Ayon Chakraborty

Purpose: This study investigates first-time Lean Six Sigma (LSS) adoption in technology-intensive manufacturers undergoing rapid scaling. Prior research largely reflects mature, stable operations and offers limited theory-driven insight into early-stage governance, capability-building and cross-firm learning. Drawing on the dynamic capabilities view (DCV), we examine how organisations develop sensing, seizing and reconfiguring routines during initial deployment. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative, multiple-case study examined two UK manufacturers at contrasting LSS maturity levels (approximately 9 years versus less than 6 months). The data comprised over 30 semi-structured interviews and company documents. DCV constructs guided thematic analysis and cross-case comparison. Findings: Early adopters struggle with project selection, clarity of leadership roles, coaching and mentoring and cultural fit (including terminology). The mature case shows that strategic alignment and governance, internal coaching capacity and staged routinisation help translate training into sustained improvement routines, enabling organisations to sense performance gaps, prioritise projects and reconfigure roles and measures. Research limitations/implications: Based on two UK high-growth, high-tech manufacturers and primarily self-reported evidence, the study supports analytical rather than statistical generalisation. The proposed mechanisms require testing and contextual adaptation in SMEs, services, public-sector organisations, stable-growth industries, highly regulated settings and emerging economies. Practical implications: The study offers a four-phase, gated deployment roadmap: align and design, pilot and protect, coach and stabilise and scale and renew. Progression depends on verified governance, resourcing, coaching and learning conditions rather than on an arbitrary implementation timetable. Originality/value: Theoretically, the study advances DCV by identifying four LSS-specific mechanisms through which initial adoption can develop dynamic capability: a strategic governance filter, certification-linked protection of improvement resources, belt-based coaching and recursive stage-gate feedback. In practice, it provides comparative guidance on how early adopters can sequence and connect these mechanisms, rather than treating governance, training and coaching as independent checklist items.

Green steel transitions in emerging economies are currently planned around large integrated plants, while the small and medium enterprise (SME) segment that dominates finished steel output remains poorly characterized. This review consolidates the environmental evidence on India’s secondary steel sector, which supplies nearly 65% of national finished steel through more than 8500 units spanning coal-based direct reduced iron (DRI), induction furnace, electric arc furnace, steel re-rolling, foundry, and forging operations. Using an integrative scoping design that combines the peer-reviewed literature, government publications, industrial energy audits, and cluster assessments, the review maps process routes, regional clusters, product flows, and energy and carbon footprints, identifying the source, reference year, system boundary, and confidence level of each principal value. The sector consumed approximately 11.8 Mtoe (137,234 GWh) and emitted an estimated 58.2 Mt CO₂ in 2019–2020, with coal-based DRI contributing about 52% of sector emissions, 60% of steelmaking-route emissions, and roughly twice the specific energy consumption of international benchmarks. Water use remains a critical evidence gap. The resulting route- and cluster-resolved baseline provides the foundation from which green production pathways for SME steel systems can be identified and the plant-level measurement priorities that credible net-zero planning requires can be specified.

Increasing the retention of existing resources in use can assist in mitigating climate change and the growing strain on linear resource streams. The circular economy provides a model for this, however academic literature lacks consensus on the definitions and prioritisation of the activities it embodies. Activities retaining the greatest portion of existing resources in use, retaining end-of-use resources in use at a component or product level, are often overlooked for lower retention options including recycling in policy and action. A scoping review was undertaken looking at the impacts of resource access constriction on component-level reuse. A review of 326 articles identified a 350% increase in publications related to component level reuse between 2015-2019 and 2020–2024 on ScienceDirect, however total relevant publications in 2024 numbered 26, a fraction of the 18,067 articles published on the circular economy. Exemplifying this gap, only 13 articles pertinent to producing goods incorporating component level reuse were identified. Construction, textiles, timber and whitegoods industries were represented within the articles. Inconsistencies in form, function, condition, availability, and cost of resources, were identified as common barriers to scalability. All barriers could be tied to availability of end-of-use resources. A Resource Consumption framework is proposed to reduce CE framework confusion, improving on prior R imperative frameworks. The proposed framework defines circularity around rate of resource consumption avoidance during goods production. The consistency of resource related barriers identified in the scoping review provides support for the combination of component-level reuse activities within a single activity group in the proposed framework.

The quality assessment of chalky and discolored rice grains is often limited to either subjective methods or single‐value metrics that fail to capture the finer details of these damages. Despite being detectable and rich in visual features, there is a lack of a quantitative framework for characterizing these damages within a single rice grain in terms of their severity, their precise location, and their dispersion patterns across the grain surface. To address this gap, a multifeature‐based computer vision framework is proposed on a dataset of 5598 high‐resolution (24 megapixels) and high‐magnification (3.9 μm/pixel) images. The framework involves a two‐stage process: first, the unsupervised segmentation of the images via K ‐means clustering; and second, the spatial, geometric, and intensity‐based features are extracted from the segmentation masks to create a quantitative descriptor for chalkiness and discoloration. Distinct patterns appear for each damage type. For discolored grains, a strong negative correlation (−0.75) is observed between the damaged area and its distance from the grain’s center, which indicates that the smaller defects are often localized near the grain head. In contrast, the chalky grains exhibit a strong positive correlation (0.80) between the circularity of the damage area and its relative intensity, which indicates that a damage that is more compact tends to be visually more prominent. These results put together indicate that a multimetric approach can offer a more detailed characterization of the grain quality than a single measurement based simply on the percentage of damaged area in the grain. Quantifying the degree of discoloration and chalkiness in terms of both severity and spatial dispersion provides a more objective and physically meaningful basis for grading. This multimetric representation reduces subjectivity, minimizes ambiguity caused by coarse classifications or limited‐resolution imaging, and enables finer discrimination among damage patterns. Overall, such an approach would support the development of more robust, reproducible, and transparent grading systems and improve the accuracy of rice quality assessment while bridging the gap between simple manual inspection methods and computationally expensive high‐resolution techniques.

Household waste systems are a frontline test of Australia’s circular economy transition, yet progress remains highly uneven and structurally constrained. Despite strong national targets for resource recovery and emissions reduction, local governments are expected to deliver circular outcomes without uniform access to infrastructure, funding, or technical capability. This study assesses the status, implementation, and progress of household waste management, energy recovery, and circular economy initiatives at the local government level in Australia. Using content analysis of data from 520 local government areas across six states, the study maps differences in service provision (e.g., general waste, mixed recycling, and food organics and garden organics [FOGO] collection), policy instruments, public-facing education, and participation in circular economy programs. The findings reveal that while a majority (92.5%) of councils provide general waste bins, 47% offer FOGO bins, and 78% supply mixed recyclable bins, only a small fraction (2.6%) offers a separate glass bin stream. Fewer than one in ten councils reference any form of energy recovery or waste-to-energy initiative, indicating that resource–energy integration remains emergent and geographically concentrated. Despite national policies such as the National Waste Policy Action Plan, significant regional disparities persist, particularly between metropolitan and rural councils. Guided by environmental governance theory and systems thinking, the study shows how policy fragmentation, funding limitations, and infrastructure inequities create systemic barriers to circularity. The study concludes by recommending targeted co-funding for rural councils, stronger policy support for organics and energy recovery infrastructure, and more coherent multi-level governance to achieve Australia’s 2030 waste and circular economy targets. This research contributes an evidence-based framework for understanding how governance structures and resource asymmetries shape local progress toward a circular economy.

Purpose: This study investigates whether Kaizen operational practices contribute to environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. While Kaizen is widely applied in operational improvement, its impact on ESG dimensions remains empirically underexplored. The aim is to examine this relationship through a global survey of manufacturing organizations. Design/methodology/approach: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with professionals experienced in Kaizen from manufacturing companies across different countries. Respondents were identified via corporate social media based on their demonstrated expertise in Kaizen practices. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Findings: Results reveal that Kaizen practices positively influence environmental and governance performance. However, no direct impact on social performance was found. The use of digital systems was identified as a full mediator in the relationship between Kaizen and social performance. Practical implications: Findings suggest that organizations can enhance ESG outcomes by implementing Kaizen practices and integrating digital systems. This combined approach can improve environmental and governance results and indirectly support social sustainability. Originality/value: This is among the first empirical studies to explore the Kaizen–ESG link through a global sample, highlighting the role of digital systems as enablers of ESG performance.

The Circular Economy (CE) has evolved as a philosophy to transform industrial supply chains to become greener to combat climate change issues. Countries’ target of achieving Net Zero will never be fulfilled unless, along with larger organizations, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are decarbonized, as more than 90% of the world’s businesses are SMEs. Although, recently, there have been many studies on SMEs’ sustainability practices and performance covering drivers, bottlenecks, and opportunities, the holistic approach for embedding circular economy and sustainability covering design, planning, implementation, and operations is missing. This research bridges this knowledge gap by revealing trends and theories of circular economy adoption in SMEs. Additionally, this research derives the drivers/enablers, issues, and challenges and determines strategies, resources, and competencies for CE adoption in SMEs. This study concludes with a consolidated framework comprising factors and methods for CE implementation in SMEs. This entire piece of research has been undertaken using the secondary data analysis method through the content analysis of 188 published articles in highly ranked peer-reviewed journals.