Integratying Lean and Six Sigma for achieving and sustaining operational and service excellence

Enterprises in this first decade of the 21st century are perceived to be needed to excel on two fronts: strong in operational/service excellence and simultaneously in organic growth. Lean Six Sigma, an integrated approach of Lean and Six Sigma methodologies, has been proven to be a powerful process improvement strategy to meet these goals. In today’s high technology, quality and cost driven, competition-oriented business world, Lean and Six Sigma methodologies play an eminent role in enhancing business profitability, customer satisfaction, process capability and productivity. Although the original goal of Lean Six Sigma was to focus on manufacturing process, today the sales, marketing, purchasing, customer order, banking, software, insurance, financial and health care processing functions have also embarked on Lean Six Sigma initiative for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of core and supportive processes. Research has clearly indicated that the applications of these two powerful process improvement methodologies will continue to grow exponentially in various sectors such as healthcare, finance and even small and medium sized enterprises.