Naveen Kumar

Barriers in green lean six sigma product development process: an ISM approach

Abstract In today’s competitive globalised business environment, production cost cutting is a primary issue before operation managers. As a research area, green lean six sigma (GLS) is proposed to have strategic importance in product development towards cutting costs, contributing to optimisation, and achieving sustainability. This research requirement has been realised to draw benefits out of three recent and involved approaches (green, lean and six sigma). In this research, an attempt has been made to address barriers in GLS product development (GLSPD) from an extensive literature review and from experts’ opinions towards developing a hierarchical model structuring these barriers. Twenty-one barriers have been identified and sorted from the review of literature and were then validated through discussions with experts. Relationships (contextual in nature) among these barriers have been realised during a brainstorming session. An interpretive structural modelling (ISM) technique has been utilised for developing a hierarchical model of barriers in implementing the GLSPD process in the automobile sector of India. A nine-level structural model has been deduced after application of the ISM technique, which shows ‘Competition and Uncertainty’ as the topmost output of the model and ‘Lack of Total Top Management Commitment’ as the bottom-level input to other barriers of the model. Further, MICMAC analysis has been also done to classify these barriers for better understanding; seven barriers are identified as driver barriers, nine as dependent, five barriers as linkage and no barrier as autonomous. An analysis of interdependence and interactions among these barriers may help supply chain managers reach a better understanding of barriers. Thus, managers may be helped in prioritising and managing barriers in order to gain a competitive advantage from GLS concept implementation in product development.

Comparative Studies to Evaluate Relative in vitro Potency of Luteolin in Inducing Cell Cycle Arrest and Apoptosis in HaCaT and A375 Cells

Luteolin is a naturally occurring flavonoid present in many plants with diverse applications in pharmacology. Despite several studies elucidating its significant anti-cancer activity against various cancer cells, the mechanism of action in skin cancer is not well addressed. Hence, we investigated the effects of luteolin in HaCaT (human immortalized keratinocytes) and A375 (human melanoma) cells. The radical scavenging abilities of luteolin were determined spectrophotometrically, prior to a cytotoxic study (XTT assay). Inhibitory effects were assessed by colony formation assay. Further, the capability of luteolin to induce cell cycle arrest and apoptosis were demonstrated by flow cytometry and cellular DNA fragmentation ELISA, respectively. The results revealed that luteolin possesses considerable cytotoxicity against both HaCaT and A375 cells with IC50 values of 37.1 μM and 115.1 μM, respectively. Luteolin also inhibited colony formation and induced apoptosis in a dose and time-dependent manner by disturbing cellular integrity as evident from morphological evaluation by Wright- Giemsa staining. Accumulation of cells in G2/M (0.83-8.14%) phase for HaCaT cells and G0/G1 (60.4-72.6%) phase for A375 cells after 24 h treatment indicated cell cycle arresting potential of this flavonoid. These data suggest that luteolin inhibits cell proliferation and promotes cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in skin cancer cells with possible involvement of programmed cell death, providing a substantial basis for it to be developed into a potent chemopreventive template for skin cancer.

Conceptualisation of Sustainable Green Lean Six Sigma: an empirical analysis

Strategies Sustainable Green, Green, Lean and Six Sigma are being increasingly referred to in literature on social; environmental; economical; wastage reduction; and quality concerns. Combinations/mergers of these strategies may be looked at as relatively new research area totalling individual benefits of each strategy, which needs to be explored. This present study is an attempt towards fulfilling this requirement. Combinations of various methodologies have been adopted: literature review; interviews; workshops: brainstorming sessions; questionnaire based survey; and statistical analysis. Recent contributions in the area of mergers of various strategies: sustainable green; green; lean; and Six Sigma have been highlighted. Conceptual framework has been presented on mergers of these strategies. Important enablers, barriers and performance measures have been identified. Ratings have been assigned to the critical success factors (CSFs) relevant to ‘Sustainable Green Lean Six Sigma’ (SGLS) based upon empirical study and analysis of eighty nine duly completed responses.

Contributions in research in the field of innovation management: analysis of critical success factors, benefits and risks

Innovation management (IM) has increasingly been identified as an important research area to consider new ideas from different perspective and to improve the outcomes of business processes. Important contributions, mostly from the last five years, in field of IM have been included in this study. A model has also been presented to show the key theme areas of IM research. Literature has been reviewed to identify seven critical success factors (categorising 49 factors); nine benefits; and three perspectives of risks (categorising 11 risks). A statistical survey has been carried out to reveal: customer’s perspective and organisation perspective as most important CSFs; long term competitive advantage and improved efficiency as most beneficial; and operational risk as most critical area in IM. Analysis of CSFs, benefits and risks will help organisations to prioritise and manage them effectively and efficiently to draw advantage from IM.