Master Thesis Defense - July 20, 2015: Lean and Green Parallel Implementation Impact on Outcomes of Supply Chain in Canadian Aerospace Industry

Roya Kalbassi

Monday, July 20, 2015 at 10:00 a.m.
Room EV003.309

You are invited to attend the following M.A.Sc. (Quality Systems Engineering) thesis examination.

Examining Committee

Dr. R. Glitho, Chair
Dr. A. Schiffauerova, Supervisor
Dr. R.K. Tyagi, Supervisor
Dr. C. Wang, CIISE Examiner
Dr. O. Kuzgunkaya, External Examiner (MIE)

Abstract

Organizational performance improvement is one of the main concerns of companies in the competitive market nowadays.  Recently, lean and green production practices have been introduced as the essential elements of performance improvement.  Among the most common practices in the lean concept, just-in-time, continuous flow, and value stream mapping are selected to be analyzed in this research.  Green standards, recycle/reuse, and energy consumption reduction are also the practices considered for green concept.  However, parallel implementation of lean and green supply chain management strategies and its impact on supply chain outcomes are rarely studied in the previous works.

In this research the effect of this phenomenon on the production quality, customer satisfaction, and overall performance of different tiers of supply chain is investigated.  A large scale survey has been performed on the Canadian aerospace industry due to its importance and contribution in the Canadian economy and the collected data was processed.  Statistical analysis including both descriptive and inferential analysis is conducted in order to interpret the collected data and verify the hypotheses of the research.  In this way, factor analysis has been performed to categorize the gathered data in the required sectors of lean or green or both practitioners.

The study provides an empirical insight into the advantages of having a hybrid supply chain management system which consists of both lean and green methods.  By means of Kruskai-Wallis and correlation analysis it is proven that performing the lean and green strategies has considerable positive impact on the outcomes of supply chain.  Employing the survey as a reliable research instrument resulted in significant conclusions demonstrating that this method can be used for the future research works in similar field.