<p>Lean Six Sigma (LSS) has been implemented worldwide for many years and has been successful in many organizations. Eloot, Huang, and Lehnich (2013) noted that achieving manufacturing excellence by using LSS was an opportunity for many companies. Liker and Rother (2011) pointed out that only 2% of companies successfully achieved the desired results with Lean plans. </p> <p>The presented dissertation identified the critical success factors of LSS implementation for Chinese manufacturing companies and explored the challenges occurring during the LSS transformations. The objectives of this dissertation were: </p> <p> i. to understand how the employee training process for LSS can be designed using total quality management (TQM) adoption in private manufacturing organizations in China;</p> <p> ii. to understand how LSS practices can be adopted successfully in SMEs in China;</p> <p> iii. to examine and explore the critical success factors (CSF) of LSS implementation;</p> <p> iv. to discuss the challenges occurring during LSS transformation.</p> <p> </p> <p>Objective (i) was achieved through a descriptive single case study. This case study showed how to apply <a>a design for Six Sigma methodology (DMADV) for staff training in quality management tools in a private organization in China</a>. The author also discussed the problems occurring during the Six Sigma project and explored how organizational culture impacted Six Sigma implementation. Objective (ii) was achieved through a detailed descriptive single case study which recorded how LSS practices were adopted successfully in a SME-VTCL in China using DMAIC methodology. Survey data was collected to identify and explore the critical success factors of LSS implementation in SMEs, by querying the voice of top, middle, and frontline management, as well as frontline workers of these companies. Objectives (iii) and (iv) were realized utilizing descriptive, exploratory, and multi-case studies designed to gather and analyze observational and interview data. The resulting interview data, and the key factors for successful LSS transformation of these three companies were discussed from the perspective of senior management and LSS promoters within the companies. Based on interview data and the Lean iceberg model, a new LSS transformation model was proposed. The author also developed 6 propositions based on the findings from the interviews. </p> <p>In summary, the results of this study provided value and references for LSS practitioners to expand the body of knowledge on the strategies used to implement LSS successfully inside organizations. The findings of this research may potentially lead more Chinese organizations to successfully adopt LSS to provide customers with high-quality products. The three LSS implementation cases described <a>critical success factors (CSFs)</a> and challenges that occurred during the transformation, may improve the success rate of implementation, help enterprises achieve the desired results through LSS, and enhance the sustainability of LSS implementations.</p>

The diploma thesis applies to Lean management and it´s application in administrative processes. The goal of diploma thesis is proposal to increase the value added activities and to reduce waste at the same time in the area of administration. The methods of Lean management as 7+1 waste, Kaizen, Lean office, Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma are applied in administrative processes in Shared service centre. These methods are evaluated by performance and productivity of processes.

Purpose: Lean Six Sigma has been playing a vital role in numerous organizations to enhance the productivity of the Supply Chain by reducing “waste and variance”. During Lean Six Sigma implementation, a change is introduced in the organization, the purpose is to understand the organizational change in this context in order not to end up failing in the implementation of this technique. Different factors affect organizational change, such as communication, successful implementation of ideas, training, empowerment of employees, the impact of unions, and support from the management. However, out of these factors, from the workforce perspective, which ones act as facilitators, and which ones act as barriers? Method: The approach that has been followed is the abductive approach as an interchange between theory and method, by combining deduction and induction. In the abductive research method, the research process starts with surprising facts or puzzling situations, and the research process is dedicated to their explanation. Findings: The study has identified if communication, successful implementation of ideas, developmental training of the workforce, empowerment of employees, management support, and employee unions act either as a barrier or a facilitator during the implementations of lean six sigma methods. Implications: By studying how these factors are acting (barriers or facilitators) there would be a certain help for the organizations in understanding the perspective of the employees in adapting to the change. This will ease the process, which would, in turn, help the organizations in an efficient implementation of Lean Six Sigma methods. Furthermore, it was found that the inclusion of Employees in decision making from an early stage will lead to efficiency in the implementation. Another implication that was found is that informal communication is as important as formal during the implementation of lean six sigma methods. Limitations: This study is based on one company.

Lean Six Sigma is an approach focused on improving quality, reducing variation and eliminating waste in an organization. The concept of combining the principles and tools of Lean Enterprise and Six Sigma has occurred in the literature over the last several years. The majority of Lean Six Sigma applications have been in private industry, focusing mostly on manufacturing applications. The literature has not provided a framework for implementing Lean Six Sigma programs applied to local government. This research provides a framework roadmap for implementing Lean Six Sigma in local government. The Service Improvement for Transaction-based Entities Lean Six Sigma Framework Roadmap (SITE MAP) identifies the activities, principles, tools, and important component factors to implement Lean Six Sigma. The framework provides a synergistic approach to integrating the concepts and tools of Lean Enterprise and Six Sigma using the DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control) problem solving approach. A case study was used to validate the framework. Lean Six Sigma was successfully applied in a 7,000-citizen municipality to reduce the cycle time of the financial administrative processes in the Finance Department of the city government.

Successfully implementing continuous improvement and quality methodologies have been challenging over the past century. Challenges occur in managing change in the organization, which can be effectively addressed through relationship building in concert with strong leadership. Even with solid leadership, change management, and relationship building, initiatives have challenges quantifying and identifying when to intervene in order to keep them on track for success. Creating a quantitative model using a 3-parameter logit s-curve, Blythe S-curve, to illustrate the growth and decay of the handoff of projects to the process owner will allow leadership the knowledge and direction to keep the initiative moving in a positive direction. Leveraging the Hotelling T2 multivariate charts on the residuals derived from the Blythe S-curve will give definitive statistical evidence on when to intervene on projects in the earliest possible time frame. Leaders in organizations implementing and actively using change management, relationship building, the Blythe S-curve model, and Hotelling T2 multivariate charts to drive quality and continuous improvement methodologies in their organization will improve the likelihood of success.

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No / The complexity of sustainable building maintenance environment enforces organizations to develop a standardized maintenance quality management system that can be applied in all concerned departments. This Chapter presents a novel conceptual model of a hybrid Knowledge-Based Lean Six Sigma Sustainable Building Maintenance System (Lean6-SBM). The KB model seeks to apply the Lean Six Sigma philosophy to support implementation of an ideal building maintenance system. The conceptual KB model also integrates GAP technique to support benchmarking and decision making. The proposed conceptual model is presented to show the fundamental components of the Lean6-SBM. / This work was supported by the Ministry of Defense Engineering Services 403 (MoDES—Sultanate of Oman) and the University of Bradford (United Kingdom).

A continuous improvement project (CIP) is a structured improvement project using a team of people "typically representing different departments or units in the organization" working to improve a process or work area over a relatively short period of time, such as a few days or up to several months. A CIP may use different improvement methodologies and tools, and may thus be defined according to the improvement approach. For instance, an organization adopting Lean as an improvement approach is likely to have CIPs implementing Lean tools, such as 5S or value stream mapping. These projects may be referred to as Lean projects in general, although they may also represent accelerated improvement projects such as Kaizen events, Kaizen blitz, or rapid improvement projects. Alternatively, an organization utilizing Six Sigma as an improvement approach may have Six Sigma projects that use the Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC) process and statistical tools. Some organizations adopt an integrated improvement approach, such as Lean Six Sigma, and therefore may have CIPs with an even broader set of tools from which to choose. Lastly, many organizations may have an improvement approach not characterized by any single set of improvement processes and tools, and thus, may be thought of generally as process improvement, or quality improvement, projects using a traditional methodology as plan-do-study/check-act (PDSA or PDCA). In this dissertation, all of these types of improvement projects are referred as CIPs. Since the 1980s, hospitals have been using CIPs to address some of the problems in hospitals, such as quality in healthcare delivery, internal process efficiency, communication and coordination, and the cost of services. Some hospitals have achieved significant improvements, such as reducing the turnaround time for clinical laboratory results by 60 percent and reducing instrumentation decontaminations and sterilization cycle time by 70 percent. However, as with many other companies, hospitals often experience difficulty achieving their desired level of improvements with CIPs. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) related to CIP success. In order to achieve this goal, five objectives were achieved: creating a methodology to assess the maturity or evolution of a research field (manuscript #1), identifying a comprehensive list of CSFs for CIPs (manuscript #2), assessing the maturity of the published literature on CIPs in hospitals (manuscript #3), identifying the most important factors related to CIPs in hospitals (manuscript #4) , and conducting an empirical investigation to define the CSFs for CIPs in hospital settings (manuscript #5 and #6). This investigation was conducted in three phases: research framing, variable reduction, and model development and testing. During these phases, the researcher used the following methodologies and data collection tools: systematic literature review, maturity framework (developed as part of this dissertation), expert study, retrospective survey questionnaire, exploratory factor analysis, partial-least squares structural equation modeling, and regression modeling. A maturity framework with nine dimensions was created (manuscript #1) and applied in order to identify a list of 53 factors related to CIP in general, involving any organization (manuscript #2). Additionally, the maturity framework was used to assess the literature available on CIPs in hospitals, considering only the authorship characteristic dimension (manuscript #3). Considering the frequency of new authors per year, the relative new integration of research groups, and the limited set of predominant authors, the research field, or area, of CIPs in hospitals is one with opportunities for improving maturity. Using the systematic literature review from manuscript #3, the list of 53 factors, and the list of predominant authors, a review of the literature was conducted, along with an expert study to more fully characterize the importance of various factors (manuscript #4). A conclusion from this particular work was that it is not possible to reduce the list of 53 factors based on these results, thus, a field study using the complete comprehensive list of factors was determined to have stronger practical implications. A field study was conducted to identify factors most related to CIP perceived success (manuscript #5) and CIP goal achievement (manuscript #6). The final results and practical implications of this dissertation consist in the identification of the following CSFs for CIP success in hospitals: Goal Characteristics, Organizational Processes, Improvement Processes, and Team Operation. These CSFs include several specific factors that, to the researcher's knowledge, have not been previously studied in empirical investigations: goal development process, organizational policies and procedures, CIP progress reporting, and CIP technical documentation. Practitioners involved with CIPs, such as CIP leaders, facilitators, stakeholders/customers, and continuous improvement managers/leaders, can utilize these results to increase the likelihood of success by considering these factors in planning and conducting CIPs. / Ph. D.

Yes / This paper presents the development of a Knowledge-Based System (KBS) to support the implementation of Lean Six Sigma (L6σ) principles applied to enhance Quality Management (QM) performance within a Healthcare Environment. The process of KBS building has been started by acquiring knowledge from experts in field of L6σ and QM in healthcare. The acquired knowledge has been represented in a rule-based approach for capturing L6σ practices. These rules are produced in IF….THEN way where IF is the premise and THEN is the action. The produced rules have been integrated with Gauging Absence of Pre-requisites (GAP) technique to facilitate benchmarking of best practice in a healthcare environment. A comprehensive review of the structure of the system is given, detailing a typical output of the KBS. Implementation of L6σ principles to enhance QM performance in a Healthcare Environment requires a pre-assessment of the organisation’s competences. The KBS provides an enhanced strategic and operational decision making hierarchy for achieving a performance benchmark. This research presents a novel application of a hybrid KBS with GAP methodology to support the implementation of L6σ principles to enhance QM performance in a healthcare environment.

The software development for mobile devices such as mobile phones, smartphones and tablets requires knowledge not only of processes but also related to software and hardware technology platforms of these devices. Continuous improvement in the performance of these platforms and the increasing demand for a variety of applications require a high competitiveness and, therefore, high levels of productivity and quality. In this scenario, agile methodologies are used and fit well to frequently changing requirements and to time to market. Among these methodologies, Scrum is one of the most accepted and used, contributing to the improvement of project management, team productivity, product quality and increasing the probability of project success. On the other hand, there is an increasing adoption of quality management methodologies such as Lean Six Sigma in Information Technology and Communication (ICT) organizations due to their proven results in improving processes development and quality of services and products developed. Methodologies such as Scrum and Lean Six Sigma have different goals, however, they can contribute together in the development of software for mobile devices. In literature, there are studies that propose the integration of agile methodologies and software quality, however, they have gaps regarding the possibility of systematic reuse of this integration, as well as in evaluating the use of these integrated methodologies. Thus, this paper proposes an evolution of an existing approach, called SLeSS, that integrates Scrum to Lean Six Sigma and has been used in the software customization for mobile phones. The evolution of this approach is to add software development in addition to customization and improve integration mechanisms initially proposed with a focus on evaluation of the practices and principles of Scrum from the use of techniques of Lean Six Sigma. This new version is applied in seven actual projects that are related to software development and customization for mobile devices and their results are also discussed in this dissertation. / O desenvolvimento de software para dispositivos mÃveis como smartphones, celulares e tablets requer conhecimento dos processos e das tecnologias relacionadas Ãs plataformas de software e de hardware desses dispositivos. A melhoria contÃnua no desempenho dessas plataformas e a demanda crescente por uma variedade de aplicaÃÃes impÃem uma alta competitividade e, por conseguinte, exigem nÃveis elevados de produtividade e de qualidade dos projetos de desenvolvimento. Nesse cenÃrio, as metodologias Ãgeis sÃo utilizadas por se adequarem bem Ãs frequentes mudanÃas de requisitos e Ãs demandas de prazo desse nicho de mercado. Dentre essas metodologias, o Scrum à uma das mais aceitas e utilizadas, contribuindo na melhoria da gestÃo de projetos, na produtividade do time, na qualidade dos produtos e no aumento da probabilidade de sucesso dos projetos. Por outro lado, hà uma crescente adoÃÃo de metodologias de gestÃo da qualidade como o Lean Six Sigma por organizaÃÃes da Ãrea de Tecnologia da InformaÃÃo e ComunicaÃÃo (TIC) devido aos seus resultados comprovados na melhoria dos processos de desenvolvimento e da qualidade dos serviÃos e dos produtos desenvolvidos. Metodologias como o Scrum e o Lean Six Sigma possuem objetivos distintos, entretanto, elas podem contribuir juntas no desenvolvimento de software para dispositivos mÃveis. Na literatura existem trabalhos que propÃem a integraÃÃo de metodologias Ãgeis e de qualidade de software, entretanto, esses trabalhos possuem lacunas no que tange a possibilidade de reuso sistemÃtico das mesmas bem como a avaliaÃÃo do uso dessas metodologias integradas. Este trabalho propÃe entÃo uma evoluÃÃo de uma abordagem jà existente, denominada SLeSS, que integra o Scrum ao Lean Six Sigma e que foi utilizada na customizaÃÃo de software para celulares. Essa evoluÃÃo visa ampliar a abordagem tanto para o desenvolvimento de software alÃm da customizaÃÃo quanto para melhorar os mecanismos de integraÃÃo inicialmente propostos com um foco na avaliaÃÃo das prÃticas e princÃpios do Scrum a partir do uso de tÃcnicas do Lean Six Sigma. Para avaliar a nova versÃo, ela à aplicada em sete projetos reais de desenvolvimento e customizaÃÃo de software para dispositivos mÃveis e seus resultados sÃo tambÃm discutidos nesta dissertaÃÃo.