Development of Lean Six Sigma training module: evidence from an emerging economy

Purpose: Nowadays, firms are keen on improving the quality culture in the organizations. The proven success of Lean and Six Sigma has given rise to the synergetic Lean Six Sigma (LSS) approach that has been catching fire in the past one decade. However, there exists a gap between the understanding and implementation of LSS in the organizations, especially in the emerging economies. Taking this as a valuable opportunity, the purpose of this paper is to present a development of LSS training module. Design/methodology/approach: This study starts with a literature review of LSS to reinforce the understanding of the research subject in scope of manufacturing sector. Then, an online questionnaire was designed and used to collect responses from 181 companies located in the Indian sub-continent. Subsequently, the results obtained from the survey were analyzed using COARSE approach. Findings: This study reveals two key findings and associated contributions. First, it was found that the overall awareness of LSS within the responded manufacturing firms is about 70.4 percent. Second, there is no single standard training module that exists in any of the sampled firms to cater to their quality programs. Hence, in order to improve the LSS awareness which could subsequently help managers as a resource for creating an efficient workplace, this paper presents a structured LSS training framework. Research limitations/implications: Although this paper presents the importance of LSS and associated awareness level among the responded firms, more empirical evidence is required to generalize the model findings. Second, this study is scoped to firms that work out of the Indian sub-continent, and this provides a future opportunity to expand the scope of this research toward a global study for a comparison between emerging and developed economies. Third, this study is limited to manufacturing firms and hence paves an opportunity to research on a similar theme in services context as well. Practical implications: Before embarking on an LSS journey, an organization can use the LSS training module proposed in this study to assess the employee awareness on LSS. Furthermore, organizations that already have a mature LSS practice can incorporate the LSS training module for periodic evaluation of the employees for effective change management. Originality/value: The training module presented in this paper is the original contribution by the authors. This is no association to any single identifiable organization or associated funding. The direct practical implication of its application in real time is the value that managers could derive from the proposed LSS training framework.