Lean, green practices and process innovation: a model for green supply chain performance.

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between lean, green and process innovation practices and green supply chain (GSC) performance. Data were collected from 374 manufacturing firms and results analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The findings revealed a synergetic effect between process innovations, green and lean practices, which play a crucial role towards the improvement of GSC performance. In particular, the results suggested that: (1) lean practices such as JIT, set-up time reduction, cellular manufacturing, and waste elimination can significantly contribute to improve GSC performance; (2) green practices including eco-design, life cycle assessment, green manufacturing, reverse logistics, and waste management significantly and positively affect GSC performance; (3) process innovation practices such as fast response to new processes introduced by other companies within the same sector, pioneering disposition to introduced new processes, and number of changes in the process introduced in one year, do not have a direct contribution to improving GSC performance; finally that (4) process innovation amplifies the effect which contributes for lean and green practices to offer a higher payoff rate in terms of GSC performance when these are coupled with process innovation activities. This paper presents an innovative approach since it studies simultaneously the three dimensions of sustainability (environmental, social and economic), the lean, the innovation process and green paradigms, which are considered strategic for supply chain competitiveness. Investigating the relationships between the four strategies is a contribution that the authors hope will become a forward step for promoting sustainability in manufacturing supply chains.