Purpose – Creativity and innovation have recently emerged as the latest focus of the popular business media, replacing established approaches, such as Lean Six Sigma (LSS). Some have gone so far as to suggest that LSS inhibits organizations from being creative and innovating. This paper aims...

Purpose – Lean and Six Sigma are the two most important continuous improvement (CI) methodologies for achieving operational and service excellence in any organization. The purpose of this paper is to explain how lean compares to the Six Sigma and outline the benefits for integrating them....

Purpose – Since Masaaki Imai coined the term Kaizen in the mid 1980s it has been regarded as a key element in the competitiveness of Japanese companies. However, even though Kaizen was defined by the author who created the term, writings by scholars and practitioners in the field exhibit a...

Purpose – Innovation is a key source of competitiveness in the knowledge economy, and continuous improvement (CI) is a key element of such corporate pursuit. The purpose of this paper is to explore links to prevalent shop floor conditions which support or prohibit the effective realisation of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the literature and provide an overview of the history, evolution and existing research on continuous improvement (CI). It reviews a large number of research papers in this field and presents the overview of various CI implementation practices...

Purpose – This paper aims to highlight that a define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC) project should be carried out keeping the broader business goal of achieving continuous improvement in mind and that a design of experiment (DOE) based improvement approach should be preferred...

Purpose – Identification of critical success factors (CSFs) for any continuous improvement initiative is important as it allows organisations to focus their efforts on these factors to ensure a success. The purpose of this paper is to present the CSFs for the effective implementation of Lean...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce a value improvement model (VIM) for repetitive processes applicable to any business where people and/or plant provide a service to support the overall business objective. Arguing competitive advantage can be realised through different...

Purpose With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the production shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), such as surgical masks, has become increasingly significant. It is vital to quickly provide high-quality, hygienic PPE during pandemic periods. This comprehensive case study aims...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is the development of a reference model contributing to the identification of the retail supply chain activities that can be improved by the implementation of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) initiatives, following DMAIC steps and using proposed tools, based on contemporary...