A literature review on lean, Six Sigma and ISO 9001:2015 in manufacturing industry to improve process performance

During the past two decades, organisations are finding intensive competition and are striving hard to survive in the market. Present day, global challenges are making companies to find new techniques and methodologies to meet the market requirements with respect to quality, cost and timely delivery of products. In this paper, a literature review is made on lean manufacturing, Six Sigma methodology and ISO 9001: 2015 QMS. Based on literature review, a comparative study is made on lean implementation, Six Sigma methodology and ISO 9001: 2015 QMS by considering the dimensions such as objective; focus; management; organisation; resource requirement; training; framework/model and documentation and it is found that the gap exists between all the three techniques. Based on the gap data a framework will be developed which integrates all the three methodologies to fill the gap or meet the challenges or limitations of the above three model. This integrated model if effectively implemented with focus on customer requirements, improve employee empowerment creativity, and contractual obligations; contribute to bottom line by reducing variation and eliminating waste thus improving the process performance.