Lean Production and Agile Organization: the Link between Supply Chain and Sustainable Development

While there are separate streams of established research on lean production, agile organization, and sustainable supply chain, the idea is to address the intersection of these three strategic initiatives in order to find synergies and competitive advantage for companies. The goal of the mission is to explore the link between supply chain and sustainable development with the insights of two main paradigms in the changing competitive environment: lean and agility. On the one side, the focus of the lean approach has essentially been on the elimination of waste and all non-value activities. On the other side, a key characteristic of an agile organization is flexibility at different echelon. The concern is to analyze how companies could manage the lean and agility principles in the supply chain with sustainable development at the different stage of the supply chain.