Alireza Shokri

• PhD
• Associate Professor at Northumbria University

Purpose Despite the existence of some studies around green outcomes and the green deployment of operational excellence (OPEX) strategies, the analysis of the interaction and prioritisation of their implementation barriers has been neglected. The purpose of this study is to investigate the interaction and prioritisation of barriers to green deployme...

Purpose Operationnal excellence has emerged as a critical factor for organisations competitiveness. Companies in developing countries are striving to elevate their operational performance to new heights. This study aims to explore the effective best practices, drivers and challenges to operational excellence in North African business. Design/metho...

Purpose This study aims to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of incorporating predictive maintenance (PdM) into existing practices of spare part inventory management and pinpoint the barriers and identify economic values for such integration within the supply chain (SC). Design/methodology/approach A two-staged embedded multiple case study...

Purpose This study aims to explore the potential application of blockchain technology in Lean Six Sigma (LSS) project through a proposed blockchain-LSS (BLSS) model. The proposed model can tackle real-time problems in information sharing, transparency and traceability in every stage of the LSS project. Design/methodology/approach The scoping revie...

Acknowledging the potential benefits of integrating Industry 4.0 techniques into Lean Six Sigma-oriented process improvement initiatives, the current literature lacks a comprehensive guideline for the systematic incorporation of Industry 4.0 within Lean Six Sigma practices. To fill this gap, we have developed the LSS4.0 framework, employing a desig...

In this study, we develop a new paradigm, Circular Lean Six Sigma 4.0 (CLSS4.0) to promote manufacturing sustainability. This paper aims to provide a practical and holistic view of the drivers and barriers that can help companies design an integrated CLSS4.0 model. The paper is based on a qualitative exploratory study using multiple case studies wi...

This study explores the interplay linking Lean Six Sigma (LSS), the Circular Economy (CE) and Industry 4.0 technologies (I4.0T), and their impact alone or combined, on sustainable organizational performance (SOP) within manufacturing firms. Using the existing literature, six hypotheses are identified and then analyzed following the Structural Equat...

This article explores the literature on lean management (LM), Six Sigma (SS), Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and their relationship. A systematic literature review (SLR) combined with bibliometric analysis was conducted to identify, select and evaluate articles and was supported by content analysis to classify papers into group-discussed clusters. A total of...

Purpose ISO 18404:2015 standard defines the proficiencies to the attainment of distinct competency levels with either Lean Manufacturing or Six Sigma or separately combined strategy Lean Six Sigma (LSS). The purpose of this paper is to perform a detailed investigation of the applicability of current LSS competency standard in SMEs and examine the n...

This paper explores the literature on the relationship between lean management (LM), Six Sigma (SS), and Industry 4.0 (I4.0) in the manufacturing context, noting research gaps and future research perspectives to encourage future work.Therefore, the objective of this review is to propose an integrated approach to build an effective LSS4.0 framework....

Purpose – ISO18404:2015 standard defines the proficiencies to the attainment of distinct competency levels with either Lean Manufacturing or Six Sigma or separately combined strategy Lean Six Sigma (LSS). The purpose of this paper is to perform a detailed investigation of the applicability of current Lean Six Sigma (LSS) competency standard in SMEs...

We aim to ascertain the pain points and economic value of integrating predictive maintenance (PdM) with spare part inventory management in automotive supply chain (ASC). We conducted multiple case studies to diagnose pain points and recommend potential solutions. We identified major process and organisational-based pain points and recommended an op...

Green deployment of Continuous Improvement (CI) projects such as Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is unknown among scholars and practitioners in contrast with green outcomes of LSS. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify top factors to transform towards the green deployment of LSS projects as an untapped phenomenon for scholars and practitioners. A su...

Purpose This study aims at investigating the impact of the perceived importance of critical cultural readiness factors (CRFs) is on perceived importance of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) technical critical success factors (CSFs) in UK manufacturing sector. Design/methodology/approach A survey questionnaire through a multiple embedded case study was conducte...

Researchers have attempted to improve the project performance using principles like lean, just-in-time, total quality management, etc. However, little research is done to quantitatively assess project performance by using six sigma metrics. In this article, we present weighted rolled throughput yield (RTY), and hence six sigma, based methodology to...

Contemporary careers are changing, and they face many challenges. This creates a pressing need for innovative research that is cross-cultural and multidisciplinary. Many forces influence careers: shifting expectations, new technology, and institutional and cultural factors that define career success (Kaše et al., 2019). The European Union recognize...

As a powerful analytical method, optimisation has been used for energy planning problems for a long time. Recent developments in computational capabilities have made it possible to include complex assumptions such as integration of natural gas and power networks, and uncertainty of various parameters with reasonable details in one energy planning p...

Purpose This work presents a synthesis of current literature published from 2010 to provide an overall understanding of the sustainable implementation of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) projects in terms of project approaches rather than outcomes. Design/methodology/approach A comprehensive and validated ten-step model was applied to conduct a scoping review...

Green deployment of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) projects is essential but unknown among scholars and practitioners. Therefore, we aim at identifying top readiness factors of green deployment of LSS projects. A survey questionnaire was distributed to LSS experts and academics around the world. A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was conducted to identify...

Purpose Historically, Lean Six Sigma (LSS) implementation has demonstrated a great deal of enhancement to process efficiency, profitability and customer satisfaction. The emerging market pressure for developing better quality, cheaper and greener products invokes a change of view in LSS economical effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to iden...

Purpose The study aims to investigate the gap between the current vision and knowledge of future early career operations leaders (OL) and common strategic total quality management (TQM) frameworks such as Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards and competing value framework. Design/methodology/approach A survey questionnaire was developed for dif...

The aim of this project was to investigate operational benefits of the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodology to reduce the scrap rate in the production line of a first tier supplier of automotive sector. This is an action research case study using LSS methodology in fully automated sub-process of the manufacturers. The implementation of LSS methodology...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the gap between the current vision and knowledge of future early career operations managers (OM) and a common strategic total quality management (TQM) framework. Design/methodology/approach A survey questionnaire and a non-parametric test for different groups of participants were adopted to ident...

This paper presents a new optimisation approach for variance within a supply chain management process. The approach is presented by the variance cube of purchasing (VCP) that involves a lean method for variance optimisation, namely the cost and variance driver analysis. The approach focuses on the optimisation and the control of existing process va...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a new optimisation approach for product variance from the purchasing perspective. Design/methodology/approach The research is based on a case study of a collaboration with a global acting automotive Tier 1 supplier, who produces steering systems for cars and commercial vehicles. A total of 116 diff...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to extend previous studies to a hybrid analysis of three business improvement practices of Lean, Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma (LSS) within last two decades and identify the research gaps and focusses in more comprehensive and robust classification framework. Design/methodology/approach A secondary data collecti...

The purpose of this paper is to present a new optimised approach for product variance from the purchasing perspective. The research is based on a case study involving a global acting automotive Tier 1 supplier who produces steering systems for cars and commercial vehicles. The case study analysis the product variance of three components. The data w...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on three fundamental human-related behaviour factors associated with Lean Six Sigma (LSS) projects in German manufacturing small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on the readiness of people (managers and their staff) to commence LSS projects. These are core personal competence, strategic vision of t...

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the feasibility of a systematic Lean Six Sigma (LSS) education through the curriculum of business schools to respond to the existing gap between the graduate’s expectation of employability and skill requirements by the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach – A UK business sc...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the level of concern and practice of sustainability development and also policy failure in the fast food supply chain. Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire using Likert scoring recorded variations in current practice and attitudes toward sustainable business. A two-stage cluster analys...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the implementation of the Six Sigma methodology as a systematic business strategy and quality initiative to improve the critical logistical measures within small-to-medium-sized food distributors. Design/methodology/approach – The first stage was the conducting of structured questionnaires to v...

Customer satisfaction and competitiveness are in the centre of attention for any quality improvement and performance measurement practice in integration with supply chain (SC). The new perspective of quality improvement in SC demands improvement in profitability besides the customer satisfaction and competitiveness. Enhancing both customer satisfac...

The paper aims to emphasize on the impacts of the supplier development on reducing the defects in supplier quality for a food distribution small–medium sized enterprise (SME). An empirical study was conducted to measure the performance of the suppliers in three different key performance indicators of the outsourcing and supplier’s performance to ar...

Purpose Six sigma is a systematic data driven approach to reduce the defect and improve the quality in any type of business. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings from the application of six sigma in a food service “small to medium sized enterprise” (SME) in a lean environment to reduce the waste in this field. Design/methodology/ap...