Martín Tanco

Do companies with greater deployment of participation systems use Visual Management more extensively? An exploratory study

One of the most important enablers of continuous improvement sustainability is ease of communication, and doing so in a way that can be understood by all employees and allows information to flow rapidly throughout the company. Visual Management (VM) provides significant benefits in communication and standardisation which boosts the effectiveness of improvement systems. This article presents an in-depth literature review about the concept of VM and its benefits, and provides results from an exploratory study carried out in the Basque Country that aims to ascertain the usage of VM in 52 companies. Based on a literature review, 20 different VM elements were identified for improving the workplace. The implementation of these elements was studied, as was the relationship of VM with employee participation systems. The results of this study show a general moderate implementation of VM tools in companies with implementation levels differing according to company size. Some of the lowest scores are detected in the areas of visual control of quality, the displaying of indicators and process visibility. Moreover, statistical differences were identified between the implementation of suggestion systems and improvement teams and the implementation level of VM tools.

Healthcare teamwork best practices: lessons for industry

Purpose – Since the field of healthcare was a latecomer to the quality movement, knowledge transfer has generally flowed in one direction, from industry to healthcare. However, organisations can also be enriched by healthcare. In particular, this paper aims to show industry that important lessons can be learned regarding how teamwork is generally managed within healthcare.Design/methodology/approach – To identify the useful lessons that healthcare can teach industry, the authors started with a brainstorming session among the members of the research team to pin‐point the lessons based on their experience with healthcare and industrial environments. Afterwards, an exhaustive review of the relevant literature from the last ten years was carried out.Findings – Industrial organisations need to develop teamwork frameworks focused on involving every employee in cross‐disciplinary, empowered and trained teams. Moreover, from a team perspective, special care must be shown when defining clear roles, focusing on end...

Main difficulties hindering supply chain performance: an exploratory analysis at Uruguayan SMEs

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to create a list of supply chain (SC)-related difficulties based on the existing SC literature. It also presents an exploratory survey concerning the main difficulties which Uruguayan managers consider to have the most negative impact on their SCs. Design/methodology/approach – The survey was carried out within small- and medium-sized manufacturing and retailing companies in Uruguay, yielding 99 valid responses. A statistical analysis of the survey is introduced including a ranking of the difficulties and a grouping of those using factorial analysis. A difficulty, as understood throughout this paper, is any factor that significantly impacts, or has impacted in recent years, the performance of SCs. Findings – Eighteen main difficulties hindering SC performance were identified. Moreover, an exploratory analysis of the survey showed that the main concerns to SC managers are related to workforce availability and government policies. Practical implications – Difficultie...

Why are companies still struggling to reach higher continuous improvement maturity levels? Empirical evidence from high performance companies

Purpose – Continuous improvement (CI) is regarded as a powerful approach to achieve business excellence. However, the implementation is not simple as it involves managing a considerable amount of tangible and intangible factors throughout the whole organization. The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap by presenting first-hand information about how companies really implement and organize their CI processes. Design/methodology/approach – The study was based on semi-structured interviews in ten high performing companies in the Basque Country, a region in northern Spain well known for its business quality. The objective was to analyze the state of their CI processes, putting special focus on how the organizational structure integrates with the CI processes and what are the characteristics of the corresponding measurement system. Findings – The study shows a lack of company-wide focus on CI, little written evidence of previous improvement activities, unclear improvement process owner, and poor use of adeq...

On the relationship between continuous improvement programmes and their effect on quality defects: An automotive case study

By means of a case study of an automotive manufacturer, this paper aims to study the impact of a continuous improvement (CI) programme on quality defects. The analysis aims to ascertain if several independent variables such as production, CIs, and shifts are correlated to each of two dependent variables: internal quality defects and auditor quality defects (detected in the line). We gathered daily data for each shift of internal quality and auditor quality in a 12-month period. The defects considered and analysed through this study amounted to more than 68,000. This analysis could be useful as a methodology to evaluate the CI programmes of other manufacturers, since there is very little literature in terms of case studies or examples that focus on the daily struggle that manufacturers face when transforming these strategies into working practices.

What motivates employees to participate in continuous improvement activities

Continuous improvement (CI) is still one of the strongest ways for companies to achieve process excellence in order to survive in nowadays’ competitive environments. Yet, it is still very difficult to implement and sustain CI systems, mainly because of the difficulty in engaging people in these activities. Based on an exhaustive literature review, followed by a three-round Delphi study with Spanish experts, this paper helps to assess what the main elements are with respect to the CI system that could motivate employees’ intention to participate in CI activities. Main results show 44 elements grouped into 10 factors that could affect employees’ intention to participate. These factors were structured into a more comprehensive model following an interpretive structural modelling approach.

Robustness of three-level response surface designs against missing data

Experimenters should be aware of the possibility that some of their observations may be unavailable for analysis. This article considers different criteria to assess the impact that missing data can have when running three-level designs to estimate a full second-order polynomial model. Designs for three to seven factors were studied and included Box–Behnken designs, face-centered composite designs, and designs due to Morris, Mee, Block–Mee, Draper–Lin, Hoke, Katasaounis, and Notz. These designs were studied under two existing robustness criteria: (i) the maximum number of runs that can be missing and still allow the remaining runs to estimate a given model; and (ii) the loss of D-efficiency in the remaining design compared with the original design. The robustness of three-level designs was studied using a third, new criterion: the maximum number of observations that can be missing from a design and still allow the estimation of the given model with a high probability. This criterion represents a useful generalization of the first criterion, which determines the maximum number of runs that make the probability of estimating the model equal to one. The new criterion provides a better assessment of the robustness of each design than previous criteria.

Assessing Response’s Bias, Quality of Predictions, and Robustness in Multiresponse Problems

Optimization measures for evaluating compromise solutions in multiresponse problems formulated in the Response Surface Methodology framework are proposed. The measures take into account the desired properties of responses at optimal variable settings, namely, the bias, quality of predictions and robustness, which allow the analyst to achieve compromise solutions of interest and feasible in practice, namely in the case of a method that does not consider in the objective function the responses’ variance level and correlation information is used. Two examples from the literature show the utility of the proposed measures.

A World Class Order Picking Methodology: An Empirical Validation

Order picking is the process of retrieving products from storage in response to a specific customer order. Although this process’ design has significant impact on warehouse global performance, a practical-oriented design procedure is still lacking in literature. This paper presents a novel order picking system design methodology based on Design for Six Sigma approach, that aims to assist designers making decisions by suggesting the most effective operational and organizational policies and the equipment needed in order to fulfill customer’s orders. A case research in a home appliances manufacturer is presented in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach.

Continuous improvement leaders, followers and laggards: understanding system sustainability

Continuous improvement (CI) systems still have room for improvement due to the difficulty in sustaining the system and attaining a high level of employee participation. This study looks to analyse the level of implementation in manufacturing companies of 16 CI routines, and how these routines foster CI and employee participation. Based on a general survey of CI managers from Spain which yielded 147 valid responses, a Cluster Analysis (CA) and a Factorial Analysis were performed in order to group both responses and the variables used into more comprehensive categories. Statistical tests were run to test for significant relationships. This paper introduces a new perspective on the issue of CI maturity levels by using CA to group companies into three categories based on the score of a set of 16 CI enablers, which were in turn reduced to four factors using Factor Analysis, allowing for the identification of improvement challenges depending on the maturity stage of each company. Three different maturity groups of companies were identified, named as Leaders, Followers and Laggards. Results show that companies with better scores on these factors believe to have more sustainable CI systems and a higher level of employee participation.