Globalization, increasing awareness of environmental issues, and advances in technology have forced manufacturing industries to adopt new and innovative practices to navigate these unprecedented challenges. Accordingly, companies started to reassemble their distinctive capabilities and supply chain practices to reach customers from different geographical locations, increase profits, expand sourcing opportunities, and offer a wide selection of services and products. At the same time, firms started to implement lean tools, which are tools that eliminate wastes in the value chain, such as Just-In-Time (JIT), 5S, seven wastes, and Kanban. While previous studies asserted the significance of implementing lean tools while improving current supply chain and sustainability practices, there has been little investigation on the interaction of the three, and their intertwined effect on operational performance. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the link between lean manufacturing, supply chain practices and sustainability practices, and their impact on operational performance metrics. A survey questionnaire was developed based on previous literature and practitioners’ feedback and sent to 94 American and European Automotive facilities. The results generated from the pilot study revealed that there is a significant correlation between lean, supply chain and sustainability practices, and operational performance (p < .05). Moreover, the data indicated that lean manufacturing, through planning, sourcing, and production constructs enhances delivery, efficiency, and quality (p < .05). In addition, supply chain practices, when coupled with sustainability, had a significant positive effect on operational performance (p < .001) while at a time, sustainability practices were found to have a significant mediating effect on the lean-performance relationship (p < 0.001).

Keywords

Lean Manufacturing Systems, Supply Chain Practices, Sustainability Practices, Operational Performance, Response Surface Analysis.