On 6 April 2016 Dr Vikas Kumar from the Bristol Business School, University of the West of England presented his research on 'the impact of lean methods and tools on the operational performance of manufacturing organisations' to staff and research students.

Evidence suggests that lean methods and tools have helped manufacturing organisations to improve their operations and processes. However, the real effect of these methods and tools on contemporary measures of operational performance, i.e. cost, speed, dependability, quality and flexibility is still unclear. This paper investigates the impact of five essential lean methods, i.e., JIT, autonomation, kaizen, TPM and VSM on these measures. A linear regression analysis modelled the correlation and impact of these lean practices on the operational performance of 140 manufacturing organisations around the world. In addition, structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to cross verify the findings of the regression and correlation analyses.

The results indicate that JIT and autonomation have the strongest significance on operational performance while kaizen, TPM, and VSM seem to have a lesser, or even negative, effect on it. Dr Kumar's co-authored paper provides further evidence regarding the effects that lean practices have on the performance of organisations and thus the research offers companies, and their managers, a better understanding of the relationship between the lean strategy and the performance of their operations.

Dr Vikas Kumar is an Associate Professor in Enterprise Operations Management at Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, UK. He holds a PhD degree in Management Studies from Exeter Business School, U.K and a Bachelor of Technology degree in Metallurgy and Material Science engineering from NIFFT, India. He has published more than 100 articles in leading International journals (such as IJPR, PPC, ESWA, TQMBE, IMechE and IJQRM) and International conferences. His current research interests include green/sustainable supply chain management, lean and six sigma, process modelling, and short food supply chains.