productivity improvement through customized lean and six sigma for garment manufacturing industries

Today rsquo;s highly flexible and dynamic customer demand for the best quality of products with lower selling price and short delivery time makes garment manufacturing industries globally stiff to survive and to compete in the world market. lean concentrates on the elimination of production wastes to create a production system highly adaptive to meet market demand. six sigma, on the other hand, is a continuous improvement plan that is intended to reduce variability. however, the scale of implementation of lean and six sigma in developed and developing countries varies based on the technologies rsquo; own manufacturing. in this paper, a customized lean and six sigma is implemented through dmaic (define, measure, analyze, improve, and control)-based methodology for the emerging garment industry in ethiopia. in addition, the efficiency of the customized lean and six sigma in reducing the quality problem and enhancing the productivity is proven through a real case study. the customized lean and six sigma helps the case company to lower the lead time by 36.05%, increased the sigma level by 21.03%, and increase labor productivity by 25.54%.