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The purpose of this paper is to propose a national framework for promoting business excellence (NFPBE) using a quality management assessment framework (QMAF) with information knowledge communication (IKC) as an enabler.

The NFPBE using the plan–do–check–act (PDCA) cycle is developed, re-enforcing key quality management aspects/areas including national quality awards, QMAF summary and national innovation programmes using a meta-analysis.

The operationalising of the NFPBE is enabled and supported by an auditing tool to assess the degree of mentoring provided by universities/research institutions/consulting firms to participating firms whose progress will be assessed by the QMAF. It was emphasised that the success of the framework requires the buy-in of national governments to support the programme through stimulus incentives such as government assistance with the costs of research and development, and cooperative research ventures between universities and companies.

The framework is conceptualised into a process flowchart, which is a blueprint to advancing business excellence in organisations at a national scale. The study is limited to only the conceptualisation of the framework. Therefore, an extended study of the framework implementation/application is required for revealing implementation guidelines.

The national framework has a propensity to enhancing the business excellence of organisations at a national level. Therefore, quality managers and policy makers could use the framework to understand the quality management shortfalls and consider strategies to achieving business excellence.

This research study proposed a blueprint to advancing quality excellence in organisations at a national level, guided by several quality frameworks.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an alternative integrated approach based on the stage-gate method to implement enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems which will enhance the effectiveness of ERP projects.

A literature review was conducted on ERP system implementation and its effectiveness. The need for improving implementation approaches and methodologies was examined. Based on the insights gained, a conceptual framework for ERP system implementation is presented by combining the state-gate approach with the pre-implementation roadmap.

The proposed framework aims to enhance the overall ERP implementation outcomes, ensuring critical success factors and eliminating common causes of failures. A pre-implementation roadmap is identified as a key element for eliminating many causes of failure including lack of organisations’ readiness for ERP. The post-implementation stage can be used for further improvements to the system through internal research and development.

The development of the framework is an attempt to contribute to improving ERP implementation. This research is expected to motivate researchers to work in this area, and it will be beneficial to practicing managers in the identification of opportunities for improvements in ERP systems. Case studies will be valuable to refine and validate the proposed model.

This paper explores research in a needy area and offers a framework to help researchers and practitioners in improving ERP implementation. This framework is expected to reduce the implementation project duration, strengthen critical success factors and minimise common problems of ERP implementation projects.

The main purpose of this research is to (1) prioritise key determinants of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) readiness assessment and (2) evaluate causal relationships among those determinants and associated sub-criteria based on inputs from industry experts.

The methodology involved two phases: (1) an MCDM approach for determining causal relationships among determinants and (2) empirical validation of findings from the first phase using industry experts' inputs.

It was found that while the choice of I4.0 technologies is important, organisational factors are also critical, as evidenced by the ranking of the “Strategy and Organisation” determinant as the highest rank prominent determinant. Also, the ranking of the sub-criteria within each determinant shows the importance of several organisational influencing and resulting sub-criteria.

This research extends the existing literature on I4.0 by demonstrating the prioritisation of determinants and delineating causal relationships among them and associated sub-criteria as a basis for developing I4.0 adoption guidelines. This research is limited to the specific scope of determinants selected/considered and experts' inputs from the Sri Lankan manufacturing sector. Future studies could consider extending this research into a broader global manufacturing context.

Prioritisation and causal relationships of I4.0 readiness assessment determinants, supported with inputs from functional managers and industry experts, could be used to guide practitioners in developing guidelines for I4.0 adoption in a phased manner.

This research provides a re-evaluation and validation of a selected I4.0 readiness assessment framework from the perspectives of interdependencies and casual relationships among its determinants and sub-criteria, based on inputs from industry experts as a basis for developing guidelines for I4.0 adoption.

With increasing choice from a range of programs, improvement project selection within broader supply chain context and resource constraints has become a major research challenge. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the different criteria for selecting Six-Sigma (SS) projects based on previous studies. The study is supported by two grounded theories: resource-based view and institutional norms. The criteria include: first, business drivers for improvement and the common performance metrics deployed; second, the organization’s stakeholders needs; and third, process owner’s needs.

To determine the relative importance of influencing factors, opinions were collected from 30 experienced practitioners including SS champions/master black-belts, company directors, consultants, and process owners through a series of interviews in small, medium, and large organizations including multi-national organizations. The evaluation of criteria is based on analytical hierarchy process.

The results show that impact on customer, financial impacts, and impact on operational goals are the most significant factors in selecting SS improvement project.

This study is a first attempt to determine the relative weight among SS project selection criteria, which help the practitioner to allocate their limited resources in implementing SS project.

This paper proposes strategies for adopting Industry 4.0 in achieving sustainable manufacturing, by overcoming barriers in the Sri Lankan manufacturing sector.

A conceptual model of sustainable manufacturing and Industry 4.0 was proposed based on a comprehensive literature review and validated through experts' inputs. The model was illustrated using three case studies to assess the relationships between sustainable manufacturing and Industry 4.0 in the Sri Lankan manufacturing context. Furthermore, possible strategies were proposed to overcome current barriers identified from case studies.

The case studies showcase that there is a considerable gap in Industry 4.0-enabled sustainable manufacturing in the Sri Lankan manufacturing sector due to several barriers. Thus, experts' knowledge-based strategies to overcome those barriers are proposed.

The conceptual model provides a holistic view of maturity levels of sustainable manufacturing measures directly connected with Industry 4.0 technologies. The study was limited to investigating the application of Industry 4.0 for sustainable manufacturing in leading apparel manufacturing organisations in Sri Lanka.

The conceptual model can be used as a framework to guide practitioners in implementing Industry 4.0-enabled sustainable manufacturing. The proposed strategies in addressing barriers to Industry 4.0 adoption towards sustainable manufacturing can be directly applied to achieving better sustainable manufacturing performance.

This study is an informative guide to encourage the Sri Lankan manufacturing industry to adopt Industry 4.0 technologies in achieving sustainable manufacturing, using the knowledge of relationships between Industry 4.0 and three dimensions of sustainable manufacturing, possible barriers and strategies.

This paper explores the role of Internet of things (IoT) enabling factors in adopting digital supply chain.

Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) was used to rank performance measures and prioritise the enabling factors. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to validate and support key research findings from the AHP analysis.

The results show that level of customer demand is the most important indicator in adopting IoT while the level of product/process flexibility is the least important. System integration and IoT infrastructure are the top two enabling factors in increasing the level of process stability, supply chain connectivity, and product/process flexibility, respectively. Furthermore, the study suggests that the enabling factors for IoT adoption are directly connected with organisational resources/technological capabilities that support the resource-based view theory. This research identified interdependencies between IoT enabling factors and key performance measures for IoT adoption success in managing the digital supply chain.

Supply chain managers can use the empirical findings of this study to prioritise IoT adoption, based on the relative importance of enabling factors and performance measures. The research findings are focused on broader supply chain practices of large companies rather than a specific industry and SMEs. Hence, any industry-specific adoption factors and SMEs were not evident from this study.

This research study empirically established priorities of enabling factors for IoT adoption, along with inter-dependencies among enabling factors as a basis for developing guidelines for IoT adoption.

This research aims to identify, examine and evaluate barriers to the adoption of digital servitization in manufacturing firms in the case of the Sri Lankan manufacturing sector and analyze the inter-relationships among digital servitization barriers.

Based on the comprehensive literature review, 13 barriers were identified. The grey decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (grey-DEMATEL) approach was used to uncover and analyze the relationships among barriers in terms of their overall influence and dependencies.

A prominent barrier to the success of adopting digital servitization in the Sri Lankan manufacturing sector is the lack of digital strategy in developing activities related to the design of digital service packages, organizational structures and processes. Supply chain integration is the most influential factor, which plays an important role in developing a competitive advantage by encouraging innovation process capabilities in servitized companies.

Industry practitioners can develop guidelines for adopting digital servitization practices based on the importance and interdependencies of different barriers and thereby prioritize projects within a program of digital servitization adoption in their organizations.

Research studies on barriers to digital servitization are limited to exploratory nature and have adopted mainly the qualitative approach, such as in-depth interviews. No empirical study has investigated the inter-relationships among digital servitization adoption barriers in the manufacturing sector. This study provides a holistic view of different barriers to the adoption of digital servitization in the manufacturing sector as a basis for developing comprehensive digital servitization strategies to manage and leverage complexity in digital transformation.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically investigate the patient flow and waiting time problems in hospital emergency departments (EDs) from an integrated voice of customer (VOC) and voice of process (VOP) perspective and to propose a new lean framework for ED process.

A survey was conducted to better understand patients' perceptions of ED services, lean tools such as process mapping and A3 problem-solving sheets were used to identify hidden process wastes and root-cause analysis was performed to determine the reasons of long waiting time in ED.

The results indicate that long waiting times in ED are major concerns for patients and affect the quality of ED services. It was revealed that limited bed capacity, unavailability of necessary staff, layout of ED, lack of understanding among patients about the nature of emergency services are main causes of delay. Addressing these issues using lean tools, integrated with the VOC and VOP perspectives can lead to improved patient flow, higher patient satisfaction and improvement in ED capacity. A future value stream map is proposed to streamline the ED activities and minimize waiting times.

The research involves a relatively small sample from a single case study. The proposed approach will enable the ED administrators to avoid the ED overcrowding and streamline the entire ED process.

This research identified ED quality issues from the integration of VOC and VOP perspective and suggested appropriate lean tools to overcome these problems. This process improvement approach will enable the ED administrators to improve productivity and performance of hospitals.

The purpose of this study is to establish empirical relationships between patient flow problems, healthcare service quality and patient satisfaction with emergency department (ED) service factors from the patient perspective.

In the overall study, of which the current investigation is a part, a mixed-method research approach was to achieve the research objectives. The results reported in this paper are based on a comprehensive questionnaire survey where a well-designed and reliable questionnaire was used to survey ED patients. This study conducted partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) by using Smart PLS software.

Results show that the respondents mostly agreed with the proposed concept of quality in ED and patients were less satisfied with ED services in general and with the internal and external environments in ED in particular. It was found that relationships between nine identified scales of patient flow problems, healthcare service quality, and patient satisfaction are significant. The findings reveal that the relationship between patient flow problems and patient satisfaction is positively mediated through healthcare service quality, which shows the predictive capability of the model, indicating high predictive relevance.

This research involves a relatively small sample from a single case study. The positive relationship between patient flow problems and patient satisfaction indicate practical significance of the model for guiding to improve overall patient satisfaction.

This research, through the involvement of both hospital staff and the patient, brings out a holistic approach in terms of operational excellence in a critical unit such as the ED. The empirically established relationships form the benchmarking and guide for developing guidelines for designing policies for service improvements of ED practices.

This study investigates the enablers and challenges of digital supply chains (DSCs) adoption and develops a digital supply chain maturity (DSCM) model as a basis for developing guidelines for DSC adoption in the digital transformation journey.

The research involves a systematic literature review (SLR) of Industry 4.0 (I4) adoption in supply chain (SC) practices to identify key enablers and associated maturity levels. The literature search of published articles during the 1997–2020 period and subsequent screening resulted in 64 articles. A DSCM model was developed using the categorization of important enablers and associated levels transitioning from the traditional SC to the DSC ecosystem.

Four broader categories of DSC enablers and challenges were identified from the content analysis of SLR. Digital strategy alongside I4 technologies and human capital were prominent in DSC adoption as I4 technologies and human capital depend on other enablers such as dynamic capabilities (DCs). Lack of infrastructure and financial constraints to implementing I4 were significant challenges in the DSC adoption.

The proposed DSCM model provides a holistic view of enablers and maturity levels from traditional SC to DSC adoption. However, the DSCM model needs to be empirically validated and streamlined further using inputs from practitioners.

The proposed DSCM model can be used as a framework to guide practitioners in assessing maturity and developing implementation plans for successful DSC adoption.

This research introduces a novel DSC maturity model through a holistic view of enablers and maturity levels from traditional SC to DSC adoption.