Very interesting question and valid in today's context; 'Green-Lean-Six Sigma' approach may help in improving productivity in long run.

thank you sir for your valuable comments but one paper i have read (Jiju Antony, Maneesh Kumar, Christian N. Madu, "Six sigma in small- and medium-sized UK manufacturing enterprises: Some empirical observations", International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, Vol. 22 Iss: 8 pp. 860 – 874, 2005) that reveal reasons for not implementing six sixma in SMEs and another reasons that majority of the firms were discouraged to implement Six Sigma due to lack of knowledge of the system to start the initiative.

I wanted to add my thought on this. The question you have raised is important, but has an assumption behind it. What is the current level of asset/ machinery utilization in terms of time. How much scope is there to reduce the downtime, by making sure about maintenance. Similarly what is the current level of quality defects because of lack of maintenance in SMEs? Subsequent questions will be 1. if the asset utilization (in terms of time) is high, what is the scope of maintenance. Or redundancy needs to be built in by having more assets. Secondly if  the asset utilization it self is low, then there is enough time for maintenance and it is not a constraint.

With respect to quality, also, it can be thought like that. If the quality is bad, is it due to lack of maintenance? So in essence there is a need to identify if it is the acetual problem and therefore it needs some productivity improvement through maintenance. 

There is one more dimension to the problem, SME vrs large organizations. The difference with respect to production and maintenance process must be out lined or understood, to isolate scale specific factors.

dear brajaballav sir thanks for your hypothetical view about maintenance. yes large vs SME may be disriminant to identified real obstacle in performance improvement.

What Antony et al, 2005 concluded is true for all quality management systems.

dear zafar sir they discuss about obstacle in implementation six sigma to SMEs and talked about practical aspect of adopting new technology by employees. obliviously advocated approach for long term beneficial for SMEs and employee both  if  six sigma proper implemented   

Dear Mr Patidar, 

your question is very interesting. The answer could not a single set of tools or systems. Because every firm is different and so is its requirements for productivity improvement. One may not find one single tool or system which fit all SMEs across the country. There are so many factors which are affecting the productivity of SMEs like technology, training, skills of employees, work environment, wages and incentives etc., how can one tool or a system can satisfy all the constraints of a given firm. 

Beyond doubt the issue is very important and  so is the contribution of SMEs in Indian economy. The answer to this 'research question' could be better obtained if you divide SMEs on basis of industry, geographical area, and size in terms of number of employees.  'One size fits all' days are now over. This is the reason research in local context still makes a difference. All researches suffer from limited degree of generalization.

Dear zafar sir thanks for your valuable answer. i agree with your answer  that performance improvement may be size of organization. when the conceptual framework implement effectively in one size industries then applying to other one in same manner.

thanks to all professor and researcher

best regard

Lakhan patidar

MANIT Bhopal

India

i like the point you indicate in sentence 'One size fits all' days are now over. This is the reason research in local context still makes a difference. this is the motivation for my research in our local area.

It appears you are looking for "productivity improvement in maintenance for Indian SMEs". Firstly, in India we have MSME. As referred by you paper states about non implementation of six sigma in SMEs in UK. If you go to Micro Industry, the situation is worse.

Are you looking for productivity improvement in maintenance only or all other operations of Indian (M) SMEs?

Situation is worse due to employee, manager or any firms habit about maintenance to not adopting any new approach easily in India.they just want short term benefit. sir if you talked any Manager,GM,engineer,Supervisor about quality and performance, they tried to avoid standard and norms of govt. One more important question arise that what is the view of Indian politician about adoption of new approach in Indian indusries. They given budget only 10% amount of manrega  for research field even-though our navratna company suffer.

Interesting discussion. Is the question how to improve the productivity of SMEs or the competitiveness of SMEs? In my humble opinion, productivity focus, which is measured at management level by “annual sales / employee” might have adverse consequences (see for instance Skinner, 1986 “The productivity paradox”). Secondly, I believe Six Sigma, although very powerful especially in high volume environment where measuring sigma level makes much more sense, is too technical and complex for SMEs, which have generally low volume and high variety. I have observed a couple of SMEs doing Lean (some of them are really successful) and deliberately avoiding Six Sigma for this reason. Final remark, SMEs must use their limited resources very wisely (one way is reducing waste in their processes), hence Lean philosophy might provide the right frame of thinking. The productivity can be an outcome, not a goal itself, once the processes are improved.

Article Improving productivity in Indian SMEs