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The purpose of this paper is to explore the voice of the customer, key performance indicators, critical to quality characteristics, critical success factors, and commonly used tools and techniques for deploying the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) strategy in Indian private hospitals, with special attention to the medical records.

The study utilizes the action research methodology to obtain a greater understanding of the use of LSS in the Indian healthcare sector. Multiple case studies were designed and successfully deployed to understand and ascertain challenges in LSS implementation. Five case studies were carried out in the Medical Records Departments (MRD) of four private hospitals in India.

Patients perceive that waiting in queue harms their health, which can be rectified by addressing the cycle time of the system. The research also found that effective leadership, availability of data, involvement of cross-functional team and effective communication are critical to the success of LSS projects. In addition, control charts, cause and effect diagram, 5S, gemba, two-sample t-test, standardization, waste analysis and value stream mapping are some of the common tools used to improve healthcare systems.

The research was restricted to studying the impact of LSS on the workflow and resource consumption of the MRD in Indian allopathic hospitals only. The validity of the results can be improved by including more hospitals and more case studies from the healthcare sector in different countries.

The findings will enable researchers, academicians and practitioners to incorporate the results of the study in LSS implementation within the healthcare system to increase the likelihood of successful deployment. This will provide greater stimulus across other departments in the hospital sector for wider and broader application of LSS for creating and sustaining process improvements.

The aim of the article is to ascertain the challenges, lessons learned and managerial implications in the deployment of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) competitiveness to micro, small and medium Enterprises (MSME) in India and to establish doctrines to strengthen the initiatives of the government.

The research adopts the Action Research methodology to develop a case study, which is carried out in the printing industry in a Tier III city using the LSS DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control) approach. It utilizes LSS tools to deploy the strategy and to unearth the challenges and success factors in improving the printing process of a specific batch of a product.

The root cause for the critical to quality (CTQ) characteristic, turn-around-time (TAT) is determined and the solutions are deployed through the scientifically proven data-based approach. As a result of this study, the TAT reduced from an average of 1541.2–1303.36 min, which in turn, improved the sigma level from 0.55 to 2.96, a noteworthy triumph for this MSME. The company realizes an annual savings of USD 12,000 per year due to the success of this project. Top Management Leadership, Data-Based Validation, Technical Know-how and Industrial Engineering Knowledge Base are identified as critical success factors (CSFs), while profitability and on-time delivery are the key performance indicators (KPIs) for the MSME. Eventually, the lessons learned and implications indicate that LSS competitiveness can be treated as quality management standards (QMS) and quality tools and techniques (QTT) to ensure competitive advantage, sustainable green practices and growth.

Even though the findings and recommendations of this research are based on a single case study, it is worth noting that the case study is executed in a Tier III city along with novice users of LSS tools and techniques. This indicates the applicability of LSS in MSME and thus, the modality adopted can be further refined to suit the socio-cultural aspects of India.

This article illustrates the deployment of LSS from the perspective of novice users, to assist MSME and policymakers to reinforce competitiveness through LSS. Moreover, the government can initiate a scheme in line with LSS competitiveness to complement the existing schemes based on the findings of the case study.

The purpose of this paper is to compare various methods of estimation of P(X<Y) based on Type-II censored data, where X and Y represent a quality characteristic of interest for two groups.

This paper assumes that both X and Y are independently distributed generalized half logistic random variables. The maximum likelihood estimator and the uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimator of R are obtained based on Type-II censored data. An exact 95 percent maximum likelihood estimate-based confidence interval for R is also provided. Next, various Bayesian point and interval estimators are obtained using both the subjective and non-informative priors. A real life data set is analyzed for illustration.

The performance of various point and interval estimators is judged through a detailed simulation study. The finite sample properties of the estimators are found to be satisfactory. It is observed that the posterior mean marginally outperform other estimators with respect to the mean squared error even under the non-informative prior.

The proposed methodology can be used for comparing two groups with respect to a suitable quality characteristic of interest. It can also be applied for estimation of the stress-strength reliability, which is of particular interest to the reliability engineers.

Lean Six Sigma (LSS) has been accepted globally across the service sector as a management strategy for achieving process excellence. In the past one decade, the application and success of LSS in services is remarkable across Information Technology (IT) organisations. However academic research has seldom derived implications from this practitioner’s science of improving processes. The purpose of this paper is to feature the application of LSS in the system maintenance department of a manufacturing firm.

The research reported in this paper is based on a case study carried out in system maintenance department using the Six Sigma Define-Measure-Analyse-Improve-Control (DMAIC) approach and its application in reducing complaint resolution time.

The LSS article presented here highlights a real-world case study of how LSS DMAIC methodology help reduce the complaint resolution time from 12.5 to 8.5 h (~30 per cent improvement) and the corresponding standard deviation from 28 to 17.4 days. This study also has resulted in reducing the turn-around-time of all the core processes in the organisation. The indirect financial savings estimated as a result of this overall impact was around INR2.5m.

The research was restricted to studying the impact of LSS in one organisation. The validity of the results can be improved by including more organisations and more case studies from the IT support services.

This could serve as a resource for both practitioners to derive useful implications and to academicians as it contributes to the LSS body of knowledge towards theory testing.

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the development of environment friendly, low cost natural fibre composites by robust engineering approach. More specifically, the prime objective of the study is to optimise the composition of natural fibre reinforced polymer nanocomposites using a robust statistical approach.

In this research, the material is prepared using multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT), Cantala fibres and Epoxy Resin in accordance with the ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) standards. Further, the composition is prepared and optimised using the mixture-design approach for the flexural strength of the material.

The results of the study indicate that MWCNT plays a vital role in increasing the flexural strength of the composite. Moreover, it is observed that interactions between second order and third order parameters in the composition are statistically significant. This leads to proposing a special cubic model for the novel composite material with residual analysis. Moreover, the methodology assists in optimising the mixture component values to maximise the flexural strength of the novel composite material.

This article attempts to include both MWCNT and Cantala fibres to develop a novel composite material. In addition, it employs the mixture-design technique to optimise the composition and predict the model of the study in a step-by-step manner, which will act as a guideline for academicians and practitioners to optimise the material composition with specific reference to natural fibre reinforced nanocomposites.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the fundamental barriers/challenges, benefits, commonly used tools and techniques, organisational infrastructure and impact on organisational performance in three Indian manufacturing companies.

A multi-case study analysis using the exploratory case study research was adopted by the authors to obtain a deeper insight into the Six Sigma implementation within three distinctive manufacturing organisations in India. Interviews were conducted with relevant staff (Six Sigma Deployment Champions, Six Sigma Master Black Belts and Six Sigma Black Belts) in all three companies.

Some of the barriers in implementing and sustaining Six Sigma identified from the case studies include: lack of accuracy of data generated from the processes, lack of understanding of the benefits of Six Sigma in the early stages of its adoption, high-attrition rate of Six Sigma Black Belts and so on. The benefits of Six Sigma included improvement of process yield, reduction of rework and rejection, reduction of raw material inventory, improved on-time delivery, on-time availability of material for production and so on. Supplier-input-process-output-customer, cause and effect diagram, process mapping, hypothesis tests (two sample test, F-test, etc.), control charts (X-bar-R chart, individual chart, etc.), simple graphical tools such as histograms, box plots and dot plots were the most commonly used tools of Six Sigma across the companies that participated for this research. All three companies have reported that Six Sigma had a positive impact on organisational performance and moreover the study also revealed that Six Sigma had positive impact on customer satisfaction, return-on-investment, productivity and product quality.

The study was carried out in three Indian companies and therefore the findings cannot be generalised. The authors are extending the study to three more companies and the findings will be reported in the forthcoming months.

The findings of the study provide a good foundation to understand the fundamental barriers, benefits, commonly used tools and whether Six Sigma is having any impact on business performance in the Indian context. Very few empirical studies have been carried out on Six Sigma implementation in the Indian manufacturing companies and this research sets an agenda for a number of studies to follow on in the forthcoming years.

In authors’ opinion, this is possibly one of the first multi-case empirical studies on Six Sigma implementation in the Indian manufacturing companies. The results of the study can be used to benchmark with similar studies in other countries to understand the good and bad management practices of Six Sigma implementation.

Six Sigma as a powerful business strategy has been around for almost a decade and has grown exponentially in healthcare industry during the past five years. During the last five years or so, many leading healthcare institutions have implemented Lean and Six Sigma methodologies with remarkable results in terms of reducing ER cycle time, increasing timely completion of medical records, increasing bed availability, improving patient flow, enhancing patient safety, increasing capacity of the theatres, reducing medication errors and so on and so forth. The purpose of this paper is to reduce patient waiting time in a pathology department of a super-specialty hospital attached to a manufacturing company. The average waiting time for patients was estimated to be around 24 minutes with a standard deviation of 17.5 minutes. This was not acceptable in the eyes of patients, and hence, it was highly desirable to understand the reasons for excessive waiting times as well as the root causes of variation in the waiting times.

The Six Sigma DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control) methodology was adopted for reducing the average waiting time and variation in waiting times.

During the execution of this case study, a number of non-value added activities were identified within the process and actions were initiated to systematically eliminate different forms of waste using the principles of Lean thinking. Cause-and-effect analysis was carried out to identify the potential causes for unacceptable waiting times and data were collected to validate these causes. The tools such as hypothesis test, box plot, dot plot etc. were used to analyse the data through Minitab statistical software and conclusions were made. As a result of this project, the average waiting time reduced from 24 minutes to 11 minutes (i.e. over 50 per cent reduction), the standard deviation reduced from 17.5 minutes to 10.04 minutes(over 40 per cent reduction).

This paper highlights the use of data driven and scientific problem solving methodology such as Six Sigma with the involvement of hospital staff members like nurses, clinicians and technicians. The results of the case study have provided greater stimulus among the senior management team for deploying the use of DMAIC methodology for tackling process and patient care related problems in the hospital.

The purpose of this article is to illustrate how the Six Sigma methodology was applied to a small-scale foundry industry to reduce the rejections and rework in one of its processes.

The research reported in this paper is based on a case study carried out in an industry using the Six Sigma Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC) approach and its application in improving the leaf spring manufacturing process of a foundry shop.

The root causes for the problem of rejection and rework were identified through data-based analysis at different stages in the project. The process parameters were optimized and measures for sustainability of the results were incorporated in the process. As a result of this study, the overall rejection was reduced from 48.33 to 0.79 per cent, which was a remarkable achievement for this small-scale industry. This was leading to improvement in on-time delivery to the customer. The finance department of the company estimated the annualized savings due to the reduction in rejection and was to the tune of USD8,000 per year.

The paper is based on a single case study executed in a company, and hence, there is limitation in generalizing the specific results from the study. However, the approach adopted and the learning from this study can be generalized.

This article illustrates the step-by-step application of Six Sigma DMAIC methodology in a small-scale foundry industry to solve an age-old problem in the organization. Thus, this article will be helpful for those professionals who are interested in implementing Six Sigma to such industries.

The purpose of this paper is to apply Six Sigma methodology, a systematic and structured approach for quality improvement in wind energy sector. This paper discusses the development of sustainable wind farm roads for an organization engaged in manufacturing, installation and servicing of windmills in India.

This paper illustrates the Six Sigma DMAIC approach and its application for development of sustainable wind farm roads.

The systematic and data driven approach of Six Sigma methodology identified many root causes for road damages and solutions were implemented to ensure sustainable wind farm roads.

Six Sigma has been successfully implemented world over in different business processes ranging from manufacturing to service and health care. However its application is very uncommon in areas like road construction. This article demonstrates the applicability of Six Sigma methodology in uncommon areas.

The purpose of this paper is to capture the status of implementation of Six Sigma in various manufacturing industries and also examine the success of the Six Sigma by using different performance indicators.

The methodology of critical review involves the selection and classification of 112 research articles on the implementation of Six Sigma in different manufacturing industries. The selected articles are categorized by the following: articles distribution based on the year of publication, publication database, various journals, contribution of authors, continent, scale of industry, implemented approaches, focused industry, tools and techniques used in phases of Six Sigma methodology, and performance indicators used in Six Sigma implementation. Then after, future scopes of research opportunities are derived based on significant findings.

The literature revealed that: Very few work was undertaken on the implementation of Six Sigma in various manufacturing industries like ceramic, paper, gems and jewelry, cement, furniture, stone, fertilizer, forging, paper and surface treatment industries. Most of the researchers have considered very few performance indicators to identify the improvement after Six Sigma implementation. But, there is no clue regarding overall improvement in different perspectives after the implementation of Six Sigma. The financial indicators, personnel indicators, process indicators and customer indicators are useful to measure the overall improvement after the implementation of Six Sigma in the manufacturing sector.

The study was carried out on the implementation of Six Sigma methodology in various manufacturing industries, and various performance indicators were identified while implementing the Six Sigma methodology. Case studies pertaining to service industries were not covered here.

Very little research has been carried out to measure the overall success of implementing Six Sigma methodology in manufacturing industries. This paper will provide value to students, researchers and practitioners of Six Sigma by providing insight into the implementation of Six Sigma in manufacturing industries.