Purpose: – Manufacturing companies worldwide have been replacing traditional mass-production practices by lean initiatives. This translation process is progressive and may vary depending on several factors. Hence, it could be expected that the degree of adoption of the lean practices could vary significantly among industries, regions and even countries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the implementation performance of lean principles in Brazil, the paper developed a survey in the Sao Paulo Metropolitan Area, which considered 51 industries of different sizes, from several industrial segments, nationals and multinationals. Design/methodology/approach: – The proposed survey was developed using as a normative framework the SAE J4000 standard – identification and measurement of the best practice in implementation of lean operation and the SAE J4001 – implementation of lean operation user manual. To measure the implementation degree of the lean practices in the researched industries, the paper proposed the utilization of two concepts: the degree of leanness (DOL) of an element of J4000 and DOL of a company. Also three hypotheses were tested, trying to establish the relationship among the DOL and firm ownership, their size and respective industrial sector. Findings: – The results obtained in the survey demonstrated that the performance of lean initiative implementation is not uniform among the companies located in the researched area. Outcomes also showed that the degree of implementation of the lean practices by multinational companies was higher than that for the national firms. However, it was not possible to establish a relationship between the DOL and the size of the firms. Neither a clear and definite association between DOL and industrial sector was possible to be identified. Practical implications: – For the practitioners and managers dealing with the lean implementation, this paper gives a relevant contribution because it shows how they can effectively use an existing tool to measure the implementation of the lean practices in their respective firms. Furthermore, the DOL calculation for each individual element of the J4000 standard could also be used by practitioners and managers to identify specific problems and opportunity areas where practical actions could be identified to improve the lean implementation. Originality/value: – This paper contributes to the lean manufacturing theory because it proposes a theoretical way to measure the degree of implementation of the lean initiatives in the manufacturing companies. Also the survey results generate additional research material that could be used by other researchers to further explore the subject in the area.

Recently, besides recurrent financial gains, industries have been required to boost their environmental and social performance to fulfil the demands of several stakeholders. Moreover, the need to measure the sustainability of manufacturing processes is recognized because the production and operations managers need to know how they are contributing to the triple bottom line of their respective companies. To do that, many initiatives have been developed although all of them face some limitations: (a) they are only appropriate for the company as a whole, which makes their application for a manufacturing process difficult; (b) they consider the measures for sustainability (economic, environmental and social) as separate variables with no integration among them, which could become a methodological difficulty in case indicators move in different directions; or (c) they are too complicated to be used as a practical tool on the factory floor. Hence, this study proposes a framework to evaluate the sustainability level of a manufacturing process, integrating the economic, environmental, and social variables into a single combined measure. A case study exemplifies how the proposed procedure can be applied in real-world situations.

The impressive results achieved by several companies through the Six Sigma technique have motivated other organisations to follow their footsteps in search for competitiveness. As noticed in the literature, most Six Sigma projects in manufacturing have aimed to obtain process enhancements, focusing mostly on optimising product cycle times with almost none taking into consideration environmental aspects as part of their developments. Furthermore, organisations have been worrying worldwide about environmental issues, seeking to foster their eco-efficiency. As a result, the main objective of this paper is to formally introduce the environmental considerations into the Six Sigma technique by proposing a procedure to incorporate environmental variables into the DMAIC process as a way to increase the eco-efficiency level of the firms. Based on the literature review, a conceptual procedure to incorporate environmental variables into the Six Sigma DMAIC technique is proposed. To verify its possible application to real-life situations an action research was developed and could verify that the traditional Six Sigma approach (dealing only with the manufacturing process variables) was capable of improving the eco-efficiency level of the process area under study by 11%. The consideration of the environmental variables as part of the DMAIC technique as per the proposed approach allowed an additional 20% gain, which demonstrates its adequacy to increase the eco-efficiency level of the manufacturing area under evaluation.