An Application of Lean Six Sigma in Cotton Yarn Dyeing

Lean Six Sigma is a data driven methodology with the end goal of reducing defects and improving quality. Although originally designed specifically for manufacturing, Six Sigma has been successfully applied to a variety of non-manufacturing industries such as healthcare, logistics, banking, and retail.1 Given the success and widespread popularity of Lean Six Sigma, it is quite surprising that there are very few published reports of applying Lean Six Sigma techniques to textile dyeing.2,3 There are many reasons why most textile dyehouses have resisted using Lean Six Sigma to improve quality and reduce waste. It is worth discussing some of them before delving into a case study of a successful implementation of Lean Six Sigma in textile package dyeing. Since Six Sigma is a data driven methodology, there are two main reasons why Six Sigma can fail to achieve improvements in quality.