Conclusions
This paper presents an investigation of the relationships between lean and resilient SC practices and their impact on economical and operational performance. On one hand, lean SC practices seek to minimize all possible wastes in the SC. On the other hand, resilient SC practices pursue to minimize the impact of any unexpected event and the time that the SC needs to go back to its initial state, before de disturbance took place. In order to carry out the above mentioned investigation we focus on the aerospace sector, as a sector in which both lean and resilient paradigms are of interest. From the academic point of view, this research provides an explicit research procedure that can be replicated in similar studies, that combines the IPA approach and the ISM technique (Figure 1). Additionally, this research further explores the interrelationship between lean and resilient SC practices and their impact on SC performance, trying to cover the existing gap in the literature on the “conflict/synergy” effect of lean and resilience paradigms. A major contribution of this research lies in the development of linkages among various lean and resilience practices and SC performance metrics (operational and economic) through a single systemic framework. Findings highlight that lean and resilience practices are closely connected, being the first ones leading to the second ones, in line with Govindan et al. (2015). Hence, the lean practices studied might impact SC vulnerability, in line with the results in Dynes et al. (2007). An additional contribution of this study lies in the higher number of practices considered in each paradigm to better capture the existing links between practices, that may have been previously ignored.
