Lean Six Sigma Journey in a UK Higher Education Institute: Challenges, Projects, and Key Lessons Learned

Lean Six Sigma is a powerful methodology for achieving process efficiency and effectiveness resulting in enhanced customer satisfaction and improved bottom line results. Although a number of manufacturing and service organizations are utilizing the power of this integrated methodology, Higher Education Institutions have been slow to introduce and develop this process excellence methodology. The purpose of the paper is to critically evaluate Lean Six Sigma as a powerful business improvement methodology for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of Higher Education Institutions. The paper will explore the fundamental challenges and critical success factors encountered with the introduction and development of Lean Six Sigma in administration at a Higher Education Institution based in Scotland. The paper also illustrates examples of the type of projects completed by the staff members at the institute as part of the Lean Six Sigma journey. The final part of the paper reveals some of the key lessons learned from the projects as well as the future directions of the journey. This paper makes an attempt to remove the myth that Lean Six Sigma is confined to manufacturing. It also demonstrates through relevant existing literature and authors\u27 experiences that Lean Six Sigma is equally applicable to public sector organizations and, in particular, Higher Education Institutions. Although Lean has been adopted by a few Higher Education Institutions in the UK and abroad, very few Higher Education Institutions have adopted the integrated Lean Six Sigma approach for waste reduction and variability reduction, which leads to superior performance and enhanced student satisfaction

A Continuous Improvement Implementation Framework for Manufacturing Companies: a Delphi Study-Based Approach for Development and Validation

Purpose – Due to the absence of industry and region-specific implementation guides, change efforts, in particular Continuous Improvement implementations, continue to report high failure rates. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to present a finalised implementation framework specifically tailored for manufacturing companies. Design/methodology/approach – A conceptual framework derived from the existing literature is validated, through a Delphi study, by an expert panel to review its content and suitability for a practical application. Findings – This paper proposes a finalised framework tailored to the practical needs of users. The results of the Delphi approach offer a phased implementation framework that provides an overview of the implementation process of Continuous Improvement initiatives and the key activities involved. The framework is suitable for use by both business leaders and Continuous Improvement practitioners with varying degrees of previous implementation experience. Research limitations/implications – The research was carried out in the UK and is specifically focused on the manufacturing industry. It is therefore not clear the applicability of the framework presented to other regions and industries. The framework, although validated through several phases of research, still requires practical application and testing. Originality/value – Business leaders and Continuous Improvement practitioners will benefit from having the necessary content presented in a manner that will promote its practical application. It has also been demonstrated that the framework is robust in its content, incorporating the literature findings as well as the experience of an expert panel encompassing 20 people

Design of an Automatic Traffic Control System with Real Time Vehicle Density Analysis

Growth in developing countries forcefully leads their roads becoming increasingly congested thus bringing traffic to a standstill. There are two major measures that can address this issue viz. manual and automatic approaches. Because of its inefficiency, manual approach is not considered under the preview of this study and the automatic approach, which is the focus of this study, can further be classified into two viz. timer based and density based approaches. Timer based approaches are primarily static in nature and hence cannot consider real time requirements. Incorporating Density analysis on to the problem under preview adds dynamism to the solution and in the proposed study, traffic signals are controlled by considering real time density of vehicles on each roads. After capturing real time images and performing appropriate preprocessing, density of vehicles are measured using Canny Edge detection approach; which is used as a parameter for later decision making. Considering density parameters alone may lead to starvation to certain roads and here in the proposed study, authors consider a weight factor to propose a better solution. A prototype was developed using Arduino mega 2560 board, Webcams and Airplane 9g Mini Servo - SG-90 and led lights and it was observed that the efficacy of the proposed system is higher while comparing it to other prevailing methods

Industry 4.0 and Lean Six Sigma Integration in Manufacturing: A Literature Review, an Integrated Framework and Proposed Research Perspectives

This paper explores the literature on lean management (LM), Six Sigma (SS), Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and their relationship. A systematic literature review (SLR) combined with bibliometric analysis was conducted to identify, select and evaluate articles and was supported by content analysis to classify papers into group discussed clusters. A total of 134 articles were retrieved from relevant databases and publisher engines between 2011 and June 2022. The analysis of these articles enabled us to identify the impact of Industry 4.0 technologies on Lean Six Sigma; the relationship between LM, SS and Industry 4.0 and the implications of their combination on operational excellence. The results show that while a majority of researchers consider Industry 4.0 to be a driver of LSS and a prerequisite for helping companies access the data and analytics needed, others find them to be complementary and synergistic. Similarly, various authors support the idea that LSS could be a facilitator of Industry 4.0. This study provides an overview of the main research streams in this field and its shortcomings and presents an LSS4.0 framework integrating lean six sigma and Industry 4 which will be of great value to academics and practitioners working in this area

Cancer burden and alarm signals: a community based study from Kerala, India

Background: Cancer is emerging as a major public health concern in many countries including India. Kerala state has the highest burden of cancer in the country. Objective of this study was to estimate the prevalence of diagnosed cancers, warning signs and selected risk factors of cancer in Kadapra Panchayath of Pathanamthitta district, Kerala.Methods: A total of 16,391 population was covered by door to door survey using a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire collected information on the sociodemographic variables of the residents, source of water supply, warning signs of cancer and details of diagnosed cancer cases.Results: The mean age of the population was 40.9+21 years. The prevalence of diagnosed cases of cancer in our study population was 776/100,000 population. Breast cancer was the most common cancer (43.5%) identified in the population. The prevalence of any warning sign among the study population was 220/100,000 population. Breast lump was the common warning sign identified. Increasing age and female gender were the factors found to be significantly associated with cancer.Conclusions: As prevalence of cancer was found to be high in this population, an active community based screening along with teaching self-breast examination to the women in the community are required. Improving community awareness could help in early diagnosis, treatment and prevention. Soil and water testing for carcinogens is recommended

Theorizing the principles of sustainable production in the context of circular economy and industry 4.0

The concept of Sustainable Production is evolving with changes triggered by the emergence of new economic and industrial models such as Circular Economy and Industry 4.0. However, most studies that currently link these concepts are based on the principles of Sustainable Production defined 20 years ago. Therefore, the primary aim of this study is to redefine the principles that should govern Sustainable Production operations in the tran- sition towards a Circular Economy and smart industry models. To this end, an initial proposal of 11 principles was shared with 11 world-class experts (academics and practitioners) and a consensus proposal was sought through a Delphi Panel. Ten principles emerged from this study, which were evaluated by experts according to criteria of significance, parsimony, semantic consistency and empirical adequacy. Additionally, to study the rela- tionships between the ten principles, the Interpretative Structural Model (ISM) technique was applied. The ISM technique identified which principles are independent of or dependent on each other and established relation- ships between the principles. The findings suggest that Principle 5 (“Prioritize employees' well-being”), Principle 6 (“Enhance management commitment to sustainability”), Principle 9 (“Measure and optimize sustainable pro- cesses”) and Principle 10 (“Boost the use of sustainable technologies”) help to establish an ideal context to enhance the development of the rest of the principles that characterize Sustainable Production. The presentation of the ten principles opens new possibilities for researchers while helping managers to better understand sustainability in terms of production and, therefore contribute to achieving SDG 12

Case study in six sigma methadology : manufacturing quality improvement and guidence for managers

This article discusses the successful implementation of Six Sigma methodology in a high precision and critical process in the manufacture of automotive products. The Six Sigma define–measure–analyse–improve–control approach resulted in a reduction of tolerance-related problems and improved the first pass yield from 85% to 99.4%. Data were collected on all possible causes and regression analysis, hypothesis testing, Taguchi methods, classification and regression tree, etc. were used to analyse the data and draw conclusions. Implementation of Six Sigma methodology had a significant financial impact on the profitability of the company. An approximate saving of US$70,000 per annum was reported, which is in addition to the customer-facing benefits of improved quality on returns and sales. The project also had the benefit of allowing the company to learn useful messages that will guide future Six Sigma activities

Internet-based Framework to Support Integration of Customer in the Design of Customizable Products

A necessary element to design and produce customer-centric products is the integration of customers in the design process. Challenges faced during customer integration into the design process include generating models of the customized product, performing analysis of these to determine feasibility, and optimizing to increase the performance. These tasks have to be performed relatively quickly, if not in real time, to provide feedback to the customer. The focus of this article is to present a framework that utilizes CAD, finite element analysis (FEA), and optimization to integrate the customer into the design process via the Internet for delivering user customized products. The design analysis, evaluation, and optimization need to be automated and enhanced to enable operation over the Internet. A product family CAD/FEA template has been developed to perform analysis, along with a general formulation to optimize the customized product. The CAD/FEA template generalizes the geometry building and analysis of each configuration developed using a product platform approach. The proposed setup is demonstrated through the use of a bicycle frame family. In this study, the focus is on the application of optimization and FEA to facilitate the design of customer-centric products.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Theorizing the principles of sustainable production in the context of Circular Economy and Industry 4.0

The concept of Sustainable Production is evolving with changes triggered by the emergence of new economic and industrial models such as Circular Economy and Industry 4.0. However, most studies that currently link these concepts are based on the principles of Sustainable Production defined 20 years ago. Therefore, the primary aim of this study is to redefine the principles that should govern Sustainable Production operations in the tran-sition towards a Circular Economy and smart industry models. To this end, an initial proposal of 11 principles was shared with 11 world-class experts (academics and practitioners) and a consensus proposal was sought through a Delphi Panel. Ten principles emerged from this study, which were evaluated by experts according to criteria of significance, parsimony, semantic consistency and empirical adequacy. Additionally, to study the rela-tionships between the ten principles, the Interpretative Structural Model (ISM) technique was applied. The ISM technique identified which principles are independent of or dependent on each other and established relation-ships between the principles. The findings suggest that Principle 5 ("Prioritize employees' well-being"), Principle 6 ("Enhance management commitment to sustainability"), Principle 9 ("Measure and optimize sustainable pro-cesses") and Principle 10 ("Boost the use of sustainable technologies") help to establish an ideal context to enhance the development of the rest of the principles that characterize Sustainable Production. The presentation of the ten principles opens new possibilities for researchers while helping managers to better understand sustainability in terms of production and, therefore contribute to achieving SDG 12