Purpose The objective of this research is to provide practitioners with inter-industry applicable rules and guidelines for the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) project definition phase. This research resulted in 13 inter-industry generic project definitions that are divided by four performance dimensions:...

Purpose: Although scholars have considered the success factors of process improvement (PI) projects, limited research has considered the factors that influence failure. The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of PI project failure by systematically reviewing the research on...

This paper presents a prescriptive account of diagnostic problem solving, or diagnosis, in quality and process control. This paper identifies a general strategy, named branch-and-prune, whose manifestations can be found in disciplines such as medical diagnosis, troubleshooting of devices, and...

Quality improvement is understood by Juran to be the systematic pursuit of improvement opportunities in production processes. Several methodologies are proposed in literature for quality improvement projects. Three of these methodologies – Taguchi's methods, the Shainin system and the Six...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a consistent and crystallized exposition of Six‐Sigma's methodology for improvement projects, which could serve as a basis for subsequent scientific research of the method. Design/methodology/approach – The paper shows that reformulation of...