Investigations on Lean Six Sigma Deployment Framework with a focus on Indian SMEs

Abstract

The world witnessed impactful events in diverse fields, such as revolutionary medicinal discoveries, advancement in automobile manufacturing, the unfortunate two World Wars, the civilisation movement, industrial revolutions, economic crisis and growth, space exploration, Information Technology (IT), the birth of the internet, technological disruptions, innovations, and many more. These events have had heavy impacts and brought enormous changes in the domains of manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, infrastructure, governance, trade, communication, services, etc., which resulted in stiff global competition in all the domains. Due to the impactful events towards the end of the 20th century, quality, innovation, sustainability, etc., have emerged as key business propositions. Dr Joseph M. Juran, a world-renowned quality guru, envisaged the 21st Century as a Century of Quality while co-relating developments of the 20th Century as a Century of Productivity. Therefore, organisations worldwide must address product concerns by focusing on robust design, quality, price, timely delivery, and after-sales services, which can be attained through operational excellence strategies like Lean Six Sigma. newlineMoreover, in the last forty years, Lean, Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma have evolved globally with diverse applicability. Lean, a philosophy derived from the Toyota Production System (TPS), aims to produce products of the highest quality at the lowest cost and in the shortest time. Likewise, the Six Sigma program, developed at Motorola in the USA, aims to reduce variation and defects by adopting a structured methodology using statistical tools. However, to gain the synergetic effects of both, i.e., Lean and Six Sigma, practitioners and researchers attempted a hybrid approach known as Lean Six Sigma at the beginning of the 21st century. Since then, Lean Six Sigma has unfolded as a prominent and widely acknowledged business improvement strategy. newlineEvidences strongly indicate that the Indian economy has grown enormously post-econom