ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain.
Sec. Sustainable Organizations
This article is part of the Research TopicApplications of Artificial Intelligence and IoT Technologies in Smart Manufacturing Vol. 2View all 5 articles
World Class Sustainable Manufacturing (WCSM): A Rational Approach for Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA)
Provisionally accepted
- 1INTI International University, Nilai, Malaysia
- 2CMR Institute of Technology, Bengaluru, India
- 3Kristu Jayanti (Deemed to be University),Bengaluru,India, Bengaluru, India
- 4Presidency College, Bengaluru, India
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Word count: 216 The rationale of this empirical study is to identify sustainability assessment constructs in the context of WCSM implementation, which has emerged as a key focus of world class manufac-turers striving to achieve Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA). This study also intends to identify the critical drivers and barriers towards implementation of WCSM. In order to achieve the study's purpose, the primary data were collected from 143 plant managers and supervisors through structured questionnaires administered at select world class manufacturers in South India based on an area-cum-purposive sampling technique. The survey instrument was exclusively designed to capture sustainability assessment dimensions to examine WCSM implementation and to investigate the impetus of WCSM implementation on achieving SCA. The findings of this empirical study revealed that five sustainability assessment constructs are identified with the help of exploratory factor analysis. They are 'WCSM Practices', 'Environmental Benefit Dimensions', 'Social Benefit Di-mensions', 'Economic Benefit Dimensions' and 'WCSM Implementation'. These sustainable assessment constructs are regarded as essential by South Indian world class manufacturers for the achievement of sustainable competitive advantage. Moreover, this study also confirmed that 'WCSM Drivers' positively influenced the implementation of WCSM and 'WCSM Barriers' negatively influenced the implementation of WCSM. Finally, the study's findings indicated that the adoption and implementation of WCSM exert a substantial positive influence on achieving sustainable competitive advantage.
Keywords: world class sustainable manufacturing (WCSM), world class manufactures, sustainable assessment constructs, manufacturing industries, sustainable competitive advantage (SCA)
Received: 23 Sep 2025; Accepted: 24 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Beleya, Murugesan, KP and Shukla. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jaheer Mukthar KP
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