Development of a sustainable Lean Six Sigma framework in Healthcare Sector

The healthcare sector is promoting the use of process improvement approaches resulting in several successful improvement projects. However, evidence, based on literature, points out that in a significant number of cases, healthcare organisations have failed to sustain the deployment of process improvement tools for long-term continuous improvements. Lean Six Sigma, which incorporates the speed and impact of Lean, with the quality and variation control of Six Sigma, is considered to have a high impact. Nevertheless, to reap the full benefits of LSS, it is necessary to develop a systematic approach to sustain LSS in healthcare organisations. Organisations have been shown to approach change from only three ways: functional, operational and ad hoc, neglecting a holistic or systemic analysis. Hence, the literature has not provided a systemic approach to change and improvement, which also includes the assessment of readiness for change. Therefore the objectives are to carry out an extensive literature review and survey to identify the reasons for organisations failing to sustain Lean Six Sigma. A list of factors critical for successfully sustaining Lean Six Sigma are identified and analysed using the ISM methodology. With the view to support healthcare professionals in integrating Lean Six Sigma in their organisation, this research develops a new framework (SLSS) to shift focus away from short term and towards long-term improvement. Furthermore, using a semi structured interview approach experts validate the framework. The framework will allow professionals to pay more attention on strategically important factors when integrating Lean Six Sigma in their organisation. The major outcome of this research is that the relationship between CSFs is analysed providing a distinctive view on how to handle them. Common approaches have focused on other aspects of research and were content with having identified CSFs, which led to the misconception that all CSFs are equally important. Hence, this research provides a more sophisticated view on this topic. In addition, the SLSS framework was build to fill the gap between implementation-focused and organisational culture focused frameworks. It can be used in conjunction with the organisation's preferred implementation framework in order to guarantee that the strategic component is covered.