Barbara Resta

Green Virtual Enterprise Broker: Enabling Build-to-Order Supply Chains for Sustainable Customer-Driven Small Series Production

Global businesses are moving towards ‘glocalization’ and ‘mass-customization’ strategies to serve in a more personal and sustainable way their customers. Advances in ICT and green manufacturing technologies are enablers of this phenomenon. This paper explores a new business model, and its related supply chain model, the Green Virtual Enterprise Broker, which is fully customer-driven and aware of the environmental footprint of products and services to serve customized and small series production demands.

How Lean Manufacturing Affects the Creation of Sustainable Value: An Integrated Model

Lean Manufacturing (LM) has always been intended as a means to improve efficiency by reducing operations costs, but the recent focus on sustainability and its three pillars (economic, environmental, and social) raises new issues. In this paper, a new model that links LM with sustainability is proposed and then refined through a cross-sector multiple case study. The results highlight a need to align lean implementation processes with sustainability strategy to avoid negative impacts that LM could have on the components of sustainability.

Designing and Configuring the Value Creation Network for Servitization

Despite the numerous benefits that the implementation of a servitization strategy can bring to manufacturing companies, several challenges have to be faced. Among others, changes in competences, resources, organisational structure and value network relationships are required in order to create, capture and deliver new value. In such a context, this paper investigates how the servitization level of a product-service offering impacts on a product-service provider as well as on its value-creation network. A theoretical conceptual model, derived from literature, is developed and then expanded into an explanatory conceptual framework through a case-based methodology. Evidence from the empirical investigation is then discussed and summarised into twelve propositions. Finally, contribution to both theory and practice, as well as some directions for future research, is pointed out.

The Servitization of Manufacturing: A Methodology for the Development of After-Sales Services

It has been suggested that though many companies realize the importance of providing after-sales services, most do not fully understand the maximum benefit from such offerings. Though several research papers document an approach for the implementation of a service operations strategy, a practical guide for the development of after-sales services is lacking in the current literature. Therefore, in this paper, we apply existing theory and use practical insights in order to propose a nine-step methodology for the development of after-sales services. The methodology links customer value from services to portfolio management theory. Two case studies describe application of the methodology. It can be used by practitioners in order to exploit the untapped potential of providing product-service offerings, with the aim to generate greater profits and a higher level of customer service.

Exploiting Lean Benefits Through Smart Manufacturing: A Comprehensive Perspective

Lean Production has proven to be a valuable methodology to improve productivity while reducing costs. Notwithstanding the countless successful lean implementations in the extant literature, others highlight its limitations, especially in production environments characterized by demand volatility, high product mix and reduced lot sizes. Technology is seen by many as a potential solution to such limitations, especially in the last years, with Industry 4.0 becoming an emerging frontier for the smart factories of the future. However, studies about the relationship between lean and smart manufacturing are scarce and often anecdotal. Therefore, the proposed work aims to fill this gap by developing a comprehensive model that links these two perspectives and serves practitioners to achieve lean’s core goals in smart factories.

Lean Manufacturing and Sustainability: An Integrated View

Lean Manufacturing has always been seen as a mean to improve efficiency by reducing operations costs, but the recent focus on sustainability and its three pillar (economic, environmental and social) brought new issues to be addressed. In this paper, a new framework that links lean manufacturing with sustainability is proposed and then refined through a cross-sectoral multiple case study. The results highlight the need to align the lean implementation process with the sustainability strategy in order to avoid the negative impacts that lean production could have on the environmental and social components of sustainability.

Product-Service Portfolio Configuration vs. Economic and Financial Results: An Empirical Analysis in the Italian Truck Industry

Based on an extensive survey involving Italian heavy truck workshops, this chapter introduces an empirically based typology. The research aims at identifying the main features that characterise heavy truck assistance workshops offering similar product–service portfolios and having a comparable service attitude. The developed typology allows a better understanding of the relationship between workshop types and their economic and financial results. The analysis shows that the attitude towards the proposal of comprehensive product–service portfolios supports workshops to prosper in this market that is affected by weak demand, hard competition and decreasing margins.

A Decision Making Process for Sustainability in the Textile Sector

A growing number of textile companies are adopting sustainable principles as a way of distinguishing themselves from their competitors and gaining a competitive advantage. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a predominant methodology for the systematic evaluation of the potential environmental impacts of a product or service system through all stages of its life cycle. However its influence and relevance for decision making is still limited since the important relationships between the economic and environmental performance are not properly addressed. In this paper, a new decision making process, exploiting the LCA methodology and combining economic and environmental aspects, is proposed.

Exploring the role of human factors in lean management

Although lean popularity is rapidly growing, its implementation is far from problem-free and companies may experience difficulties in sustaining long-term success. On this premises, the purpose of this paper is to understand to what extent human factors, affected by the implementation of both hard (defined as technical and analytical tools) and soft (concerning people and relations) lean practices, play a key role in achieving long-term superior performance.,The analysis of the relationships between lean practices implementation, human factors and operational performance is carried out in a single exploratory case study. A retrospective approach is adopted to trace the changes of human and operational performance before, during and after the introduction of lean management (LM) implementation. In particular, a mixed method concurrent design merging results of a qualitative analysis with data collected from a survey is selected to provide a more realistic benefit in the exploration of the proposed research questions.,The results show a short-term direct relationship between the implementation of lean practices (hard and soft) and physical work environment and job characteristics, directly connected to operational outcome. In the long term, operational performance is influenced by employee behaviour outcome and conditioned by physical work environment and job characteristics with the mediating effect of individual characteristics.,The proposed model supports the building of a roadmap for LM implementation, taking into account the role of the human factors to achieve superior operational performance. Moreover, it helps managers to implement a monitoring system to check how social and technical components of a LM system evolve over time. Finally, it supports the definition of specific training programs, tailored for specific workers’ types.,This paper extends theory in LM, highlighting how hard and soft lean practices have to interact to enable a successful LM implementation.

Leveraging environmental sustainability for competitive advantage in the Italian Clothing and Leather sector

ABSTRACT The present study analyses how the elements of a corporate environmental management system (environmental strategy, environmental management practices (EMPs) and business competitiveness) are connected for the creation of competitive advantage in clothing and leather companies, strongly affected by sustainability issues. The research was conducted through an online survey submitted to Italian companies. A structural equation modelling approach was employed to test the hypothesised model. Results indicate that the implementation of sustainable product and process practices have positive impacts on company’s business competitiveness. Moreover, companies having a greater integration of sustainable practices in their competitive strategy show advantages in terms of brand value, employees’ retention and access to capital. The most important stakeholders involved in the definition of an environmental strategy are suppliers and companies’ employees. Focusing the attention on the business competitiveness impacts of EMPs, companies that have a production plant abroad show greater competitiveness impacts.