Six Sigma and Lean are two major improvement tools used by the U.S. corporations. Their effectiveness is a different issue, and none wants to discuss it. What are normal measures of quality in EU, and what are typical tools used for quality improvement?
There are as far as I know organisations as Health Boards of different Hospitals within the NHS in UK that implementing the methodologies, more the Lean 6 Sigma and lesser 6 Sigma per se.
Praveen
I wouldn't care to answer across the board for all industries and Europe as a whole. However, I've been quite involved in evaluation of the 'Productive Ward programme' - a Lean inspired QI improvement for hospital wards in the UK. There is now a whole raft of related 'products' (community hospitals, operating rooms etc.). The programme has also been sold to other countries including ireland, Canada and New Zealand. Evaluation of the actual effectiveness of these programmes has been challenging in the extreme - partly because there has been little large-scale funding. Our work concentrated primarily on the national roll out of the programme itself and below are links to a few papers that should give you a sense of the literature on this particular programme. Lean and 6S also appear in UK health care quite frequently although it would be fair to say that there is a degree os scepticism - it's another product promoted by management consultants. There are, however, outbreaks of enthusiasm.
In case you are not familiar: a couple of broader reviews in health care (not Europe specific though). I suspect the messages will be familiar even if the papers aren't!
Radnor, Z.J., Holweg, M., Waring, J., 2012. Lean in healthcare: The unfilled promise? Social Science and Medicine 74 (3), 364-371.
Vest, J., Gamm, L., 2009. A critical review of the research literature on Six Sigma, Lean and StuderGroup's Hardwiring Excellence in the United States: the need to demonstrate and communicate the effectiveness of transformation strategies in healthcare. Implementation Science 4 (1), 35.
Waring, J.J., Bishop, S., 2010. Lean healthcare: rhetoric, ritual and resistance. Social Science and Medicine 71 (7), 1332-1340.
All the best
Peter
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I am very certain that many companies in EU are using methodologies of Lean and Six Sigma. Many universities in Central and Northern Europe have courses, thesis and PhD programs based on Lean and Six Sigma. I personally did my thesis back in 2009 in Volvo Technology in Sweden on the topic of Lean Production System. Currently there are lot of Six Sigma Health initiatives going on in Sweden. I observed that Europeans are mostly concerned with the implementation of these methodologies rather than the certification syndrome as developed in US. There are many industrial projects undergoing in various universities around Europe regarding Lean and Six Sigma.
Plenty of places in the EU both researching and actively practicing activity they call lean and six sigma, and in healthcare, a variant called IHI-QI, (Institute for Healthcare Improvement - Quality Improvement). There is a body of research developing in the UK healthcare for what is being called 'improvement science', within which lean and other similar business process improvement methods together with many other aspects of change/improvement would sit. There is lots of debate about if lean etc 'works', (and for whom in what circumstances), though my view is there could be more research.. One of the main English healthcare regulators, NHS Improvement (or currently Monitor/TDA) have contracted with Virginia Mason hospital, a leading US 'lean' hospital to work over a lengthy term to help English NHS hospitals develop their improvement work (lean based). Attached is a case study of an English lean hospital that I was involved in leading. Let me know if you want to discuss some more directly, happy to have a conversation.
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In the UK a number of large and small industries have started using lean and six sigma. Public sector organisations like NHS in particular are involved in several lean and six sigma projects. You may also refer to following papers on lean and six sigma that will give you a broad overview of what companies in EU/UK think about these tools
Belekoukias, I., Garza-Reyes, J. A., & Kumar, V. (2014). The impact of lean methods and tools on the operational performance of manufacturing organisations. International Journal of Production Research, 52(18), 5346-5366.
L. Kirham, J. A. Garza-Reyes, V. Kumar, and J. Antony, (2014), Prioritisation of operations improvement projects in the European manufacturing industry, International Journal of Production Research, 52 (18 ), 5323-5345
J. H. Lee, J. A. Garza-Reyes, V. Kumar, L. Rocha-Lona, N. Mishra, (2013), A comparative study of the implementation status of Lean Six Sigma in South Korea and the UK, Advances in Sustainable and Competitive Manufacturing Systems, Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering, 1489-1502
S. Withers, J. A. Garza-Reyes, V. Kumar, and L. Rocha-Lona, (2013), A Case Study Improvement of a Testing Process by Combining Lean Management, Industrial Engineering and Automation Methods, International Journal of Engineering and Technology Innovation (IJETI), 3 (3), 134-143
P.J. Byrne, V. Kumar, and M. Brady, (2013), The Role of Process Improvement in Healthcare: A Case Study of A Large Irish Hospital, 20th International Annual European Operations Management Academy (EurOMA) conference, 7th-12th June 2013, Dublin, Ireland
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