Lean six sigma - critical success factors for implementation in small and medium enterprises

  Vivek Viswanath,  Ramkumar P N,  Dr Satish K P

Small and Medium sector are the real backbone of the manufacturing sector of any country. This work is basically aimed at finding the factors influencing the implementation of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) in small and medium sector organizations within Kerala. The main beneficiaries of this work would be the manufacturing SMEs (small medium enterprises) sector in Kerala. In the initial part a detailed literature review was conducted to identify the factors that contribute to the successful implementation of LSS in SME sector. From this analysis 31 factors were identified and a structured questionnaire was prepared to test each of those variables. The survey was conducted mainly in the districts of Palakkad and Thrissur. The survey consisted of 142 organizations of which 80% belonged to small scale sector and around 20% belonged to medium scale sector. The data collected was analyzed using SPSS (statistical package for social sciences) software. Exploratory factor analysis was used as a tool to arrange the question in the questionnaire into required heading, thereby 6 main topics were extracted and the correlation between each of those factors were identified using SPSS software. The result obtained showed the lack of awareness about about the concept of LSS. As a result the implementation of LSS is almost non-existent. In such a circumstance this study will throw light upon the fundamentals which need to be strengthened so that this concept is applicable within the SME sector, thereby improving the overall quality of manufacturing industries within Kerala.

Keywords- Lean six sigma, SMEs, Exploratory factor analysis, SPSS

Unique Identification Number - IJEDR1603085
Page Number(s) - 520-523
Pubished in - Volume 4 | Issue 3 | August 2016
DOI (Digital Object Identifier) -   
Publisher - IJEDR (ISSN - 2321-9939)

  Vivek Viswanath,  Ramkumar P N,  Dr Satish K P,   "Lean six sigma - critical success factors for implementation in small and medium enterprises ", International Journal of Engineering Development and Research (IJEDR), ISSN:2321-9939, Volume.4, Issue 3, pp.520-523, August 2016, Available at :http://www.ijedr.org/papers/IJEDR1603085.pdf