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The purpose of this paper is to share the experiences and perspectives of three practitioners from two continents on the subject of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) from both academic and industrial viewpoints. The authors of the paper have each been working on the topic of LSS over the past 15 years and have contributed over 150 journal and conference papers to the topics of lean and Six Sigma.

The approach is to synthesize the practical experiences and research conducted by three authorities on the topic of LSS. In addition, relevant secondary data have also been used in the sections where and when appropriate.

The authors initially present the history of LSS emphasizing the importance of integration of the two most effective process excellence methodologies over the past 30 years. The authors also report the current trends of LSS in organizations as well as the emerging future trends. They argue that LSS will continue to grow and evolve across the globe for several years.

The paper is intended to be equally useful to both academics and practitioners who are interested on the topic of LSS. From a pure practical standpoint, the paper provides an overview of the past, present and future trends of LSS as a powerful business strategy and problem-solving methodology for all industrial sectors, irrespective of their size and nature. The documentation of the history and recent developments in LSS should be useful to researchers in academia.

In authors’ best knowledge, there are no recent journal articles which cover all the three of these aspects; the past, the present and the future of LSS. This paper presents the above three aspects in a unique manner and addresses the gap between the current state and future directions of LSS.

This article presents a novel case study that analyzes the applicability of DoE in the curling sport in order to improve their own performance and the performance of its athletes. Specifically, this study analyzes the most important factors to increase accuracy and precision in the draw game with curlers' opinions. It was decided to use the “Last Stone Draw (LSD)’ as an appropriate play situation.

Specifically, this study analyzes most important factors to increase accuracy and precision in the draw game with curlers opinions from the German Curling association. Three research techniques were used in this study: case study, interviews and a well-designed experiment. The analysis through the use of DoE includes a measurement system analysis, an initial variance test between two players, a screening and a characterization experiment.

The results obtained from DoE suggest that the factors routine, stress, release, balance, and the previous play situation have a substantial impact on the score of the player's draw game. However, no factor has a statistically significant impact on the average distance to the center of the target. Moreover, the DoE analysis also concludes that the accuracy and precision of the player's performance is not affected equally by all analyzed factors, but they turn into highly significant when examining their relationship to the other factors.

The findings of this study can be beneficial to other sports events in improving the performance. Moreover, DoE has proved to be an invaluable tool for many people in the German Curling Association in understanding the factors which influence the curlers performance and also factors which do not affect the curlers performance.

This research attempts to contribute to the existing sports management literature by identifying a way in which DoE can be an effective tool in non-manufacturing settings for identification of most important factors which influence the curling performance.

This paper aims to present and summarise the arguments for and against the ISO 18404 standard and the perceived advantages and disadvantages of implementing it.

A qualitative interview approach was utilised by interviewing a panel of leading academics and practitioners familiar with Lean Six Sigma.

The results indicate that Lean Six Sigma professionals have conflicting opinions on ISO 18404. An overwhelming majority of the panel questioned the “quality” of the standard and whether it is “fit for purpose”, while others see the advantages of a common standard in helping continuous improvement deployment.

As the standard has not been widely adopted, there were limited examples on ISO 18404 discussion in the literature. Much of the current literature focuses on the theoretical application of the standard, with sparse practical examples providing case study deployment. Also, the interviews were short and at a high level. There is an opportunity for further study and analysis. It was difficult to find qualified interviewees who were familiar with the standard. A very real constraint when conducting research into ISO 18404 is to obtain a balanced view of the standard from those who have a vested interest in its continuation and evolution, or not.

The paper provides a resource for people to obtain insight into the value or non-value add of a standard in Lean Six Sigma and the appropriate details of such a standard. These results can form the basis of a case for the implementation of the standard for those organisations currently trying to decide whether to implement it or not.

The paper aims to investigate the pros and cons of having a standard for lean six sigma developed in 2015. The study follows up on a previous study by Antony et al. (2021) in more depth and aims to provide a more detailed investigation of various aspects of the standard.

A sequential mixed methodology was utilised by interviewing a panel of leading academics and practitioners familiar with lean six sigma followed by distributing a survey questionnaire to continuous improvement and operational excellence (OPEX) personnel.

The findings indicate that continuous improvement and OPEX professionals have conflicting views of International Standards Organisation (ISO) 18404. A majority of the participants of the qualitative study suggested, whilst supporting the requirement for a lean sigma standard, voiced concerns about the auditability of the standard and whether it is currently “fit for purpose” and proposed that it needs to be revised. Within the quantitative survey, 42% had never heard of the standard, and of the 58% who had heard of it, 90% had read it. Just 10% stated that they had or would apply the standard within their organisations. Just fewer than 50% felt that the standard was fit for purpose which suggests for further refinements of the standard in the future. Finally, 85% of respondents of the quantitative survey suggested for the revision of the standard whilst just 15% felt it should be removed.

Other than a previous study by Antony et al. (2021), implementation of ISO 18404 in organisations and its benefits as well as empirical study looking into the impact of the standard on corporate performance in the literature were limited. An opportunity to review lessons learnt from a case study on the ISO 18404 standard implementation within an organisation would further enhance the research.

The paper provides a valuable resource for organisations to obtain insight into a standard in lean six sigma and whether to implement it or not. Furthermore, the results can form the basis of a case for the future revision of the standard by consolidating and strengthening the findings from the first study with more detailed quantitative and qualitative study.

The purpose of this paper is to assess Lean Six Sigma to identify important advances over the last ten to 15 years and discuss emerging trends that suggest how the methodology needs to evolve. The goal is to aid those who want to use the method to improve performance as well as assist those developing improvement methodologies.

The use and development of Lean Six Sigma is reviewed including the origins of the method, the what, why and benefits of the method, how the approach is different, the integration of Lean and Six Sigma, implementation mistakes made, lessons learned and developments needed in the future.

It is found that organizations have many different improvement needs that require the objectives and methods contained in the lean and Six Sigma methodologies. It is also found that deployment and sustaining improvements are major issues that can be overcome by building a sustaining infrastructure and making improvement a business process. Critical issues include using Lean Six Sigma to generate cash in difficult economic times, development of data‐based process management systems and the use of working on improvement as a leadership development tool.

These findings suggest that improvement is most effective when approached in an holistic manner addressing improvement in all parts of the organization using a holistic improvement methodology such as Lean Six Sigma. Improvement must address the flow of information and materials thorough processes as well as the enhancement of value‐adding process steps that create the product for the customer. This leads naturally to making improvement a business process that is planned for, operated and reviewed as any other important business process is.

The roadmaps, guiding principles, and deployment pitfalls identified will be of value to those initiating and operating improvement processes in their organizations enabling them to rapidly create useful and sustainable improvements. The discussion of needed enhancements will be of value to those who are working to improve the effectiveness of the approach.

Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is a continuous improvement methodology used to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of processes. Although there are several articles published, only two have analyzed the literature from a bibliometrics perspective. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the LSS literature by bibliometrics, identifying its state of the art, scientific gaps and research trends.

Articles published up to 2016 in the database Scopus were investigated to identify the most significant articles, authors, journals, institutions and countries based on citation counting as well as the most frequent keywords and subject areas on LSS. Articles published in 2014, 2015 and 2016 were analyzed to point out scientific gaps and to identify eight main research trends on LSS.

The research trends are: “LSS implementation”, “Healthcare”, “LSS tools”, “Human factors”, “Expansion of results”, “SME”, “LSS combined with other methodologies” and “Education”. The research outcomes also point out the most significant articles, authors, journals, institutions and countries in LSS literature.

This research contributes to develop the state of the art of LSS and helps professionals as well as researchers to identify which issues new studies should address.

The performance of the literature is measured based on the number of citations and not on the number of published papers, and the bibliometric analysis covers the highest number of articles so far (319 articles). Besides, the identification of the main research trends on LSS is exclusively based on the most recent studies.

Literature reviews are a pervasive aspect in research. An ever mounting field such as Lean Six Sigma requires a perpetual touch on the subject to accentuate insights that can be researched about. The purpose of this paper is to address the published literatures in the field of Lean Six Sigma through multiple criterion for an enhanced understanding of the subject matter through summarizing its current trends, uncovering existing literature gaps and revealing opportunities for future research in the field.

The literature review on Lean Six Sigma field spans around 17 years that includes peer-reviewed journals from management, business, engineering, healthcare, manufacturing, military among the many disciplines. The study uses a content analysis approach in which several dimensions of the literature were analysed: purpose or focus of study, years of publication, journal name or publications, methodologies, theories used, country of study, industry sub-sectors, active authors in the field, critical success factors, barriers and challenges and the most contribution of Lean Six Sigma papers by universities.

Eleven important findings from the analysis were summarized among them; the field of Lean Six Sigma had begun to grow significantly since the new millennium particularly after the 2004-2007 or 2008 period; standalone concepts of Lean and Six Sigma are highly researched compared to the integrated concepts; large proportion of perspective, conceptual and descriptive based studies; lack of empirical validity on the fusion between Lean and Six Sigma; lack of theoretical based studies, etc.

The study is limited to 102 journals in commonly searched databases in the subject matter which produced 261 journal papers. This study seeks to broaden the summary of studies done under the keyword “Lean Six Sigma”.

The review analysis uses a content analysis approach in search of valuable gaps in existing research. The study found 261 papers from 102 journals that were published over the past seventeen years (2000-2016). This paper provides scholars, practitioners and managers with insights on the present trends and focus of Lean Six Sigma in addition to what else are lacking in the subject matter, which could pave the way for future research and practical endeavours.