for teaching lean manufacturing, driven by a problem-solving culture that values learning as a critical output. The design of a “practical problem based” online Kaizen utilising the virtual classroom as an obeya room enabled students to learn Lean Six Sigma tools and practically deploy the tools. Qualitative and quantitative measures were deployed to assess the success of the transition.

This research is a case study on SQT a leading Irish Lean Six Sigma training provider and their transition to online training and the digitalisation of their Lean Six Sigma training programs and other associated programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The changes and challenges in transitioning from the existing classroom-based training model are discussed. A quantitative survey and qualitative interviews were carried out with the customers (trainee’s and sponsoring employer organisations/clients) of the Lean Six Sigma trainer provider for 9–12 months. The results of the survey on the customers learning experiences with online Lean training is analysed. The results will demonstrate that the move to online Lean training was positive for both the customers and the training provider in terms of quality of delivery, cost minimisation, elimination of non-value-add travel and classroom time, improved online teamwork, program structure and engagement and enhanced benefits of the application of the learning in the workplace.

Virtual reality offers an immersive, remote alternative to in-person teaching. We teach a Lean masterclass entirely in real-time virtual reality. By summer 2021, we had taught five masterclasses for 117 senior-level managers from more than 50 leading organisations. In these courses, participants located all over the world can interact with each other almost as in a physical seminar setting. Drawing on formal course evaluation surveys and personal experience, we discuss the appropriateness of real-time virtual reality as a teaching platform and the benefits and challenges of this approach. Based on our experiences, and taking into account the rapid ongoing technological development, we imagine that this form of teaching and learning will accelerate in importance and application.

Lean practitioners have traditionally been reluctant to automate and digitalize production. Over the last years the combination of lean and digitalization has been actualized in academic publications, but still there are unanswered questions. In this paper, we address the relationship in a qualitative case study of a performance management system in a lean production context in a department of a Norwegian light-metal production company. We find synergies between lean and digitalization, as the digital system supports visualization of performance, problem analysis and continuous improvement through employee involvement. Nonetheless, we also find that digital solutions might be a barrier for motivation and further production improvement when IT systems are not developed aligned with the continuous improvement on the shop floor. We encourage organizations to find alternative ways of organizing the relationship between distributed continuous improvement and centralized IT development to strengthen the synergy of digitalization and lean.

The research aims to understand how the implementation of Artificial Intelligence AI in Manufacturing Operations takes place. This paper will feed wider research on the interaction between Lean Production and AI, after understanding the implementation process of AI. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been performed. A set of more than 2300 documents has been extracted and screened to produce a list of 90 highly selected and classified articles and conference papers dealing with the research question. After a first meta-level analysis, a structured discussion has been presented over the documents. Three macro use-cases for implementing AI into manufacturing systems have been identified. The first two use cases have been deeply analyzed by the SLR, while the third one has been left for further researches. For the first two use cases, the main applications have been presented through a comprehensive categorization (for stand-alone solution) and a clear explanation of the different paradigms (for I4.0 related implementation). Furthermore, for each case, the available frameworks have been presented. The main challenges and issues that managers should consider while implementing this kind of technology were presented. Possible consequences that AI innovations might have were also indicated. The article ends with insights for Lean production and future research.

Despite the acclaimed potential of industry 4.0 for efficiency and growth, statistics show that the majority of firms’ digital transformation programs fail to meet their objectives. We provide a plausible explanation of this understudied phenomenon through theoretical discussions on the four overlooked paradoxical characteristics found between digitalization activities. Further, using the lens of lean and dynamic capabilities theory, we propose strategies for firms to transcend the paradoxes and in turn, realize their expectations of the transformation initiatives.

Lean Six Sigma is a powerful methodology that integrates the best of two distinct approaches to business excellence: Lean and Six Sigma. While Six Sigma focuses on the systematic reduction of variation within processes, the Lean approach aims for business growth through waste elimination and the continuous development of people. Given the advent of Industry 4.0, digitalization now presents the next frontier of industrial improvement. Lean Six Sigma can be integrated with Industry 4.0 to optimize process efficiency. This study is a systematic literature review on the integration of Industry 4.0 and Lean Six Sigma. The findings are that while this topic is an emerging area of study, there are benefits, motivations, critical success factors, and challenges to integrating Lean Six Sigma and Industry 4.0.

The concept of learning factory is taking more and more hold as teaching method, especially after the advent of Industry 4.0 (I4.0). Learning factories have in fact proved to be effective in developing knowledge and skills necessary for students to master the potentialities of adopting new I4.0 technologies in several aspects of production and logistics systems. Driven by these potentialities and aiming to create and spread new knowledge on the use of I4.0 technologies in production and logistics systems, the Production Management group at NTNU, with the support of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, has established in 2018 the Logistics 4.0 (Log4.0) Lab. Since then, the Log4.0 Lab has been used to develop state-of-the-art research investigating the impact of I4.0 technologies on production and logistics systems and to transfer the developed knowledge to the students to render them ready for and attractive to the job market. In this paper, we provide some examples of the use of the Log4.0 Lab for teaching purposes, and specifically we focus on its use with respect to the Lean 4.0 concept, i.e., the integration of I4.0 technologies with Lean practices and concepts.

Network Action Learning has emerged as an innovative development of Action Learning and has been described as a lean approach to collaborative strategic improvement with problem-solving at its core, be it either within- or across organizational boundaries. Virtual Action Learning is also presented as an emergent variety of Action Learning, bringing together geographically dispersed individuals within and across organizations in an online, virtual environment. Given the onset of new, innovative digital technologies – particularly in response of the Covid-19 pandemic – Blended Learning has also emerged as an educational platform that represents some combination of face-to-face and online learning using mobile technologies and cloud-based resources. Though Virtual Action Learning has been discussed as neither better than nor second best to face-to-face Action Learning, in this paper, we suggest that a blended approach may be the most effective method. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to construct a Blended approach to Network Action Learning, where intra- and inter-firm Network Action Learning can take place using a hybrid, physical-virtual approach to promoting collaborative strategic improvement and gemba-based problem-solving.

The term ‘fake lean’ is useful as it points to the various ways in which lean is put into praxis. At the same time, ‘fake’ in this expression condemns particular uses. Against the background of literature on organization concepts, we discuss the notion of ‘fake lean’. This essay centers around the tenability of the essentialist norm inherent in ‘fake lean’. We encourage users of ‘lean’ to reflect on how they put it into practice, and whether or not they decide to ‘fake’ this organization concept.

Toyota Production System (TPS) created in the 1950s undoubtedly marked the beginning of a new era in production and economy. The paradigm shifts introduced both in terms of the management and organization of material flows and in the way the respect for people became an important pillar, brought enormous benefits to the society. From the 1970s until today, companies and organizations around the world have been implementing this new way of organizing and managing the industry and services to achieve excellence. Since the 1970s, several TPS-Inspired Models of Excellence have been created and have been competing for their academic acceptance and adoption in companies and organizations around the world. The purpose of this article is to analyze the most popular models and compare them in terms of the following criteria: Focus on Pull Flow; Focus on Process; Focus on Respect for People (or Sociotechnical scope); Existence of associated techniques; Coverage on Indirect Areas; Popularity in scientific journals; and Popularity in books. Although being “Lean” frequently referred as synonymous of TPS, according to those criteria, authors are inclined to conclude that Kaizen Model, Toyota Way, and Shingo Model are the most comprehensive excellence models considered in this study.

Based on the Toyota Production System (TPS) business model, Lean Systems were popularized in the 1990s and have helped many businesses achieve significant gains in profitability and competitiveness. Despite this, a majority of organizations that attempt to adopt this system fail to do so. One reason this can occur is an inability to adapt lean principles to specific environments. To address this problem, alternative methods like Scrum, Agile, and Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) were developed. As a further advance to lean approaches, an alternative system called “Quantum Lean” (QL) was developed to build on the work of lean innovators and apply continuous improvement to lean systems. Compared to other lean approaches, QL offers a combination of greater simplicity, efficiency, speed, and comprehensiveness. The key to this system is a framework that is:Time-Focused – Instead of addressing waste like traditional lean does, QL attacks time. This results in much greater simplicity by leveraging the fact that time is the fuel that feeds all waste. Instead of attacking waste in its 8 forms, addressing time is simpler.Product-Centric – Instead of tracking time from the view of the customer/resource/owner, time is tracked and measured from the standpoint of the product and only the product. Relentlessly maintaining this framework assures consistency in conclusions and reduces the conflicting objectives (e.g., owner vs. employee vs. customer) that come with other continuous improvement approaches.Simple and Comprehensive – QL employs a comprehensive and structured analytic methods including Product Path Diagramming (PPD). Compared to other methods like Value Stream Mapping (Traditional Lean) or Manufacturing Critical-Path Time Mapping (QRM), PPD offers greater simplicity, refined prioritization, and/or an improved ability to identify and minimize every waste and contributor to time-in-fulfillment.Although there are additional benefits, QL’s simplicity is arguably its greatest virtue and makes additional advantages possible.

Continuous Improvement initiatives are diverse, encompassing, amongst others, lean management, six sigma, TPM and TQM. Striking is that the Continuous Improvement literature focuses mainly on the transformation process itself, with little attention given to its outcome. This study addresses this gap by examining the characteristics of organizations after the continuous improvement transformation. A review of scientific papers and management books yielded eight elements characterizing a continuous improvement organization. These elements were described using 25 main characteristics, thus bringing clarity to academics and practitioners about the definition and attributes of becoming a continuous improvement organization.

Much has been written and researched on the role of top management in Lean transformations. However, even with top management commitment companies can struggle to keep up kaizen activities once the so-called implementation period has passed. Little has been made of the role of the middle managers. Often overlooked and underappreciated, the development of middle managers leadership skills through gemba based training and hansei (self-reflection), might be the missing link in successful and sustainable lean transformations. Based on a literature review on the subject and case studies of three different companies, we present how middle managers can become an integral part in sustainable lean transformations by taking the role of trainers, and leading on-the-job development of both technical-, improvement- and teamwork skills. This should be done by teaching Toyota Production System (TPS) on the gemba, creating space for Hansei. The training should be carried out in a train-the-trainer system where each manager is responsible for the training and development of their direct reports.

This paper studies the effect of Lean QRM Yellow-belt training programs on employee’s continuous improvement (CI) behavior. Training employees is still the most common approach organizations follow to implement Lean production. However, such training programs do not always have the desired effect. To understand why Lean training programs, such as the Lean QRM Yellow-belt training may or may not lead to expected results, this study draws on a process model to conduct a longitudinal analysis. The results indicate that the Lean QRM Yellow-belt training program positively influences the patterning or shared understanding of lean operating routines, but does not (yet) influence the enactment of lean operating or CI routines. The interaction between enacting and patterning lean operating and CI routines however is necessary to implement lean production and thus influences the potential success of its sustainable implementation. These results pose practical implications on the content and didactical form of teaching in Lean QRM Yellow-belt training programs.

We present 14 learning principles supporting a lean approach to knowledge management. These principles are discussed in relation to research on competence development strategies. Further, we also relate them to advice and lessons learned from the agile and lean software development communities. The principles focus on learning as a team activity, and learning focused on needs. They also suggest a perspective where inventories of knowledge can be seen as waste, and where learning is potentially a wasteful activity. We argue that the learning principles are significant steps towards lean knowledge management.

Using games and simulations to teach various lean methods and approaches enables the teacher to increase student’s participation and identify each individual’s challenges. Given the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, most of the businesses and institution went into lockdown from early 2020, forcing the educators to deliver remote workshops. Playing Lean is a team-based board game in which players have to develop their business through iterative development and lean experimentation. The team that reaches early majority first—by crossing the proverbial chasm—wins. In this paper, the author explores how the game was adapted for teaching the lean startup method remotely.

Lean Thinking principles and methods, in the context of highly valued production systems, are seen as the best practices and essential for competitiveness. Therefore, it requires educators, students, and employees well trained and prepared in Lean concepts to meet these demands. In this context, gamification is becoming a popular resource among educators who aim to train the principles of Lean Thinking. Among educators, Bloom’s taxonomy is an objective-based assessment as it approaches a high level of detail when defining learning objectives. In the context of this paper, Bloom’s Taxonomy encompasses the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and attitudes, to identify learning outcomes in serious games. This paper presents a literature review based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, Serious Games and Lean learning. With this review, the authors intend to find evidence that Serious Games are suitable for Lean learning to reach the highest order level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Fourteen papers were identified in this review discussing the three topics. In just three of these papers, it was identified such evidence.

The wide diffusion of the Lean Thinking philosophy has led different industries to improvements by analyzing their processes and identifying KPIs to monitor their performance, resulting in more notable importance to the KPIs results than the generation process. Waste appears in different environments, and the KPI monitoring process is no exception. The Lean approach within this area boosts the monitoring process, providing real-time analysis, allowing a better response time in corrective actions. This paper exhibits a continuous improvement project that successfully led to a significant reduction in KPI generation processing time. It relies on introducing a KPI dashboard, a digital tool for lean production.

It is well known in manufacturing that a flow shop usually outperforms a job shop for comparable products. This paper aims to understand the impact of routing variability on WIP inventory, lead time, and delivery performance. A perfect flow shop has no routing variability, with every part following exactly the same sequence of processes. A job shop, on the other hand, often has significant routing variability. In reality, there can be any degree of variability, from the perfect flow shop to a perfectly random routing in a job shop, or anything in between. This paper compares the performance of a perfect flow shop with a perfectly random job shop, aiming to keep all other factors influencing the performance as comparable as possible. The goal is to isolate the impact of routing variability on system performance.

Lean Manufacturing is considered to be one of the major frameworks in improving manufacturing performance. Yet, a majority of lean improvement projects fail to generate a benefit for the organization. The problem usually lies with an incomplete understanding of lean manufacturing by the personnel involved. Therefore, industry is very interested in improving lean skills. This paper gives a qualitative overview and comparison on how to improve the abilities of the personnel to do lean, as well as suggestions on how to combine these approaches for a well-rounded improvement of the ability to do lean. It shows opportunities both for corporations as well as individuals on how to improve lean performance.

The environment dynamism of the modern era is fostering the spreading of lean in every industry. Followed by the demonstrated benefits of the lean principles in operational performances many companies have taken the leap. Nonetheless, beyond the manufacturing and mass production industries, the dissemination of lean has a long road ahead yet. Logistic and warehousing activities form part of this group, and authors agree about the limited contribution in the literature. For this reason and considering the necessity of the current era for constant optimization of the activities, increasing attention on warehousing is important. The purpose of this article is to illustrate an empirical performance of how lean is applied to the context of a logistic service provider distinguished by flexible solutions. The continuous improvement story exploits the A3 framework for building the problem solving.

Since its inception with Toyota, the lean approach has been a growing point of interest in various industries and organizations worldwide. However, the focus of attention, in terms of its application in the literature, has remained constant in improving the performance of production processes compared to improving that of offices. Instilling Lean as a strategic vision requires not only a focus on production but also other areas of the focal firm. This paper showcases a success story in a manufacturing company that has decided to opt for a lean office continuous improvement project through A3 problem solving tool to compenetrate the strategic vision of Lean Culture and to develop one first step for the creation of synergy with its production processes.

As years go by, companies operate in an ever-changing environment requiring strategic tools to provide effectiveness and efficiency. The Healthcare sector is not different, dealing with several challenges like increasing patient numbers and limited resources. Healthcare centers need to improve continuously while offering the best services to their patients. The lean thinking, which was initially a symbol of manufacturing process, has evolved over the years to reach the scope of service improvement. This paper exhibits a successful initiative of engaging lean thinking in the healthcare industry to develop more efficient and effective services.

Successfully completed construction projects with regards to quality, time consumed, and cost are the main concern focus of the construction industry. Thus, there is a growing attention to continuous improvement programs dealing with the streamlining of material and information flows and the minimization of waste in all processes at a construction site. Unfortunately, many companies are struggling with this, and the continuous improvement programs fails. Drawing on an action research case study involving a leading Norwegian construction company and their key suppliers, this study aims to identify enablers and inhibitors influencing the implementation process of a specific continuous improvement method – Toyota Kata. The aim was to learn from the implementation process to avoid pitfalls and to know what to solve, increasing the likelihood of success. The case is a housebuilding project where the case companies collaborate on common improvement tasks. Main enablers identified is the importance of having a common area for collaboration between actors in a value chain to solve common problems and application of a systematically approach ensuring learning and lasting improvement. The main inhibitors are lack of culture for CI and Kata is not a part of a management system such as Lean Construction, enabling to involvement of the entire workforce in the CI process. The results of this study can help managers and practitioners to address the identified enablers and inhibitors, paving the way for successful implementation of Kata.

The expectations of Norwegian citizens with respect to the quality, availability, and effectiveness of public healthcare and welfare service provided by municipalities, are rising. Public resources are at the same time limited. This increased pressure is, however, an encouragement to optimize organizations and improve productivity and on delivering high-quality service. It is well known from the manufacturing industry that lean as an approach has achieved outstanding results regard to this. Thus, the aim of this study is to explore the translation process of new organizational idea of lean into the municipality, enabling to meet future increasing demand. The translation is carried out through a collaboration between a private actor and the municipality, where the private actor contributes with knowledge and skills about lean in a manufacturing industry context. An in-depth, exploratory single case study was carried out with the aim of understanding how the collaboration process takes place and the factors that drive the translation process. From how lean is rendered to fit the specific context to its meet in the recipient organization. The data material is made up of semi-structured interviews with key personnel from both actors and the analysis of written documentation from the collaboration process. The main drivers identified were being part of the same municipality, competent translation, internal translator to prepare the final translation, and solid anchoring and motivated leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to describe challenges in collaborative research in practice. The research object is a development process where a medium-sized and large manufacturer applied prototypes of a problem-solving practice on practical problems in product realization. These applications provided the manufacturers with insights into practical problems in product realization and their problem-solving capabilities. In addition, the application of the prototypes generated data for a case study about challenges in collaborative research. The findings reveal three challenges in collaborative research. The first challenges relates to scoping problems and action. The second challenge relates to practitioner’s immediate outcome from applying the problem-solving practice. The third challenge addresses practitioner’s commitment for change. Practitioners gained insight by applying prototypes; however, implications for practitioners emerge when mutual stakeholders have ambiguous or conflicting objectives for participating in research. Implications for research include tension between researchers and practitioners in the organization. Therefore, researchers, practitioners and consultants can benefit from considering these challenges when engaging in collaborative research.

The inspiration behind the research conducted in this conference paper roots back to the 6th European Lean Educator Conference (ELEC 2019) held in Milan. Named “The Lean Educator and Practitioner Mashup”, the conference was meant to explore the latest academics and industrial contribution to lean education, embracing the figure of Leonardo da Vinci as a conceptual leitmotif.Both formal and informal events were paramount in the inspirational process leading to this research, highlighting some relations between lean thinking principles and the character of Leonardo da Vinci.In this regard, analogies have been analysed to study if and how Leonardo’s tools, theories and techniques could describe him as one of the contemporary figures of the Lean Educator or Lean Sensei.The focus of the research was on Leonardo’s tendency to outline the method and process through which his genius developed and manifested, to point out similarities and differences with the contemporary lean thinking and practice and to compare his figure with the one of a Lean Educator first and of the Lean Sensei afterwards.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the adoption of lean manufacturing principles, as well as tools, in multiple industrial sectors. In fact, this management philosophy, which is already well-established, has been applied successfully in other various contexts than just production. However, companies are under pressure to manage their activities, considering their effects in social and environmental terms. In this sense, this study aims to characterize the acceptance of lean by Portuguese companies, as well as the results obtained both in terms of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), as well as in terms of organizational competitiveness (COM) by companies with lean implemented. To this end, a questionnaire was distributed to 3957 companies operating in Portugal, having obtained a total of 373 responses, of which 201 were validated, i.e., a rate of 53.89% valid responses. The results of this study show that companies with lean adopted, also adhere to green management practices (GMP), managing to improve their performance relative to each one of the dimensions of the triple bottom line (TBL), i.e., their ESG outcomes, as well as their COM.