Sustainable manufacturing is an assimilation of triple bottom line (economic, environmental, and social) approach of the manufacturing business. In such a complex system, decision making becomes ...clumsy in terms of selecting and prioritizing the different aspects of the triple bottom line. The multi criteria decision making techniques can facilitate the selection and prioritization in a complex system. The present study prioritizes the sustainable manufacturing barriers by calculating their weights through the application of Best Worst Method in one of the manufacturing organizations of India. The barriers were identified through a review of the peer-reviewed articles and expert's opinion. These identified barriers were categorized into six major criteria. For prioritization, the final intensities (weights) of 39 barriers were calculated through the application of Best Worst Method. The findings of the present study enlighten economical & managerial barriers as the most obstructive barriers among the major criteria of sustainable manufacturing barriers followed by organizational barriers, social & environmental barriers, technological barriers, knowledge & learning barriers, and independent barriers. The practitioners of the case organization will be facilitated in selecting the most significant barriers and developing strategic plans to diminish or eliminate the barrier's intensity for successful adoption of sustainable manufacturing. However, opinions of the experts were utilized for the present study which can be driven by subjective inputs. The present work can be further extended by including more barriers through conducting the large-scale survey of manufacturing organizations.
•The present study evaluates the barriers of sustainable manufacturing.•Best worst method (BWM) is utilized to prioritize the barriers.•Economical and managerial barriers are the most significant barriers.•Prioritization is done in one of the manufacturing organization of India.
The manufacturing sector has contributed significantly in building the nation's economy for developing countries like India but it has also created many environmental and societal issues. To deal ...with these issues, the present study has identified the enablers and modelled their interrelationships in case organization of Indian. The present study has identified 29 enablers of sustainable manufacturing through literature review and opinions of experts. Interpretive Structural Modeling has been utilized to develop a hierarchy structural model which can represent the interrelationships among the enablers. The fuzzy concept has been integrated with Matrix Impact of Cross Multiplication Applied to Classification (MICMAC) technique to calculate the driving/dependence power of the enablers. The present study highlights “Limitation of traditional processes” and “Public pressure” as the most significant enablers for sustainable manufacturing adoption. The present study discusses a case application of identifying the interrelationships and influence of sustainable manufacturing enablers. The present study provides pivotal references for researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers by exploring the interrelationships and driving/dependence power of the enablers. The findings may encourage the researchers and practitioners to initiate the same studies in other manufacturing organizations by extending the set of enablers and classifying into some more realistic groups.
•.Interpretive structural modeling is used to develop interrelationships of enablers.•.Driving and dependence powers represent the influence of one enabler over another.•.Limitations of traditional processes and public pressure are significant enablers.•.The successful case application in other organizations will create market pressure.
Alveoli, the lung's respiratory units, are tiny sacs where oxygen enters the bloodstream. They are lined by flat alveolar type 1 (AT1) cells, which mediate gas exchange, and AT2 cells, which secrete ...surfactant. Rare AT2s also function as alveolar stem cells. We show that AT2 lung stem cells display active Wnt signaling, and many of them are near single, Wnt-expressing fibroblasts. Blocking Wnt secretion depletes these stem cells. Daughter cells leaving the Wnt niche transdifferentiate into AT1s: Maintaining Wnt signaling prevents transdifferentiation, whereas abrogating Wnt signaling promotes it. Injury induces AT2 autocrine Wnts, recruiting "bulk" AT2s as progenitors. Thus, individual AT2 stem cells reside in single-cell fibroblast niches providing juxtacrine Wnts that maintain them, whereas injury induces autocrine Wnts that transiently expand the progenitor pool. This simple niche maintains the gas exchange surface and is coopted in cancer.
Alveoli are gas-exchange sacs lined by squamous alveolar type (AT) 1 cells and cuboidal, surfactant-secreting AT2 cells. Classical studies suggested that AT1 arise from AT2 cells, but recent studies ...propose other sources. Here we use molecular markers, lineage tracing and clonal analysis to map alveolar progenitors throughout the mouse lifespan. We show that, during development, AT1 and AT2 cells arise directly from a bipotent progenitor, whereas after birth new AT1 cells derive from rare, self-renewing, long-lived, mature AT2 cells that produce slowly expanding clonal foci of alveolar renewal. This stem-cell function is broadly activated by AT1 injury, and AT2 self-renewal is selectively induced by EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor) ligands in vitro and oncogenic Kras(G12D) in vivo, efficiently generating multifocal, clonal adenomas. Thus, there is a switch after birth, when AT2 cells function as stem cells that contribute to alveolar renewal, repair and cancer. We propose that local signals regulate AT2 stem-cell activity: a signal transduced by EGFR-KRAS controls self-renewal and is hijacked during oncogenesis, whereas another signal controls reprogramming to AT1 fate.
This study aims to propose a hybrid framework for lean six sigma (LSS) based on the prioritisation of barriers and solution approaches, to facilitate hassles free applications for handling the ...challenges of wastes reduction and quality improvement. The study identifies 27 LSS barriers and 22 solution approaches through literature review and utilises feedback from industry experts. For framework, study uses fuzzy AHP-PROMETHEE to prioritise LSS barriers and solution approaches. Incorporating fuzzy sets in analytical hierarchy process (AHP) ensures the optimality of barrier weights. Whereas, preference ranking organisation method for enrichment of evaluations (PROMETHEE) helps in pairwise comparisons of solution approaches with respect to each LSS barrier, facilitating fair judgements. This research guides regarding the development of framework and checks its suitability and robustness through case application of an Indian manufacturing organisation. Authors expect that researchers and practitioners will find study useful for LSS and multi criteria decision making(MCDM) domains.
Aging promotes lung function decline and susceptibility to chronic lung diseases, which are the third leading cause of death worldwide. Here, we use single cell transcriptomics and mass ...spectrometry-based proteomics to quantify changes in cellular activity states across 30 cell types and chart the lung proteome of young and old mice. We show that aging leads to increased transcriptional noise, indicating deregulated epigenetic control. We observe cell type-specific effects of aging, uncovering increased cholesterol biosynthesis in type-2 pneumocytes and lipofibroblasts and altered relative frequency of airway epithelial cells as hallmarks of lung aging. Proteomic profiling reveals extracellular matrix remodeling in old mice, including increased collagen IV and XVI and decreased Fraser syndrome complex proteins and collagen XIV. Computational integration of the aging proteome with the single cell transcriptomes predicts the cellular source of regulated proteins and creates an unbiased reference map of the aging lung.
Purpose
To endure against the global rivalry, various organizations are espousing several quality melioration techniques, but most of them flunk to implement them in palmiest way; hence, to surmount ...the failure of implementation, it is very essential to identify and prioritize the impediments of the technique to be implemented. Lean Six Sigma (LSS) has evolved as one of the most efficacious technique implemented by organizations. The purpose of this paper is to identify and prioritize the barriers of LSS for its productive implementation.
Design/methodology/approach
The study initiates from conducting a literature review of peer-reviewed articles concentrating on LSS barriers. The barriers are identified from literature as well as opinion from industry experts. These barriers are categorized underneath the canopy of five major criteria. The final elite barriers are prioritized and stratified by employing the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process approach.
Findings
The present study identifies 27 critical barriers that obturate the palmy LSS implementation. Further prioritization of these barriers will help the practitioners to develop the strategies to tackle the barriers.
Research limitations/implications
The LSS barriers are identified through the literature search and opinions from industry experts, while a survey can be conducted in order to incorporate more barriers related to manufacturing concerns.
Originality/value
The main contribution of this paper includes identification of LSS barriers and later prioritizing them to project their intensity in order to make the practitioners comfortable to handle the LSS implementation issues.
The mammalian lung is a highly branched network in which the distal regions of the bronchial tree transform during development into a densely packed honeycomb of alveolar air sacs that mediate gas ...exchange. Although this transformation has been studied by marker expression analysis and fate-mapping, the mechanisms that control the progression of lung progenitors along distinct lineages into mature alveolar cell types are still incompletely known, in part because of the limited number of lineage markers and the effects of ensemble averaging in conventional transcriptome analysis experiments on cell populations. Here we show that single-cell transcriptome analysis circumvents these problems and enables direct measurement of the various cell types and hierarchies in the developing lung. We used microfluidic single-cell RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) on 198 individual cells at four different stages encompassing alveolar differentiation to measure the transcriptional states which define the developmental and cellular hierarchy of the distal mouse lung epithelium. We empirically classified cells into distinct groups by using an unbiased genome-wide approach that did not require a priori knowledge of the underlying cell types or the previous purification of cell populations. The results confirmed the basic outlines of the classical model of epithelial cell-type diversity in the distal lung and led to the discovery of many previously unknown cell-type markers, including transcriptional regulators that discriminate between the different populations. We reconstructed the molecular steps during maturation of bipotential progenitors along both alveolar lineages and elucidated the full life cycle of the alveolar type 2 cell lineage. This single-cell genomics approach is applicable to any developing or mature tissue to robustly delineate molecularly distinct cell types, define progenitors and lineage hierarchies, and identify lineage-specific regulatory factors.
Purpose
– Literature reviews in the field of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) are often substantially less stringently portrayed than other empirical research. The purpose of this paper is to lucubrate on ...clarifying emerging aspects, trends and importance of LSS through reviewing the published literature over multiple parameters for a ameliorating and trenchant view.
Design/methodology/approach
– In the present study, a literature review of LSS articles is carried out over the time horizon of 14 years from referred peer-reviewed journals in business and management disciplines, information systems and computer science, engineering, healthcare, etc. While carrying out the literature review, various distinct dimensions are considered, such as publication years and journals, countries, research design, research type and application sector within industries. A descriptive evaluation of the literature body is followed by gap identification and future research opportunities.
Findings
– LSS research is growing rapidly, covering various disciplines and domains with a great focus on LSS tools and techniques; empirical research is dominant with more emphasis on case study approach; and growing gap between manufacturing- and service-focused articles implies return of LSS to manufacturing as its initial base.
Originality/value
– The review analysis entirely focuses on descriptive statistics of empirical research in LSS. The sample size includes 189 shortlisted articles in 58 journals published over a time span of 14 years (2001-2014). The paper provides both academicians and practitioners a better panorama to understand the present status of LSS for pursuing rigorous LSS research through explicating chronological emergence, challenging themes, dominating research types and application areas in LSS.
Purpose
This paper aims to guide about prioritisation and ranking of the solutions and overcoming barriers to facilitate the adoption of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) by using a hybrid framework.
...Design/methodology/approach
It identifies LSS barriers and solutions to facilitate LSS adoption through literature review and by involving subject experts. The study makes use of fuzzy set theory and proposes a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP)-modified TOPSIS (technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution) framework. It uses sensitivity analysis to establish framework robustness.
Findings
The key findings of this techno-managerial study are identification and prioritisation of 27 LSS barriers and 22 solutions to overcome adoption challenges, proposition and usage of fuzzy AHP-modified TOPSIS framework, guidance regarding where to focus for facilitating LSS adoption and ensuring robustness using sensitivity analysis, which establishes insignificant deviation in rankings when criteria weights are altered.
Research limitations/implications
Some biasness and subjectivity may exist during pairwise comparisons as human judgements are involved.
Practical implications
Handling a hybrid solution like LSS is never easy. It is expected that the study will help industry professionals to plan their LSS adoption attempts effectively. Guidance regarding LSS barriers will assist in observing necessary precautions to avoid failures. It will open up new research fronts for researchers also.
Originality/value
Literature is full of studies regarding LSS barriers and its rankings. It is very rare to witness a study like ours, which discusses the barriers and links with solutions and its prioritisation. Proposed hybrid framework for a hybrid techno-managerial approach such as LSS is unique and acts as the roadmap for smooth implementation.
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