According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

House of Quality

Purpose



– The advent of recession at the beginning of twenty-first century forced many organizations worldwide to reduce cost and to be more responsive to customer demands. Lean Manufacturing (LM) has been widely perceived by industry as an answer to these requirements because LM reduces waste without additional requirements of resources. This led to a spurt in LM research across the globe mostly through empirical and exploratory studies which resulted in a plethora of LM definitions with divergent scopes, objectives, performance indicators, tools/techniques/methodologies, and concepts/elements. The purpose of this paper is to review LM literature and report these divergent definitions, scopes, objectives, and tools/techniques/methodologies. 




Design/methodology/approach



– This paper highlights various definitions by various researchers and practitioners. A total of 209 research papers have been reviewed for the research contribution, research methodology adopted, tools/techniques/methodologies used, type of industry, author profile, country of research, and year of publication. 




Findings



– There are plethora of LM definitions with divergent objectives and scope. Theory verification through empirical and exploratory studies has been the focus of research in LM. Automotive industry has been the focus of LM research but LM has also been adopted by other types of industries also. One of the critical implementation factors of LM is simultaneous adoption of leanness in supply chain. LM has become an integrated system composed of highly integrated elements and a wide variety of management practices. There is lack of standard LM implementation process/framework. 




Originality/value



– The paper reviews 209 research papers for their research contribution, research methodology, author profile, type of industry, and tools/techniques/methodology used. Various characteristics of LM definitions are also reviewed.

Lean manufacturing: literature review and research issues

Objectives
To explain the technical principles of and differences between commercially available iterative reconstruction (IR) algorithms for computed tomography (CT) in non-mathematical terms for radiologists and clinicians.

Iterative reconstruction techniques for computed tomography Part 1: technical principles.

Like quality management in general, Six Sigma has penetrated into most sectors of today's business world. Although Six Sigma originated in industry, it has inspired a considerable amount of academic literature. This paper reviews this literature describing the trends, sources, and findings. The paper also seeks to synthesize the literature, with an emphasis on establishing its relationship to quality management theory and topics for future research. In doing so, there is an attempt to answer the following fundamental questions. (i) What is Six Sigma? (ii) What are its impacts on operational performance? (iii) What roles can academics usefully play in relation to Six Sigma? Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Six Sigma Literature: A Review and Agenda for Future Research

While TQM is an organization-wide approach, aimed at improving the quality of products and services and mainly focused on continuous improvement, Lean Six Sigma is an approach focused on improving quality, reducing variation and eliminating waste in an organization. The concept of combining the principles and tools of Lean Enterprise and Six Sigma in a more synergistic manner has occurred in the literature over the last several years. The majority of TQM and Lean Six Sigma applications have been in private industry, focusing mostly on manufacturing applications. The literature has not provided cases of Lean Six Sigma programmes applied to local government. This paper presents some efforts of implementing TQM tools in local government and a case study of applying Lean and Six Sigma tools and principles to improving the quality and timeliness of providing local governmental services.

Implementation of TQM and lean Six Sigma tools in local government: a framework and a case study

Purpose – This paper aims to present the results of an initial research study conducted to identify the desired professional characteristics of an industrial engineer with an undergraduate degree and the emerging topic areas that should be incorporated into the curriculum to prepare industrial engineering (IE) graduates for the future workforce.Design/methodology/approach – A survey was administered to faculty and industry professionals across the USA to describe the desired characteristics and define the important emerging topic areas. The modified three‐round Delphi technique was applied to obtain consensus and ranking of the emerging topics.Findings – The research findings that identify the desired characteristics and the most important emerging topics to be incorporated into the reengineered curriculum discussed in this paper. Statistical analysis of the results indicates some differences in opinions expressed by persons in academic settings and those working in business and industry.Originality/value...

Enhancing the Undergraduate Industrial Engineering Curriculum: Defining Desired Characteristics and Emerging Topics.

In real life, data is messy and doesn't always fit into normal statistical distributions. This is especially true in service industries where the variables are, well, variable and directly related to and measured by the constantly changing needs of customers. As the breadth and depth of tools available has increased across the integrated Lean Six S

Lean Six Sigma in Service : Applications and Case Studies

Operational excellence is critical to throughput and patient flow in an emergency department. This case study applied the Lean Six Sigma DMAIC methodology to improve throughput as measured by reduc...

Applying Lean Six Sigma methods to reduce length of stay in a hospital's emergency department

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate how Lean Six Sigma (LSS) may help mitigate the impact of COVID-19 within health care environments The goals of this study were to understand the current knowledge of LSS and COVID-19 through a systematic review of the current literature, identify the gap in the current knowledge of LSS in COVID-19 mitigation within health care environments and define the principles of LSS, within organizational resilience that support a health care organization’s ability to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 Design/methodology/approach: A narrative literature review was conducted to identify relevant research A total of 21 subject matter experts (SMEs) meeting the inclusion criteria were approached through a guided interview process Content analysis was conducted to describe how LSS principles contribute to supporting health care organizations operating in the era of COVID-19 Findings: Study results report that personal safety is the primary subject, followed by supporting dimensions of process redesign, and telemedicine LSS topics that directly relate to COVID-19 are in four thematic areas: tools, applications, benefits and challenges Particular areas of application, techniques, challenges and benefits are identified and discussed that could be applied proactively and reactively, to organizational and supply chain resilience to recover from COVID-19 Research limitations/implications: There were a number of limitations to the generalizability of this work The sample size was small and purposeful, thus, external validity of the study results are not determined The SMEs in this study have not implemented the practices noted in the results at the time of the study, and knowledge of results is limited to the study aims Originality/value: This study of LSS principles and COVID-19 has implications for practitioners and offers specific guidance for areas of health care adoption of LSS techniques and tools that benefit patient safety, challenges for the user to be mindful of and potential benefits in resilience of operations in the era of COVID-19 © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited

Sandra Furterer

Papers

Implementation of TQM and lean Six Sigma tools in local government: a framework and a case study

Enhancing the Undergraduate Industrial Engineering Curriculum: Defining Desired Characteristics and Emerging Topics.

Lean Six Sigma in Service : Applications and Case Studies

Applying Lean Six Sigma methods to reduce length of stay in a hospital's emergency department

Lean Six Sigma as an organizational resilience mechanism in health care during the era of COVID-19