GREEN AND LEAN PRACTICES TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE AND OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS

In the last few decades, the importance of sustainable concerns for organizational survival has grown, and Lean Thinking (LT), Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma (LSS) approaches are becoming more and more notable to improve sustainability performance. The integration between Green, Lean and Six Sigma approaches in service systems seems necessary in order to balance the need for operational efficiency with environmental commitment and social fairness.

The overall aim of this thesis was to present Green and Lean practices towards sustainable and operational performance improvements. The methodological approach consisted of the development of the thesis by aggregation of articles, composed of three studies. Study I aims to verify the sustainability performance of Brazilian organizations in performance measures and to propose sustainable guidelines with the intention of directing future efforts to the transition to sustainable development (SD). Study II aims to evaluate the degree of importance of sustainable performance measures of Brazilian organizations and to propose guidelines to achieve sustainability aligning these measures with operational improvement programmes. The purpose Study III is to critically review the LT and LSS methodologies and highlight their importance to achieve sustainable services.

Study I and II utilised a triangulated approach by collecting qualitative and quantitative data acquired through multiple collection methods of a theoretical literature review, documentary analysis of corporate reports, questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews with industry professionals and academic researchers. In Study III, a systematic literature review (SLR) of the subjects under investigation was conducted.

Study I’ results shows that internal organizational factors are the main inductors of the sustainable environment in organizations, and sustainability must be tied to strategic planning, starting from upper management to lower levels; and it is essential to use sustainable performance measurement systems in order to respond to external and internal levers. In addition, Study I and II show that it is the corporate responsibility to focus their efforts on both operational improvement programmes and sustainable initiatives in order to achieve better environmental protection, corporate reputation, quality management, cost performance and suppliers relations, as they are considered to be more important on organizational sustainability. The Study III provides a holistic Green LSS (GLSS) framework attempting to help practitioners to find ways of institutionalizing it in numerous kinds of services, by pointing out nine critical factors for its implementation. such as continuous customer satisfaction, and an effective Jidoka automation.

This thesis brings multiple contributions, providing academics and practitioners with a better picture of achieving SD through sustainable (green) and operational (lean) performance measures and by pointing out through a GLSS Framework some compatibilities between LSS and triple bottom line sustainability in services; helping to understand the perceptions and expectations of stakeholders; expanding the literature review on the subject studied, as well as presenting theoretical, managerial and political implications to organizational sustainability.

Keywords: Sustainable development; Performance measures; Lean Thinking; Lean Six Sigma. Survey; Systematic review; Nonparametric methods; Interdisciplinary; Services