Investigations on Lean Six Sigma Deployment Framework with a focus on Indiam 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. Moreover, 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. Evidences strongly indicate that the Indian economy has grown enormously post-economic reforms in 1991. Due to this, Indian industries have been thriving with many opportunities and reported worthy growth in various industrial sectors like Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Software and Information Technology, Space, Automobile, Telecom, Banking & Financial Services, Retail industry, etc. The Indian small and medium enterprise (SME) sector has played a crucial role in this economic growth, contributing significantly to large employment generation, exports, and being a part of the supply chain to large enterprises. Despite this, SMEs still need to catch up and provide an optimised level of quality products. SMEs are found to be poor in adopting techno-managerial solutions, such as Lean Six Sigma, because of lack of (i) framework, (ii) awareness, (iii) financial constraints, (iv) trained employees, (v) innovation, (vi) in the adoption of new technology, and fear of failure, etc. Hence, there is an urgent need for further investigations on the deployment aspects of Lean Six Sigma, specifically focused on Indian SMEs. To accomplish this requirement, the present research work has been undertaken. This research primarily aims to develop a Lean Six Sigma framework that assists Indian SMEs in deploying Lean Six Sigma. The present investigation employed qualitative and quantitative approaches. In this respect, meaningful insights about Lean Six Sigma were collected through primary and secondary sources of information, i.e., from practitioners and Lean Six Sigma consultants and examining the literature, respectively. Further, the developed framework has been deployed at one Indian SME as a validation attempt. Initially, a comprehensive literature review in two parts was carried out. In the first part, a critical review focused on understanding the facets of Lean Six Sigma broadly from a global perspective. The second part examined the subject matter associated with implementing Lean Six Sigma, specifically in the Indian context. The elements reviewed included research methods, frameworks, factors, performance metrics, success stories, industry sectors, etc. These findings were extended further to develop a survey questionnaire and to finalise the decisive factors for successful Lean Six Sigma implementation for further research. A survey of industry practitioners was conducted to assess the present status and allied issues of Lean Six Sigma, including benefits achieved and the reason for non-adoption. The survey results revealed the infancy stage of Lean Six Sigma implementation, particularly in SMEs. Further, most industry respondents were satisfied with current practices and unaware of Lean Six Sigma. At the same time, the industry respondents who successfully deployed Lean Six Sigma were highly satisfied and strongly advocated implementing it in other industries. It also emerged as a matter of fact that the Lean Six Sigma consultants brought awareness and assisted with Lean Six Sigma implementation. Henceforth, the next part of the research attempts to dwell on the rich experience of the Lean Six Sigma consultant to establish the relationship among the factors and to rank them in order of importance. Based on the literature review and expert feedback, 16 decisive Lean Six Sigma factors were identified. The Lean Six Sigma consultants established the contextual relationship among the decisive factors, which were analysed using the Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) approach. A structured hierarchical model was built, and decisive factors were categorised. The study's outcome highlighted the five most important decisive factors that need careful attention as they are responsible for the success or failure of Lean Six Sigma deployment. A conceptual Lean Six Sigma framework with a four-phase, eight-step approach has been proposed, along with a roadmap of deployment incorporating the research findings derived earlier. Finally, the developed conceptual framework has been deployed at manufacturing SMEs as an action research-based case study. The developed framework has been deployed in a phased manner, and results prove that the Lean Six Sigma deployment significantly helps to attain broad yet worthy improvements. In summary, the present research work has contributed a step forward in better comprehending Lean Six Sigma in the Indian context. In addition, a novel Lean Six Sigma deployment framework has been conceptualised and validated, focusing on Indian SMEs.