Competitive landscape, informed consumers and stringent regulations have forced many manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to focus on operational efficiency along with sustainability issues in recent years. While many manufacturing organisations have been taking lean initiatives for the past few years for operational excellence, an impulsive rush to adopt lean without a strategic deployment vision has led to scattered implementation of lean tools and projects without desired success. Many researchers and practitioners prescribe value stream mapping as a foundation for lean transformation initiatives; however, little empirical work is available on the symbiosis of lean and green paradigms to reap maximum benefits. This research, through a systematic methodology and a novel tool called Green Integrated Value Stream Mapping (GIVSM), integrates both paradigms in a case study on a U.K. packaging-manufacturing SME. Applying the GIVSM demonstrates that simultaneous deployment of lean and green paradigms have synergistic effect for improving both operational efficiency and environmental performance. In addition, continuous improvement framework with sustainable procurement is proposed to overcome the lean-green misalignments. This study also provides a guiding reference for practitioners to undertake similar improvement projects and identifies opportunities to expand this academic research on integrated lean-green approach into other industry sectors.

Purpose: Food supply chain (FSC) in Greece is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), who face several challenges in adopting green practices. The purpose of this paper is to identify the key drivers and barriers influencing the environmental performance of SMEs within the Greek dairy supply chain (SC). Design/methodology/approach: Descriptive research methodology attempts to prioritize the drivers and barriers for improving the environmental sustainability performance. Analytical hierarchy process and sensitivity analysis are used to understand the complex nature of the influencing factors. Findings: The analysis identifies five barriers and six drivers for the implementation of green practices within the dairy SC. While external drivers significantly influence the market structure and logistics network, government, competitors and customers are the driving factors for improving environmental performance. Research limitations/implications: The study contributes to filling the literature gap on key factors influencing the implementation of green practices within the FSC. The identified influential factors will contribute toward building a framework for improving sustainability performance within the Greek dairy SC. Practical implications: The study is expected to benefit the Greek and European SMEs by driving their environmental practices within the perishable SC network. Originality/value: The paper provides directions for researchers, practitioners and policy makers in understanding the challenges for implementing green practices in the dairy SC. The holistic approach followed in this paper is a building block for a conceptual framework on implementing environmental sustainability within the FSC. Apart from contributing to the current literature by extending the research horizon to SMEs’ green adoption capability, this study also provides better understanding of the pivotal role of internal and external key factors in influencing sustainability performance.

Food supply chains are receiving increased attention due to rapid depletion of natural resources, increasing quality standards and rising food safety and security concerns. Implementing sustainability practices in food supply chains is believed to overcome such emerging challenges. However, limited studies address sustainability implementation concerns, particularly in cold food supply chains. Thus, this study attempts to identify factors hindering sustainability implementation in cold food chain networks by considering a case of UK artisan cheese producers. Survey data is utilised to identify and prioritise barriers for implementing sustainability following fuzzy analytic hierarchy process and sensitivity analysis. The analysis identified several key barriers, including initial investment cost, firm size and unawareness of government regulations. The internal barriers significantly dominate the implementation of sustainability practices in comparison to external barriers. Lack of consensus regarding the concept of sustainability by different stakeholders is observed to be an issue negatively affecting the level of integration in SMEs. Findings will help food and dairy SME's in gaining competitive advantage through the successful implementation of sustainability practices.

Past few years have continuously seen an increase in intensity and frequency of climate-related disasters in non-mature economies. Most of these losses can be attributed to inefficient and ineffective management of humanitarian logistics and supply chains during the preparedness, response and reconstruction phases of disaster relief operations. Previous researches have focussed primarily either on the response phase of humanitarian logistics or on the humanitarian supply chain coordination issues mostly within international or local NGOs. We present results of a research on how a novel integrated lean and agile (leagile) framework could be employed to efficiently and effectively manage humanitarian logistics and supply chain management (HLSCM) in a local jurisdiction (i.e. public sector) of a disaster-hit region in a non-mature economy. Through this leagile framework, we identify inefficiencies and opportunities of improvement in HLSCM. Our recommendations can be used by both public and private sector organisations dealing with humanitarian emergencies to increase the efficiency of their response and performance during a disaster. Our research also informs guiding principles of UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction to include a leagile framework for achieving both effective and efficient responses to disasters in its priorities for action. We further suggest future research agenda in this field in order to augment the resilience of both public and private organisations.

Humanitarian supply chain (HSC) research is still in its infancy and remains an enigma, due to its profound differences with the much-researched field of global supply chains. Thus, humanitarian operations (HO) remain obstinately difficult to manage, despite attempts by key stakeholders to keep abreast of all the contemporary challenges. A key concern is wastage of disaster relief materials along the supply chain, which strains already scarce resources. Moreover, humanitarian research is plagued by a dearth of theory development and redeployment of existing theories from other fields, which are critical in enhancing methodological rigour. To address these gaps, we undertake an in-depth qualitative study which draws on data from humanitarian organisations that responded to the major earthquake in Nepal (2015). Using a novel approach, we adapt the theory of constraints (TOC) and dynamic capabilities to conduct our investigation. First, we apply TOC at an analytical level to unearth the constraints perturbing HO. Second, using dynamic capabilities as an overarching theoretical lens, we draw insights which contribute towards effective HSC management. To conclude, our study contributes by extending the dynamic capabilities theory for Lean thinking in HO. We achieve this by proffering ‘sustaining’ as a key extension of dynamic capabilities in HSC.