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Integrated
Identify critical success factors to green and Lean
implement integrated green and Six Sigma

Lean Six Sigma

Mrigendra Nath Mishra 765
Institute of Management Studies, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India
Received 23 July 2017
Revised 10 June 2018
Accepted 11 October 2018
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is analysis of Green and Lean Six Sigma, based on the success factors
in its use through a well thought-out literature review, is being planned; a framework has been integrated in a
productive manner with the Green and Lean and Six Sigma methods so as to incorporate and actualize the
execution.
Design/methodology/approach – The methodology consists of comparative investigation of Green,
Lean management and Six Sigma using open written work, essential analysis at data and master experience
of the researchers. To achieve this goal, a significant review of the existing literature of the subject area has
been done to prepare a framework in view of the critical success factors. A study was arranged and flowed
survey from various businesses utilizing John’s Macintosh Project (JMP) statistical software.
Findings – The paper establishes the distinguishing proof of five success factors with their situational
importance and shows that the integrated Green and Lean Six Sigma can drive the organizations to optimize
their resources and cost of services or productions.
Practical implications – A Green and Lean Six Sigma organization would take profits by the use of the
proposed framework in an alternate extent of organizations should be dynamic. The organizations should
assess their shortcomings and qualities, set needs and perceive objectives for fruitful implementation.
Originality/value – Suggestions are being made regarding thoughts and methods that would constitute a
Green and Lean Six Sigma organization. The suggested framework compare the method for improvements
that may occur in organizations while implementation of the Green and Lean management or Six Sigma.
Keywords Critical success factors, Green and lean Six Sigma, Integrate
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
The rise in the competitive business environment, the weight of globalization and the
stakeholder’s orientation has changed the market dynamic. Traditionally, efficiency,
customer satisfaction, responsibility and profitability have been the key centered criteria for
organizations (Green et al., 2012; Garza-Reyes, 2015). In general, society’s increases
environmental mindfulness, extending essentials of customers to improve social and
environmental execution compelled the organizations to change their ways to deal with
overseeing operations and procedures (McCarty et al., 2011, Wong and Wong, 2014, Garza-
Reyes, 2015). As per Bergmiller and McCright (2009), to keep their aggressive edge in view
of economic, social and environmental, the three estimations of viability ought to be mulled
over by organizations. In these circumstances, the challenges for organizations are to
address every one of their customers’ issues through compensating by positive economic
International Journal of Lean Six
execution while adjusting the balance between the triple primary concern of manageability Sigma
(McCarty et al., 2011, Alves and Alves, 2015). Various management systems, for instance, Vol. 13 No. 4, 2022
pp. 765-777
Green and Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma implemented management systems has been © Emerald Publishing Limited
2040-4166
explored by a growing number of organizations to become more competitive and meet DOI 10.1108/IJLSS-07-2017-0076
IJLSS market, social and environmental demands (King and Lenox, 2001; Kleindorfer et al., 2005;
13,4 Diaz-Elsayed et al., 2013).
Maximum numbers of studies have made it clear that Lean Six Sigma can be seen to
improve commercial stability (King and Lenox, 2001; Bergmiller and McCright, 2009;
Carvalho and Cruz-Machado, 2009; Larson and Greenwood, 2014). Green and Lean have
ascended as main parts of the sustainability solution (Cherrafi et al., 2016). The Green and
766 Lean combine method seems naturally and is clearly highlighted in academic literature
(Kleindorfer et al., 2005; Bergmiller and McCright, 2009; Carvalho and Cruz-Machado, 2009;
Franchetti et al., 2009; Dües et al., 2013, Hajmohammad et al., 2013, Martínez-Jurado et al.,
2014, Garza-Reyes, 2015). The researchers discussed and examined the relationship between
Green and Lean by highlighting the divergences and synergies between two possible
benefits of their integration, their effect on the organization’s performance and their
theoretical integration (King and Lenox, 2001; Kleindorfer et al., 2005; Bergmiller and
McCright, 2009; Carvalho and Cruz-Machado, 2009; Franchetti et al., 2009; Cherrafi et al.,
2016). Many structures have been proposed to integrate Green and Lean. However, evidence
shows that the integration of two strategies can be inherited in the same way as individual
Green and Lean approaches, but they can end through the integration of Six Sigma (Garza-
Reyes, 2015). Green, Lean and Six Sigma are three strategies that are compatible and
complementary; thus, each strategy has the ability to reduce the deficiencies of others
(Banawi and Bilec, 2014; Garza-Reyes, 2015). The lean is the specialty of its ability to
identify and eliminate wastes, but it does not take into account the environmental impacts
(EPA, 2009, Klotz et al., 2007, Pampanelli et al., 2014). Hence, Green to fill this gap (Sharrard
et al., 2008, Li et al., 2010, Ng et al., 2015). Later, the study has proposed to integrate Green
and Lean to reduce environmental effluents, but their integration has not helped
organizations achieve the highest sustainable performance, so as to address this difference
Six Sigma has been introduced with the same (Banawi and Bilec, 2014; Garza-Reyes, 2015).
In this regard, the implementation of the DMAIC model can give a structure to recognizing,
portraying, sorting out, directing, overseeing, finishing, supporting and enhancing
sensibility ventures (Garza-Reyes, 2015). Further, Garza-Reyes (2015a) improvised that
information and factual driven typical Six Sigma can fulfill the gap of Green Lean approach
to contribute in meeting the requirements and challenges of this idea.
Integrating Green and Lean Six Sigma is well debated a few topic in literature; however,
organizations have succeeded to execute the integration of Green and Lean Six Sigma (Alves
and Alves, 2015). There are many challenges and obstacles in the way of Green and Lean Six
Sigma implementation, but there are several factors that can enable these processes. Apart
from this, so far, a contemporary research problem in the area of Green and Lean Six Sigma
lies in – How to integrate and implement effective processes and create organizational
cultures for Green and Lean Six Sigma through terms of project management aspects, such
as knowledge management, stakeholder requirements, monitoring and control in an
organization.
According to Rungasamy et al. (2002), critical success factors is an aspect which are
necessary for the success of any initiative, in the sense that if the goals related to the factors
are not achieved, then the implementation of the initiative will be unsatisfactory. How to
integrate Green and Lean Six Sigma into a systematic approach and maintain best results is
a learning for tackling the challenges in implementation of Green and Lean Six Sigma. Thus,
the determination of critical success factors is an important aspect to help the organization
focus on its efforts and resources on these factors to achieve the desired success.
The paper intends to create a platform for further study to identify critical success
factors for the successful implementation, in particular, the development of a framework has
been integrated in a productive manner with the Green and Lean and Six Sigma methods so Integrated
as to incorporate and actualize the execution and analyze the conversation between Green green and Lean
and Lean Six Sigma implementation strategies for competitive edge.
Six Sigma
2. Literature review
Various organizations have validated Lean Six Sigma activity to increase efficiency, reduce
costs, upgrade customer response times and improve quality (Bergmiller and McCright, 767
2009). On the other hand, the implementation of Green manufacturing prompts the use of
waste production, reduction in energy and raw materials and the use of risky materials
(Bergmiller and McCright, 2009; Verrier et al., 2014). To change the materials without the
spread of greenhouse gases, Green Manufacturing is shown as a framework for the limited
use of non-renewable or hazardous materials so as to produce waste (Sheridan, 2000;
Allwood, 2015). As per EPA, 2009, Green Manufacturing has been shown as the “action of
things manufactured through economically stable processes, which reduce the negative
environmental impact while saving vitality and trademark resources. As in experts, groups,
and item security upgrade Green manufacturing “.
With these efforts, the organizations are facing challenges during the integration and
implementation of Green and Lean Six Sigma, that is why, various structures are proposed
to support the philosophy. A comprehensive and critical review of academic literature under
the present study has identified some frameworks.
The review of literature identified the need for leadership, employee involvement and a
mature organizational structure under a Lean Six Sigma tools to apply with a good level of
environmental awareness as important issues for cultural change and continuous
improvement (Pampanelli et al., 2014, Zhang and Awasthi, 2014; Ng et al., 2015). Continuous
improvement cultures are the main base of all structures, because before selecting the right
techniques and tools to progress towards sustainability, these structures begin the
implementation process by evaluating the current state of sustainability performance,
through few most popular methods such as PDCA, DMAC and Kaizen. Some of the most
relevant and recent frameworks are discussed below.
Jeyaraman and Kee Teo (2010) proposed a conceptual framework to study the
relationship between the CSFs on the operational and an organizational performance of the
companies, that is interesting to identify whether the organizational belief and culture
moderate the relationship between CSFs and implementation success of the Lean Six Sigma
program.
George (2011) elevated that the already high-status Lean Six Sigma has reached among
professionals trying to find management methods that work swiftly upon deployment in
their enterprises by interjecting quality tools and green engineering mentality into a single
endeavor.
Verrier et al. (2014) proposed a framework to integrate Green and Lean structure to make
better economic, environmental and social performance, which includes indicators of Green
performance, Lean and Green intentions. To sharing the best knowledge and practices, it is
essential for a group of organizations to benchmark their experiences.
Banawi and Bilec (2014) proposed framework which is the only framework in the
literature that integrating Green and Lean and Six Sigma approaches in the construction
industry based on DMAIC and organized in three steps. First, Define and measure to
identify and determine environmental waste, which is the process of Value Stream Mapping
and Life Cycle Assessment selection for evaluation.
Secondly, analyze and improve by plans to choose the right Six Sigma tools to reduce or
eliminate waste. Then finally, to measure its deficiencies, control the plans by re-evaluating
IJLSS the environmental waste using the Value Stream Mapping and Life Cycle Assessment. To
13,4 clarify its application and related results for justification, the case of pile cap installation was
studied. In addition, it has concluded that the Green and Lean Six Sigma framework
provides a comprehensive, multi-phase approach to improve the process correction and life
cycle environmental impacts.
Pampanelli et al. (2014) proposed a framework, in which Green was integrated into the
768 idea of pure Lean. The adoption of the Kaizan approach resulted in reduction of energy and
mass consumption in lean manufacturing cells. The framework integrates five stages:
 Stage 1: Balancing out the value flow – By identifying the cell with the consumption
of important resources, fixing the pre-requisites necessary to implement the
structure, there is a successful experience in implementing lean appliances, and its
production flow is stable.
 Stage 2: Recognizing environmental perspectives and effects – Decides the pilot
territory in light of the distinguishing proof of the applicable environmental effects
as indicated by ISO 14001.
 Stage 3: Measuring environmental factor value – Perceives, measures and
accumulates environmental information, for instance, vitality, water, metallic and
polluted waste, oils and chemicals and effluents.
 Stage 4: Enhancing environmental factor value – Recognizes squander end
openings by driving Kaizen workshops.
 At last, Stage 5: Strive for Incremental Improvements – It makes movement across
the organization and prepare for adaptation for persistent change.

Alves and Alves (2015) have developed the approach of a model and its implementation, which
integrates the lean concepts and sustainability in supported of the cultural change, the
proposed model uses lean techniques to reduce the consumption of natural resources with the
elimination of wastes. The model further integrates – organizing the usage procedure,
execution arranging, execution of enhancements, adjustment of the procedures and sharing
learning and ceaseless change. The model is inclined to change work culture by changing
value, behaviors and its consequences by sharing knowledge and developing employees’ skills.
The barriers are influenced by the context; the search for generalizable barriers,
relationships, priorities and control measures is to some extent elusive. Almeida Marodin
and Saurin (2015) introduced a framework for managing barriers to lean production
implementation in specific companies, which comprises five stages:
(1) description of the context;
(2) identification of the barriers;
(3) analysis of the influence of the context on the barriers;
(4) analysis of the relationships among the barriers using interpretive structural
modelling – this sets a basis for prioritizing the barriers; and
(5) a feedback meeting to discuss the results of data collection, which also informs on
the development of an action plan to control the barriers.

Marodin and Saurin (2015a) developed a list of risks in LPI, based on a literature review. The
risk management perspective facilitated the identification of which factors, barriers and
difficulties that have an impact on LPI could be interpreted as risks (i.e. sources of
uncertainty), and which could be simply interpreted as constraints, as they were very
difficult to be changed, at least in the short term (e.g. process type).
 According to Netland (2016), to succeed in implementing a Lean program in a factory, Integrated
managers must commit to and involve themselves in the activities of implementation. green and Lean
Developing Lean knowledge and competency by offering continual education and training
to both managers and employees is critical for success. Furthermore, there is a persistent
Six Sigma
need for proper planning, following-up and funding of the Lean program. Sharing best
practices and establishing a dedicated implementation team can be effective. As
implementation progresses, these factors become less important and managers should instil
plant-wide routines by increasing the empowerment of shop-floor employees. 769
According to Vasanthakumar et al. (2016), interpretive structural modelling method has
been used to develop the structural model depicting interrelationships and most dominant
and least dominant factors. The identified most dominant factors include a strong top
management commitment with proper strategy selection, long-term vision and participation
and a strong understanding of the current product and process designs.
It is clear from the literature review that, it is a business transformation technique, which
is the way to grow in relation to the shareholder. There is a necessary concern for improving
the quality, consumer commitment, speed and cost. It eliminates waste through implement
the techniques of both Lean and Six Sigma (Laureani and Antony, 2012; Snee, 2010).
Recent studies of the relationship between Green Manufacturing and Lean Six Sigma have
been thoroughly tested and it is suggested that they are concurrent and thus can be
integrated effectively (Dües et al., 2013; Garza-Reyes, 2015a). They have many elements, so
the result is usually related to the use of various techniques and approaches to product
design, waste and lead time reduction and the management of organizations, people and
supply chain relations (Wiengarten et al., 2013; Dües et al., 2013; Larson and Greenwood, 2014;
Johansson and Sundin, 2014; Garza-Reyes, 2015). Thus, Green and Lean Six Sigma have
emerged as an initiative for organizations to improve environmental efficiency while
achieving their economic goals (Shrivastava, 1995; Rao, 2004; Deif, 2011; Galeazzo et al., 2013).

3. Research methodology
The research methodology of paper includes systematic and critical review of literature and
developing understanding the implementation of Green and Lean Six Sigma the lessons
learned in the paper through survey of selected organizations.
The literature review was conducted using relevant publications that identified in the
main management databases, using a number of keywords that are frequently used in the
literature to describe the integration of Green and Lean Six Sigma strategies. The keyword
combinations for searching the literature were Green, Lean Six Sigma, Lean manufacturing,
Six Sigma, Green Lean Six Sigma and Sustainability.
The review of the literature has shown the existence of gaps in knowledge to develop
understanding of the field. The studies have not provided satisfactory information on issues
which affect the compelling integration of Green and Lean Six Sigma within organizations.
As extracted through critical review of literature, the integration of concepts are possible,
however, to check the real happenings in the market and to identify the real factors of
integration, a study was planned to do the same.
A study was arranged for surveying 150 organizations, from various businesses that
have as of now coordinate Green and Lean Six Sigma. Of 150 organizations contacted, 54
responses were received. Further scrutiny of data lead to 35 accurate responses for the
research analysis. The survey questionnaire is based on rating the importance of CSF. The
respondents to the survey were asked to score on a Likert type scale for their perceived
importance of each CSF with representation as 1 – strongly disagree; 2 – disagree; 3 –
neutral; 4 – agree; and 5 – strongly agree. A reliability test was conducted on the basis of the
IJLSS use of John’s Macintosh Project (JMP) statistical software and Cronbach alpha coefficients.
13,4 The practice of JMP statistical analysis software is in various applications such as Visual
six sigma, Reliability, Business visualization, Design of experiment, Analytical application
development, Exploratory data analysis, Interactive data mining, Quality, Modelling,
Statistics as well as for research in science, engineering and social sciences. The use of JMP
is to tackle routine and difficult statistical problems. Apparently, it easily access the data
770 from various sources, JMP gets the most out of reliable data in any situation by using
various quick data preparation tools. JMP as the heart of quality program incorporate a wide
range of statistical and graphical features enable to prevent problem before they occur,
reduce errors, optimize processes, make better and smarter decisions. The results show in
Table I that alpha coefficient is between 0.74 and 0.93. As shown by Nunnally (1987), a
dependability coefficient of 0.64 or higher seems a satisfactory level of internal consistency .
Therefore, the information gathered is reliable for study.
The experience of researchers with understanding from literature helped in elaboration
of facts. The method was chosen due to its expansion.

4. Critical success factors for the Green and Lean Six Sigma
The coordination of Green and Lean Six Sigma is a capricious procedure and the ideal
conditions are not easily accomplished. Henceforth, the recognizable proof of Critical Success
Factors is basic, as it urges organizations to focus their endeavors on these factors to assemble
the shots of success. Critical Success Factors for Green and Lean Six Sigma usage were
recognized through extensive literature review. A study of the literature uncovered that a huge
segment of the exploration oversaw fragile parts rather than hard ones, that is, specialized
perspectives. Five Critical Success Factors were identified through this process.

4.1 Readiness of organization to execute Green and Lean Six Sigma

Before implementing Green and Lean Six Sigma Initiative, it is important to understand the
organization’s preparedness. Every organization use to invest heavily in strategy with
proper evaluation of the probability of project success. Based on experience, one can suggest
that the organizations should know and realize a diagnostic to determine their weaknesses
and strengths and to understand their status in Green and Lean Six Sigma way with certain

Cronbach’s a

Entire set 0.8806

Excluded Col
Q1 0.9303
Q3 0.8597
Q4 0.8009
Q7 0.7401
Q9 0.8700
Cronbach’s a, standardized
Entire set 0.8849
Excluded Col
Q1 0.9344
Table I. Q3 0.8656
Results of Cronbach Q4 0.8123
alpha coefficients for Q7 0.7442
internal consistency Q9 0.8748
level of maturity. Clinical results will show regardless of whether the organization is in a Integrated
position to execute Green and Lean Six Sigma initiative. green and Lean
Six Sigma
4.2 Selection and priority of project
The crucial phase of experience during the Green and Lean Six Sigma initiative is appropriate
project selection and prioritization of the same. The project selection method gives priority to
those projects, which will give the best economical returns. So, selecting the right project and 771
develop trust and confidence in management and staff to implement Green and Lean Six
Sigma initiatives become a big task. In return, the organization will be encouraged to invest
and will take future efforts in the initiative. It is important to keep in mind the following
elements when selecting potentially Green and Lean Six Sigma projects. The project should be
aligning with organizational strategic objectives and stakeholder issues along with resources
and technical perspective. The team members involved in Green and Lean Six Sigma initiative
should clarify the goals of the project, and the project should have the ability to show
measurable stable improvement in a short time. Therefore, an important factor is attracting
the best employees for all the levels and departments. Team members should be selected by
the experience of the process under their availability, skill and improvement chances.

4.3 Dedicated management and employee

Top management and employee participation and commitment in the implementation of Green
and Lean Six Sigma’s plan is very crucial for long-term success. Without commitment, it is
wastage of time and energy. Researchers believe that commitment by management is
important, which inspires employees and supports the strategic role of the initiative.
Management should define vision, strategic direction and develop the culture of the
organization, which promotes continuous improvement to improve sustainability performance
so that to achieve the organization’s economic, social and environmental goals. Apart from
this, the organization should ensure the empowerment of people, inducement and enhancement
of creativity. Recognition plays an important role in this context, and in return, employees
should work according to the company’s strategies for successful implementation of Green and
Lean Six Sigma (Pampanelli et al., 2011; Alves and Alves, 2015; Park and Linich, 2008).

4.4 Facilitate resources and skills for implementation

One of the most urgent necessities for developing and maintaining process-change activity,
for instance, to construct human capital by working up with the appropriate skill-set for
preparing and instructing to representatives (EPA, 2009; Pampanelli et al., 2014; Vinodh
et al., 2011; Park and Linich, 2008; Sobral and Jabbour, 2013). The representatives should
have the ability to comprehend and use the Lean Six Sigma devices and systems into
consistent operations while remembering the ultimate objective to improve execution. Co-
workers should be given enough time to understand and execute the basic resources to
achieve advanced economic, social and environmental performance.

4.5 Concentrate on estimation and results

For successful implementation of Green and Lean Six Sigma, performance estimation is
essential. It gives rewards to the organization to understand management issues, surveys
the development of the outline of the movement and look forward to the goal (EPA, 2009;
Pampanelli et al., 2011; Park and Linich, 2008). Any impacting parameter affecting the
estimation framework can be enabled and can provide additional service as an explanation
behind basic leadership. In addition, the organization should remember that Green and Lean
IJLSS Six Sigma are not about device or technology. It enhances the performance of the
13,4 management and leads to a particular true purpose to achieve better results. In this unique
situation, Green management ought to guarantee the occurrence and establishment of
proper information network of the activities.

5. Result and discussion

772 The results after the overview are displayed in Table II and Figure 1, where various factors
have been described with their average score. Critical success factor is considered as the most
important factor with the most advanced semantics score. According to data, “Readiness of
Organisation to Execute Green and Lean Six Sigma”, “Selection and Priority of Project” and
“Facilitate Resources and Skills for Implementation” are running behind by “Dedicated
Management and Employee”, which is seen as the most basic with the normal significance of
4.9. In addition, as per respondents’ consideration, “Concentrate on Estimation and Results”
is not amongst considerable factor during an implementation of Green and Lean Six Sigma.
The highest score of “Dedicated Management and Employee” is indicating that it is very
important for the implementation of Green and Lean Six Sigma in the organization. The
results of the survey confirmed the idea of many experts and researchers in the same domain.
To implement Green and Lean Six Sigma, “Readiness of organisation” to execute is widely
considered by respondents as second most important factor. Without the organizational

Critical success factors Average score

Dedicated management and employee 4.9

Table II. Readiness of organization to execute green and lean six sigma 4.2
Normal significance Selection and priority of project 3.7
scores for critical Facilitate resources and skills for implementation 3.5
success factors Concentrate on estimation and results 2.7

Figure 1.
CSFs’ importance
readiness and efforts to improve, the performance may have to face obstacles and problems Integrated
during its deployment. This factor turns out to be more important for practitioners, whereas few green and Lean
studies have only hinted it (EPA, 2009, Pampanelli et al., 2011, Longoni and Annachiara, 2014).
Conversely, it is astonishing to see the low score of “focus on measurement and results”,
Six Sigma
which frequently mentioned in the literature as a key element, encourage team members to
make more efforts and focus on more important activities to achieve objectives of Green and
Lean Six Sigma project.
Based on survey results, we propose a specific integrated framework for implementing
773
Green and Lean Six Sigma is being proposed. The framework provides a comprehensive set
of five categories used to assess an organization to integrate Green and Lean Six Sigma. It
illustrates the cause and effect relationships between the CSFs on performance and the
results achieved (Figure 2).
As Figure 2 illustrates, there are five elements to evaluate the organization. The first two
elements define the importance of organizational readiness to execute Green and Lean Six
Sigma with the dedicated management and employee that helps to set vital course for the
organization and drives the outlook of brilliance. The subsequent element, the selection and
prioritization of the project is prepared after the dedicated management and employee so
that the importance of selecting the right project can be showcased, in the subsequent
process. The next element signifies the availability of required resources and skills of people
for implementation of project to achieve the desired result. The last element signifies the
element for Measurement and results as a piece of the framework, which supports
fundamental authority and drives improvements.
In perspective of study, the Green and Lean Six Sigma Framework can be constructed,
which is a sensible system for enhancing maintainability.
 The growing trend of economical misuse of regular resources and decreasing the
negative environmental effects of modern exercises, the results exhibited that the
Green and Lean Six Sigma Framework can empower organizations to lessen their
resources usage when they have the required higher score of Green and Lean Six
Sigma performance improvement.
 With respect to avowing keys to management success of the proposed framework,
different mentioned components should be considered while actualizing the framework.

6. Conclusions and future scope

Green and Lean Six Sigma are very powerful strategies that share special disadvantages
related to common elements and they are also compatible and collaborative and can be

Figure 2.
Framework to
implement Green and
Lean Six Sigma
IJLSS integrated to create a better strategy for achieving economic, social and environmental
13,4 performance.
With the increasing pressure of customers, regulators and other stakeholders to improve
social and environmental performance, nowadays one of the strategic imperatives for
organizations is stability (Garza-Reyes, 2015). Consequently, many management systems
have been integrated to progress towards achieving the desired stability (Chiarini, 2015).
774 To reduce the structural consumption of natural resources and improve health and safety
of the workplace, Lean Six Sigma and Green concepts are designed to explore the potential
benefits of integration. Its purpose is to help companies of different areas and sizes to
effectively implement Green and Lean Six Sigma in a practically structured form, adjusting
the proposed structure to suit the specific needs and conditions of each organization. Before
introducing the implementation of the Green and Lean Six Sigma Framework, a group of
key success factors were identified to ensure effective and successful implementation:
(1) dedicated management and employee;
(2) readiness of organization to execute;
(3) selection and priority of project;
(4) facilitate resources and skills for implementation; and
(5) concentrate on estimation and results.

The paper expects to perceive the Critical Success Factors influencing Green and Lean Six
Sigma execution. In the context of the literature review, the depiction of each important critical
success factor has been shown. Second, the critical success factors were surveyed to confirm
their ranking. Under the influence of this observation, the two factors “Dedicated management
and employee” and “Readiness of organisation to execute” have been identified as two most
Critical Success Factors for using Green and Lean Six Sigma. Through a superior
comprehension of these Critical Success Factors, the organization will have an idea with respect
to the best way to implement Green and Lean Six Sigma and see the “success equation”.
The framework is modest in structure and can be executed without substantial
resources. In perspective of the results of the survey, one can assume that Green and Lean
Six Sigma framework is also a reasonable methodology for accomplishing sustainability.
The framework provides an opportunity to researchers to validate the same in different
contents, that is, industries. Further, it provides a base for implementation the quality practices,
which can be developed more precisely for implementations in organizational performance.
This is one of the attempts to propose the identification of CSFs for implementing Green
and Lean Six Sigma initiative and for that there are many aspects that need to be
investigated further.
The future succeeding step of the study will pave the way for development of Green and
Lean Six Sigma’s readiness Index Model, which is based on CSFs for the fruitfulness
deployment of Green and Lean Six Sigma. The research paper also paves the way for further
researcher to study the structural relationship between Green and Lean Six Sigma’s success
factor and create a model for the CSFs using modelling techniques.

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Further reading
Azevedo, S.G., Carvalho, H., Duarte, S. and Cruz-Machado, V. (2012), “Influence of green and lean
upstream supply chain management practices on business sustainability”, IEEE Transactions
on Engineering Management, Vol. 59 No. 4, pp. 753-765.
Cherrafi, A., Elfezazi, S., Chiarini, A., Mokhlis, A. and Benhida, K. (2016b), “Production management
model integrating green and lean six sigma”, Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference
on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management, Kuala Lumpur, (accessed 8 - 10 March
2016).
Cherrafi, A., Elfezazi, S., Chiarini, A., Mokhlis, A. and Benhida, K. (2016a), “The integration of lean
manufacturing, six sigma and sustainability: a literature review and future research directions
for developing a specific model”, Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 139, pp. 828-846.
Chiarini, A. (2014), “Sustainable manufacturing-greening processes using specific lean production tools:
an empirical observation from european motorcycle component manufacturers”, Journal of
Cleaner Production, Vol. 85, pp. 226-233.

Corresponding author
Mrigendra Nath Mishra can be contacted at: mri.mishra3@gmail.com

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