Final interview guide for final case interviews
| Topics | Subjects | Example questions |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction | Introduction | If necessary: personal introduction |
| Reason for the interview | Explanation of the subject, purpose, approach and time required | |
| Questions | Explanation that they can ask questions any time | |
| Audio recording | Is it okay to audio record this interview? | |
| Explanation of reason why and use of the data and destruction of the data | ||
| Functionalities | What is your job description? | |
| What is it that you do on a regular day? | ||
| Open | Lean operations | If necessary: explanation of lean operations and CI |
| What do you do in operations? | ||
| CI | What do you do in improvement? | |
| Organizational routines (enacting and patterning) | What do you do to develop routines? | |
| Critical success factors | What do you do to develop conditions necessary to enact lean operating and/or CI routines? | |
| Ostensive aspect | Patterning lean operating routines | How do you develop employees' shared understanding of lean operating routines? |
| Patterning CI routines | How do you develop employees' shared understanding of CI routines? | |
| Performative aspect | Enacting lean operating routines | How do you develop employees' enactment of lean operating routines? |
| Enacting CI routines | How do you develop employees' enactment of CI routines? | |
| Related artefacts | Artefacts related to lean operations | How do you implement artefacts related to lean operating routines? |
| Artefacts related to CI | How do you implement artefacts related to CI routines? | |
| Operations (Shah and Ward, 2007, p. 799) | Supplier feedback | What do you do to “provide regular feedback to suppliers about their performance”? |
| JIT delivery | What do you do to ensure “that suppliers deliver the right quantity at the right time in the right place”? | |
| Developing suppliers | What do you do to “develop suppliers so they can be more involved in the production process of the focal firm”? | |
| Involved customers | What do you do to “focus on [the] firm's customers and their needs”? | |
| Pull | What do you do to “facilitate JIT production including Kanban cards”? | |
| Flow | What do you do to “establish mechanisms that enable and ease the continuous flow of products”? | |
| Low setup | What do you do to “reduce process downtime between product changeovers”? | |
| Controlled processed | What do you do to “address equipment downtime through total productive maintenance and thus achieve a high level of equipment availability”? | |
| Productive maintenance | What do you do to “ensure each process will supply defect free units to subsequent process”? | |
| Involved employees | What do you do to “involve cross-functional employees in problem solving”? | |
| Improvement routines (Bessant et al., 2001) | Understanding CI | What do you do to create understanding of “the basic values of CI”? |
| Getting the CI habit | What do you do to “generate sustained involvement in CI”? | |
| Focussing CI | What do you do to “link CI activities to the strategic goals of the company”? | |
| Leading the way | What do you do to “lead, direct and support the creation and sustaining of CI behaviours”? | |
| Aligning CI | What do you do to “create consistency between CI values and behaviour and the organizational context”? | |
| Shared problem solving | What do you do to “move CI activity across organizational boundaries”? | |
| CI of CI | What do you do to “strategically manage the development of CI”? | |
| The learning organization | What do you do to “enable learning to take place and be captured at all levels”? | |
| Critical success factors (Knol et al., 2018) | Top management support | What do you do to assume responsibility and involvement from top management? |
| Shared improvement vision | What do you do to develop, share and follow company-wide, long-term direction, objectives and goals? | |
| Good communication | What do you do to exchange ideas, information and knowledge honestly, clearly and transparently in all organizational directions? | |
| Leadership | What do you do to get team leaders to facilitate, coordinate and balance improvements from shop floor employees? | |
| People focus | What do you do to get organizational systems to help employees to do their work versus employees being bound to organizational systems? | |
| Learning focus | What do you do to share both positive and negative experiences and consider mistakes opportunities for improvement? | |
| Sufficient resources | What do you do to make sufficient time and money available for training and improvement activities? | |
| Improvement training | What do you do to provide training for managers and shop floor employees in improvement concepts, tools, techniques and team building? | |
| Performance Management system | What do you do to measure and display process data from all levels to control production, prevent defects and indicate opportunities? | |
| Supplier link | What do you do to get suppliers to provide and get feedback and rate them to select a limited number of suppliers? | |
| Customer link | What do you do to get customers to provide and get feedback and cooperate for improvement? | |
| Support congruence | What do you do to align employee targets, assessments and rewards of all departments with the improvement vision? | |
| Closing | Remainders | Is there anything else related to lean operations and/or CI that you would like to share? |
| Focus | Of all we have discussed, what has been the most important? | |
| Follow-up | Explanation (repetition) of the use of the data and the remainder of this research |
| Topics | Subjects | Example questions |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction | Introduction | |
| Reason for the interview | Explanation of the subject, purpose, approach and time required | |
| Questions | Explanation that they can ask questions any time | |
| Audio recording | Is it okay to audio record this interview? | |
| Explanation of reason why and use of the data and destruction of the data | ||
| Functionalities | What is your job description? | |
| What is it that you do on a regular day? | ||
| Open | Lean operations | |
| What do you do in operations? | ||
| CI | What do you do in improvement? | |
| Organizational routines (enacting and patterning) | What do you do to develop routines? | |
| Critical success factors | What do you do to develop conditions necessary to enact lean operating and/or CI routines? | |
| Ostensive aspect | Patterning lean operating routines | How do you develop employees' shared understanding of lean operating routines? |
| Patterning CI routines | How do you develop employees' shared understanding of CI routines? | |
| Performative aspect | Enacting lean operating routines | How do you develop employees' enactment of lean operating routines? |
| Enacting CI routines | How do you develop employees' enactment of CI routines? | |
| Related artefacts | Artefacts related to lean operations | How do you implement artefacts related to lean operating routines? |
| Artefacts related to CI | How do you implement artefacts related to CI routines? | |
| Operations ( | Supplier feedback | What do you do to “provide regular feedback to suppliers about their performance”? |
| JIT delivery | What do you do to ensure “that suppliers deliver the right quantity at the right time in the right place”? | |
| Developing suppliers | What do you do to “develop suppliers so they can be more involved in the production process of the focal firm”? | |
| Involved customers | What do you do to “focus on [the] firm's customers and their needs”? | |
| Pull | What do you do to “facilitate JIT production including Kanban cards”? | |
| Flow | What do you do to “establish mechanisms that enable and ease the continuous flow of products”? | |
| Low setup | What do you do to “reduce process downtime between product changeovers”? | |
| Controlled processed | What do you do to “address equipment downtime through total productive maintenance and thus achieve a high level of equipment availability”? | |
| Productive maintenance | What do you do to “ensure each process will supply defect free units to subsequent process”? | |
| Involved employees | What do you do to “involve cross-functional employees in problem solving”? | |
| Improvement routines ( | Understanding CI | What do you do to create understanding of “the basic values of CI”? |
| Getting the CI habit | What do you do to “generate sustained involvement in CI”? | |
| Focussing CI | What do you do to “link CI activities to the strategic goals of the company”? | |
| Leading the way | What do you do to “lead, direct and support the creation and sustaining of CI behaviours”? | |
| Aligning CI | What do you do to “create consistency between CI values and behaviour and the organizational context”? | |
| Shared problem solving | What do you do to “move CI activity across organizational boundaries”? | |
| CI of CI | What do you do to “strategically manage the development of CI”? | |
| The learning organization | What do you do to “enable learning to take place and be captured at all levels”? | |
| Critical success factors ( | Top management support | What do you do to assume responsibility and involvement from top management? |
| Shared improvement vision | What do you do to develop, share and follow company-wide, long-term direction, objectives and goals? | |
| Good communication | What do you do to exchange ideas, information and knowledge honestly, clearly and transparently in all organizational directions? | |
| Leadership | What do you do to get team leaders to facilitate, coordinate and balance improvements from shop floor employees? | |
| People focus | What do you do to get organizational systems to help employees to do their work versus employees being bound to organizational systems? | |
| Learning focus | What do you do to share both positive and negative experiences and consider mistakes opportunities for improvement? | |
| Sufficient resources | What do you do to make sufficient time and money available for training and improvement activities? | |
| Improvement training | What do you do to provide training for managers and shop floor employees in improvement concepts, tools, techniques and team building? | |
| Performance Management system | What do you do to measure and display process data from all levels to control production, prevent defects and indicate opportunities? | |
| Supplier link | What do you do to get suppliers to provide and get feedback and rate them to select a limited number of suppliers? | |
| Customer link | What do you do to get customers to provide and get feedback and cooperate for improvement? | |
| Support congruence | What do you do to align employee targets, assessments and rewards of all departments with the improvement vision? | |
| Closing | Remainders | Is there anything else related to lean operations and/or CI that you would like to share? |
| Focus | Of all we have discussed, what has been the most important? | |
| Follow-up |
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