Investigations on implementing lean six sigma through ISO 9001 2008 standard based quality management system

Abstract

During the past four decades organisations worldwide have been sensing the intensity of competition that has led them to adopt competitive strategies Researchers and practitioners have been evolving many new manufacturing managerial models to attain these competitive strategies so as to enable these organisations to achieve competitiveness Among the manufacturing models Six Sigma became a promising managerial model for achieving competitiveness by facilitating to achieve zero defects in manufacturing of products and offering of services In parallel to this development organisations have been striving to achieve continual quality improvement through ISO 9001 certification ISO 9001 certification has been driving the organisations to install Quality Management System QMS Thus as a sequel to the increasing intensity of competition the world began to see the emergence of numerous manufacturing managerial models with the objective of achieving higher degree of quality defect free operations and systematic continual quality improvement Lean Six Sigma steers the adoption of Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma principles to achieve synergy out of them In line to this kind of synergising efforts few researchers have suggested the integration of Six Sigma with ISO 9001 based QMS Most of these researchers have reported the reaping of significant benefits using the synergised models newlinelike Lean Six Sigma and ISO 9001 standard based QMS integrated Six Sigma newline