Investigating the readiness of people in manufacturing SMEs to embark on LSS projects

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to investigate the impact of the core personal competence, vision and organisational culture on readiness of people to commence Lean Six Sigma (LSS) projects in the manufacturing Small and Medium Sized- Enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach - A set of hypothesis analysis was designed to identify the level of association between constructs of people’s competence, vision and culture with LSS readiness through correlation and regression analysis. A quantitative data collection through questionnaire has been conducted for seven different German manufacturing SMEs involved in aerospace and agro-food manufacturing as convenient samples. Finding – It was found that there is a strong positive association between Core competence of people and organisational culture with readiness for commencing LSS. However, further detailed regression analysis indicated that amongst cultural constructs, core values of people was the significant predictor for LSS readiness, whilst no significant difference between core competence constructs was found to be ready for LSS commencing. Therefore, focusing on core values of people could be prioritised to facilitate management commitment and removing resistance to change as two key people-related success factors of LSS commencement. Practical Implications –The result of this paper could be generalised to different manufacturing SMEs and would have direct impact on identifying the key factors that could lead to management commitment and resistance to change in order to commence any LSS in any organisation specially SMEs. Originality/Value- This research focuses on human resource (HR) aspects of implementing LSS projects in SMEs and would recommend the people-related critical variables to lead success of LSS project in western culture.