Purpose – Recently, the operations management academic literature has seen articles focusing on the transfer of “lean” thinking or kaizen concept from the private to the public sector. In Spain, during the last 15 years, some local councils have also followed similar improvement...

Purpose – The Gemba‐Kaizen approach is a key business process strategy employed by companies (multinationals also) to enhance their manufacturing performance. However, whilst there is significant research information available on implementing management systems in a sequential manner, there...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to see how quality management is carried out in hotels in the Basque Country, a region in the north of Spain with a long tradition in the tourist sector. Design/methodology/approach – The objective of the study was to establish what approaches to...

Purpose – Continuous improvement has become an important strategy in improving organizational performance. Unfortunately, product development is often excluded in continuous improvement programs due to the special characteristics of product development activities. The overall purpose of this...