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     Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology


The Key Success Factors for Lean Manufacturing versus Six Sigma

Ibrahim Alhuraish, Christian Robledo and Abdessamad Kobi
LARIS, ISTIA, University of Angers, Angers, France
Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology  2016  2:169-182
http://dx.doi.org/10.19026/rjaset.12.2318  |  © The Author(s) 2016
Received: June ‎8, ‎2015  |  Accepted: August ‎5, ‎2015  |  Published: January 20, 2016

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate and identify the key success factors of implementing lean manufacturing and six sigma in separate ways. The study applies a quantitative approach and statistical analysis to determine the results collected from the French industry. Findings revealed that there exist statistically significant differences in the level of importance between the implementation of lean manufacturing and six sigma across the common success factors such as culture change, communication and involvement of employees, among others. On the other hand, there were similarities in the degrees of importance regarding the common success including top management commitment, skill and expertise and linking method to supplier, etc. The findings can assist an organization to be more careful with the success factors of each method, in addition to helping them in determining the appropriate method that enables exploration between lean manufacturing and six sigma based on the capacity of an organization to apply the success factors. Literature reviews regarding comparison of key success factors of lean manufacturing and six sigma had not been tested earlier, which have been considered in this study.

Keywords:

Key success factors, lean manufacturing, six sigma, quality tools, statistical test,


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Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

Open Access Policy

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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ISSN (Online):  2040-7467
ISSN (Print):   2040-7459
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