Reduction Waste by Combining Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma in an Electronics Industry

Nowadays organizations are involved in a complex environment with continues changing, that should impels the innovations looking for increase production performance, quality improvement, customer satisfaction and create a competitive advantage. Lean manufacturing provides an approach to identify and eliminate waste and all non value added activities through continuous improvement. The use of lean manufacturing as a set of "tools" that assist in waste identification and besides linked to DMAIC stages from six sigma could result in a systematic approach toward increasing value through production flow, statistical capability from the process and customer satisfaction; synergizing company efforts. An application case in an electronic industry from this integration is presented where sigma level from process was raised to 4.625 (99.91% efficiency), postulating VSM (Value Stream Map) and DMAIC stages as an essential first step from lean and six sigma respectively. The emerging integration that is already used in many industries is referred as Lean Six Sigma.