Browsing by Author "Abualfaraa, Wadhah"

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    Lean-green manufacturing practices and their link with sustainability: a critical review
    (MDPI, 2020-01-29) Abualfaraa, Wadhah; Salonitis, Konstantinos; Al-Ashaab, Ahmed; Ala’raj, Maher
    The current rapidly changing and highly competitive market has put companies under a great pressure towards adopting sustainable practices, in terms of keeping a healthy balance among economic, environmental and social performances. In this context, the lean-green manufacturing approach, which combines lean practices focused on customers’ demand, and green practices focused on reducing the business’ environmental impact, has gained popularity. Nevertheless, the lean-green manufacturing is still a relatively new practice, lacking a clear and structured research definition, and of significant evidence of successful cases in the practice. In this paper, a literature review is conducted to identify the actual possibility of combining lean and green practices, the current trends for implementing such combination and the potential sustainability improvements such implementation can lead. It is the authors’ intention that the findings analysed in this paper can contribute to the state-of-the-art of lean-green manufacturing and provide practitioners with a useful tool towards developing effective strategies for its deployment.
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    A synergetic framework for green and lean manufacturing practices in SMEs: Saudi Arabia perspective
    (MDPI, 2022-12-29) Abualfaraa, Wadhah; Almanei, Mohammed; Kaur, Rashmeet; Al-Ashaab, Ahmed; McLaughlin, Patrick; Salonitis, Konstantinos
    Manufacturers are urged to improve their sustainability performance, in terms of keeping the balance among economic, environmental, and social performances. Nevertheless, top managers and company leaders tend to complain that it is not possible to implement greener solutions without large investments. In this context, the well-known lean manufacturing approach, mainly focused on waste reduction, has come to be viewed with a renewed interest towards improving not only economic but also environmental and social aspects. Unfortunately, while there is no doubt that lean manufacturing increases productivity, efficiency, quality, and customers’ satisfaction by reducing wastes, there is a lack of research about the benefits of lean practices in relation to green manufacturing. The aim of the present work is to investigate the level of integration of green and lean manufacturing approaches, focussing specifically on the context of Saudi Arabia. As a result, a novel theoretical framework capable of combining the lean and green approaches within a synergetic environment, enhancing the former and mitigating the latter, is proposed. A survey was put together for assessing a number of hypotheses and validating the proposed framework. Qualitative analysis based on a survey conducted in different SME manufacturing companies in Saudi Arabia is presented. The statistical analysis of the collected data shows a clear trend that in Saudi Arabia, companies are starting to have a positive view about the integration of lean and green approaches implementation. The results highlighted higher maturity among the respondents with regard to the lean implementation, focussing on operational improvements. The improvements that can be attained with regard to environmental performance are coming next, and the framework proposed can help increase awareness among Saudi manufacturing SMEs.