In the production of air conditioners, there are various issues such as complex requirements, redundant stations, excessive man-hours, and low production line balance rate. This paper aims to address these problems by analyzing the historical data of H Company\'s commercial air conditioner production line. The data is categorized into five aspects: station, working hours, standard working hours, labor capacity, and presence of bottleneck processes. To optimize and improve the second production line, this paper applies the production line balance management method based on data mining. It utilizes the decision tree model in data mining and incorporates lean production knowledge from industrial engineering. The goal is to identify crucial factors that affect the balance of the production line and address the issues caused by these factors. The aim is to reduce and eliminate redundant working hours and enhance the balance rate of the production line. By implementing the approach outlined in this paper, the bottleneck time of the second production line was reduced from 96.67 s to 74.6 s, and the production line balance rate increased from 68% to 85%.

Textile industry is an old and effective industry in Iran. However, due to its age and high energy consumption, this industry has low profitability and entrepreneurship. One of the most important problems of the weaving industry is the issue of waste regarding manpower, materials, machinery, and especially energy consumption. Another problem is environmental pollution. In this paper, using a multiple decision-making model for ranking and selecting criteria and sub-criteria, which is presented using the step-wise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA) and also by examining several industrial plants on weaving, the final ranking was performed using the fuzzy COPRAS method. According to the final result and using the opinions of experts and reviewing the studied cases, the environmental criterion was more important than other criteria, and also according to the existing sub-criteria, the amount of CO2 production and pH in the process of completion and washing and the types of pollution in the effluent and sewage were more important than other sub-criteria. Also, among the alternatives, company 5 is evaluated as the best alternative.

In conditions of increasing of load caused by rapid development of new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) pandemic, health care systems of various countries faced the shortage of basic resources, including individual protection means for medical personnel and population that required taking complex measures to eliminate the situation. In the Tomsk oblast, the unified system of supplying medical organizations with individual protection means was organized. The system provides centralization of management of supplies and their distribution; standardization of approaches to using, accounting, storage and utilization of protection means depending on type and conditions of medical care support; monitoring system of provision of individual protection means applying lean manufacturing tools. The implementation of the project made it possible to ensure at the initial stage of the pandemic the maintenance of individual protection means stock in every institution not less than for 7 days and subsequently not less than 30 days demand.

Pharmaceutical applications of 3D printing technologies are growing rapidly. Among these, vat photopolymerisation (VP) techniques, including Stereolithography (SLA) hold much promise for their potential to deliver personalised medicines on-demand. SLA 3D printing offers advantageous features for pharmaceutical production, such as operating at room temperature and offering an unrivaled printing resolution. However, since conventional SLA apparatus are designed to operate with large volumes of a single photopolymer resin, significant throughput limitations remain. This, coupled with the limited choice of biocompatible polymers and photoinitiators available, hold back the pharmaceutical development using such technologies. Hence, the aim of this work was to develop a novel SLA apparatus specifically designed to allow rapid and efficient screening of pharmaceutical photopolymer formulations. A commercially available SLA apparatus was modified by designing and fabricating a novel resin tank and build platform able to 3D print up to 12 different formulations at a single time, reducing the amount of sample resin required by 20-fold. The novel SLA apparatus was subsequently used to conduct a high throughput screening of 156 placebo photopolymer formulations. The efficiency of the equipment and formulation printability outcomes were evaluated. Improved time and cost efficiency by 91.66% and 94.99%, respectively, has been confirmed using the modified SLA apparatus to deliver high quality, highly printable outputs, thus evidencing that such modifications offer a robust and reliable tool to optimize the throughput and efficiency of vat photopolymerisation techniques in formulation development processes, which can, in turn, support future clinical applications.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this paper is to identify the lean production (LP) practices applied in healthcare supply chain and the existing barriers related to their implementation.
METHODS: To achieve that, a scoping review was carried out in order to consolidate the main practices and barriers, and also to evidence research gaps and directions according to different theoretical lenses.
RESULTS: The findings show that there is a consensus on the potential of LP practices implementation in healthcare supply chain, but most studies still report such implementation restricted to specific unit or value stream within a hospital.
CONCLUSIONS: Healthcare organizations are under constant pressure to reduce costs and wastes, while improving services and patient safety. Further, its supply chain usually presents great opportunities for improvement, both in terms of cost reduction and quality of care increase. In this sense, the adaptation of LP practices and principles has been widely accepted in healthcare. However, studies show that most implementations fall far short from their goals because they are done in a fragmented way, and not from a system-wide perspective.

The energy-saving and emission reduction (ESER) strategy is a crucial measure for promoting the sustainability of manufacturing industry in green transition. Analyzing current practices and limitations of the ESER in the manufacturing industry, this paper proposes a new concept entitled lean energy-saving and emission-reduction (LESER) and an approach to effectively improve the energy efficiency and reduce waste emissions. This paper illustrates the definition of the LESER and establishes an implementation framework for LESER to improve the manufacturing process. To quantify and evaluate performance of LESER, the state space model of the carbon footprint for energy consumption and waste discharge is established. A method for implementing the LESER strategy is constructed in the following steps: (i) clarification of the current situation; (ii) analysis of the root cause; (iii) improvement; (iv) evaluation of the carbon emissions; (v) sustaining and standardizing. Finally, the LESER strategy is applied to the Zcrubber Group Co. Ltd., which is characterized with high pollution, high energy consumption, and high emission in green transition. Results demonstrate practicability of the proposed strategy to offer an effective measure for promoting sustainability of manufacturing industry.

In recent years, the renewed interest in environmental issues has gradually required manufacturers to simultaneously pursue a more rational use of resources and a reduction in wastes production. New strategies, technologies and organisational innovations must be therefore conceived to \"create more value with less impact\" (WBCSD, 2010). An interesting and promising perspective for achieving internal efficiency, market effectiveness and environmental eco-efficiency is that of integrating the environmental variable in the Lean Production (LP) paradigm. Scholars and practitioners have been working for some years in this direction of eco-innovation. The present article aims at obtaining a quali/quantitative overview of Lean and Clean(er) production (L&C) research through a bibliometric and network analysis, by using a scientific literature database; in particular, it investigates how Clean(er) Production research and publications are progressively embedded in the field of LP, what are the main topics in this sub-field and common research themes. A comprehensive picture was made by analysing data concerning publications, authors, affiliations, and the countries of origin. Evolutionary profiles, major topics investigated, leading authors and collaborations have been reported. The results also reveal promising spaces for the development of L&C production research, in order to achieve economic and environmental benefits.

The objective of this research is to identify critical success factors (CSFs) of the reusable plastic packaging (RPP) system and to establish their interrelationship in the context of manufacturing industries. Fourteen CSFs were shortlisted by reviewing the literature and considering expert team inputs. To explore the mutual influence between the identified CSFs the Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) approach was applied. To strengthen link interpretation, ISM methodology was supported by the Total Interpretive Structural Modeling (TISM) approach. Further, to identify the factors with high driving power the Matrice d\'Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliqués à un Classement (MICMAC) analysis was employed. It was concluded that three CSFs namely, \'top management commitment\' \'lean support,\' and \'optimized inventory management\' were the critical ones with high influential power. This study aims to help the decision-makers in developing effective strategies for the implementation of the RPP system in the case sector for achieving sustainability.

Although lean production (LP) has been increasingly adopted in healthcare systems, its benefits often fall short of expectations. This might be partially due to the failure of lean to account for the complexity of healthcare. This paper discusses the joint use of principles of LP and resilience engineering (RE), which is an approach for system design inspired by complexity science. Thus, a framework for supporting the design of socio-technical systems, which combines insights from LP and RE, was developed and tested in a system involving a patient flow from an emergency department to an intensive care unit. Based on this empirical study, as well as on extant theory, eight design propositions that support the framework application were developed. Both the framework and its corresponding propositions can contribute to the design of socio-technical systems that are at the same time safe and efficient.

Industrial improvement approaches such as Lean management are increasingly being adopted in health care. Synthesis is necessary to ensure these approaches are evidence based and requires operationalization of concepts to ensure all relevant studies are included. This article outlines the process utilized to develop an operational definition of Lean in health care. The literature search, screening, data extraction, and data synthesis processes followed the recommendations outlined by the Cochrane Collaboration. Development of the operational definition utilized the methods prescribed by Kinsman et al. and Wieland et al. This involved extracting characteristics of Lean, synthesizing similar components to establish an operational definition, applying this definition, and updating the definition to address shortcomings. We identified two defining characteristics of Lean health-care management: (1) Lean philosophy, consisting of Lean principles and continuous improvement, and (2) Lean activities, which include Lean assessment activities and Lean improvement activities. The resulting operational definition requires that an organization or subunit of an organization had integrated Lean philosophy into the organization\'s mandate, guidelines, or policies and utilized at least one Lean assessment activity or Lean improvement activity. This operational definition of Lean management in health care will act as an objective screening criterion for our systematic review. To our knowledge, this is the first evidence-based operational definition of Lean management in health care.