A systematic literature review on Sustainable Lean Six Sigma: Current status and future research directions

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to determine the current status of Sustainable Lean Six Sigma (SLSS) practices execution in the industries by identifying the research gaps and also methodologies that are applied by different researchers and practitioners.

Design/methodology/approach

To find the current status of SLSS practices all over world, the literature review of the articles available through SCOPUS data base is given in different categories such as a country-wise and year-wise publication of the articles, journal-wise publication of articles, case study implementation focus in industry and data analysis techniques used by the researchers.

Findings

The different methodologies applied by the researchers and practitioners have been explained and the gaps for further research are identified. The extensive review of articles of last 18 years revealed that there are various opportunities such as quantitative study, framework modeling on the SLSS, and implementation of developed models in different industries, etc. which are required to be explored.

Originality/value

In the present study, a review of 129 articles for the time span of January 2000 to February 2018 is considered. The SCOPUS database was used for selecting the articles for review. A total of 129 articles were considered for the literature review, and the case study implementation in different industries with the focused areas such as cost reduction, defect reduction, economic, environmental and social aspects was explained.

Citation

Parmar, P.S. and Desai, T.N. (2019), "A systematic literature review on Sustainable Lean Six Sigma: Current status and future research directions", International Journal of Lean Six Sigma, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 429-461. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLSS-08-2018-0092