Towards sustainability by aligning operational programmes and sustainable performance measures

Abstract

In the last decades, sustainable concerns have increasingly gained importance to organizational survival, and Lean/Six Sigma approaches are becoming more and more outstanding in order to improve sustainability performance. This article aims to evaluate the degree of importance of sustainable performance measures of Brazilian organizations and to propose guidelines to achieve sustainability by aligning these measures with operational improvement programmes. Multiple data collection methods were applied as theoretical literature review, questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews with industry professionals and academic researchers. The findings show that it is the corporate responsibility to focus their efforts on both operational improvement programmes and sustainable initiatives in order to achieve better environmental protection, corporate reputation, quality management, cost performance and suppliers relations, as they are considered to be more important on organizational sustainability.