Seyoum Eshetu Birkie

• Doctor of Engineering
• Professor (Associate) at KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Purpose This study explores how industrial production companies adjust implementation strategies to deliver value with their company-specific production system (XPS) in a multi-site setting. Implementing an XPS is part of operations management and is supposed to mobilise employees resource-efficiently to increase operational performance. Design/me...

Purpose: This paper aims to explore and describe how companies manage the level of standardisation of improvement practices in a multisite context. It seeks to explain the managerial strategies applied to change the standardisation level in manufacturing companies with multiple production sites worldwide.Design/methodology/approach: This paper coll...

This study explores how human-centered digitalization can contribute to the flexibility and adaptability of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) production processes, resulting in more resilient systems. This study explains the relationship between digital technologies and production system features through progressively more human-centric stage...

This paper explores the concept of green design in the context of production, focusing on investment projects for production equipment design and acquisition by a manufacturing firm. Research towards making manufacturing and production related activities more sustainable is increasing. In the manufacturing sector, environmental sustainability tends...

Automotive small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) suppliers are important players in many national economies. They are currently facing increased pressure to manage the undergoing, demanding changes in the automotive industry. One proposed way for the firms to manage is to introduce Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies in their production, but for thi...

This paper explores how the design process of the production system could be utilized to improve the operational performance during the production ramp-up and operation phases. A qualitative case study was carried out in a large process-type manufacturing company, focusing on three new production line launching projects. Different actions taken in...

In recent years, policy makers as well as urban logistics and transport research have investigated how to reduce environmental impact from transportation in urban areas. Therefore, many new frameworks that can help a specific actor in its decision making process at a certain decision making level (i.e., business or policy level) have been implement...

This paper reports on an initial explorative investigation on the relationship among resilience, digitalization, sustainability practices, and operations performance following the outbreak of Covid-19. It builds on literature survey and event study based on news items from international outlets. The findings indicate the need for holistic perspecti...

The EU policies in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) focusses on sustainable energy development through integration of greener ports [1,2]. Inline with the EU goals for BSR, the purpose of this paper is to present a generic model building approach to understand and quantify the aspects of environmental sustainability in terms of vehicular emissions in th...

The purpose of the research outlined in this paper is to explore the question of how the Lean concept evolves at a strategic management level in an international manufacturing company. The firm has set out to review its strategy and management system in a series of workshops to meet upcoming challenges in a business environment under transformation...

In view of major social changes, such as the growing climate crisis, increased external expectations on the production sector demand an industrial transformation. Since transformations call for innovation, new lean practices will emerge locally at sites in production networks to cope with new challenges. But, how can new local lean practices be dep...

Production system lifecycle includes phases ranging from concept pre-study to ramp-up and operations. Manufacturing companies often face challenges to reach operational performance targets during ramp-up time and operation phase. The design phase is considered crucial as major decisions related to the future production system are taken during this...

Global production companies spend a noticeable amount of resources on developing lean subprograms deployed within the corporate group. Despite the objective of achieving overall improvements, the expected performance might default due to inefficient deployment processes. Unforeseen lag or resistance to centralized programs has in previous studies s...

Purpose The unpredictable failure of submersible pump (SP) in groundwater irrigation systems has considerable negative economic consequences. The purpose of this paper is to develop a total cost minimization model that aims to optimize maintenance actions for SP. It reports on simulation-based stochastic scenario analysis for evaluating total cost...

Purpose Recent studies have argued that companies may actively implement practices to mitigate disruptions in their supply chain and reduce the extent of damage on performance. Other studies have shown that disruptions may propagate in supply chains, leading to consequences that are more negative and raising doubts on the effectiveness of mitigatio...

Municipal solid waste (MSW) is a waste discarded by the public in their everyday activities. The generation of municipal solid waste at Mekelle city has grown steadily mainly due to increase in population. There is severe health and environmental impact due to lack of awareness and technologies for the utilization of municipal solid waste into valu...

Waste to energy concept is one of the best methods, which not only consider the environment but also generate energy from municipal solid waste (MSW). Generation of MSWs at Mekelle city, Ethiopia, has grown steadily mainly due to migration of people from rural areas. However, the waste has not been managed and utilised as a useful resource due to l...

Waste to energy concept is one of the best methods, which not only consider the environment but also generate energy from municipal solid waste (MSW). Generation of MSWs at Mekelle city, Ethiopia, has grown steadily mainly due to migration of people from rural areas. However, the waste has not been managed and utilised as a useful resource due to l...

This paper reports on working findings in an action research-based project, implementing a green kaizen pilot in a European pharmaceutical manufacturing company. The aim of the study is to investigate how continuous improvement initiatives with focus on environment originally developed for the automotive manufacturing industry could apply to the ph...

The Circular Economy (CE) is currently a popular notion within the policy and business advocacy groups. Despite being visionary and provocative in its message, the research on the CE concept is emerging. The two intertwined objectives of the paper are; first to identify, discuss and develop the various definitions provided by the emerging literatur...

Supply chain risk management (SCRM) approaches suggest that actors in a supply chain network should consider different risk scenarios to address and mitigate supply chain risks in a better way. Overall performance of a supply chain could be severely affected by disruptions that are triggered by failures or service disruptions in the critical infras...

mechanism. However, there are only few studies that investigated such challenging undertaking in light of changes for sustainable manufacturing systems. This study aims to explore practices towards establishing more sustainable production systems of the future. The investigation is based on publicly available data from selected Swedish manufacturer...

Purpose This study aims to investigate the influence of supply chain (SC) complexity on the effectiveness of resilience capabilities in mitigating SC disruptions. Hypotheses about direct and moderating influences of complexity on resilience capabilities and performance change after disruption are built and quantitatively tested. Design/methodology...

Collaborative management research approaches (e.g. Action research, Intervention research) emerged to overcome what is considered as a lack of integration between empiricism and theoretical knowledge. In such approaches, researchers will not be just observing the phenomenon, however, they should be immersed in the empirical settings, and the resear...

Purpose Many studies have found that Lean practices provide better performance in a stable business environment. However, there is limited information on how Lean practices influence performance gains (defined in this paper as improvement and sustenance of performance) in an uncertain (complex and dynamic) environment. This study aims to investigat...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize a typology of supply-side resilience capabilities and empirically validates these capabilities and their constituent bundles of practices. Design/methodology/approach – The study is primarily qualitative, employing the critical incident technique to collect data across 22 firms and seeking to...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate synergy/trade-off relationship between lean and operational resilience paradigms upon disruption. Lean and resilience are operationalised with practice bundles and core functions, respectively. Design/methodology/approach – The study uses the Bayesian inference approach to analyse systematicall...

Complexity and dynamism are considered intrinsic features of engineer-to-order (ETO) business environment; it is, therefore, important to understand and manage them better. Based on empirical investigation into two case companies, this paper expands the existing literature on how and why complexity and dynamism context factors constitute not only e...

This study identifies and systematically reviews the literature on resilience in management research in order to characterise operational resilience. We argue that operational resilience provides an integrative view on different resilience perspectives in business (supply chain, business continuity, infrastructure, organisational, strategic). Using...

The theory advanced in this paper relates to dynamic capabilities of resource-based view. The paper identifies proactive and reactive resilience capability factors. It then empirically investigates their influence on recovery performance from unforeseen incidents. The paper uses critical incident methodology that combines qualitative and quantitati...

This state-of-the-art review analyses literature on resilience paradigm perspectives and conceptualizations in business and management. Attempts have been made to produce a definition that reflects on and attempts to resolve inconsistencies and pursue with the conception of operational resilience. Future research directions are indicated by arguing...