Integrating lean and six sigma for optimum manufacturing performance

Recent manufacturing industry reports and research indicate that the majority of companies
seeking to achieve world class performance, or improve their business performance in an increasingly
competitive market, have not been able to change at a reasonably fast rate towards achieving their
performance targets such as lead time, delivery, quality and cost. This paper attempts to study the
effectiveness of lean and six sigma, two of the most popular performance improvement
methodologies used by manufacturers today, and highlights their strengths and weaknesses,
investigates the rationale behind combining them. The study also explores the most effective way of
integrating the two philosophies to achieve improvement at a fast rate. Most published research on
integrating lean and six sigma have been only descriptive. Descriptive research is an important step
towards explaining the rationale of integrating lean and six sigma, however, empirical research on
lean six sigma is characterised by lack of attention to implementation know how, resulting in the need
to focus on the operational side.

Citation:
Shamou, M.; Arunachalam, S. (2009) ‘Integrating lean and six sigma for optimum manufacturing performance’ Proceedings of Advances in Computing and Technology, (AC&T) The School of Computing and Technology 4th Annual Conference, University of East London, pp.51-60.