Lean Six Sigma Studies in Türkiye: A Literature Review

Abstract

The literature in the field of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is developing in Türkiye as well as over the world. However, theses and papers written in Turkish are waiting to be disseminated. This paper aims to investigate LSS in the Turkish context with the purpose of identifying the current state, gaining insight and exploring future directions. This paper implements the systematic literature review methodology to identify and review all relevant studies in Turkish literature. This paper covers the literature on LSS in Türkiye from 2004 to 2021. As a result, a total of 32 theses and 29 papers were investigated in detail. This paper not only focuses on years, sectors, areas etc. of the studies, but also analyses the contents of papers in relation to enterprise size, project prioritization, and quality tools used in DMAIC phases, and improvements after implementation in terms of descriptive and content analysis. The results show that, although there are many LSS implementations in Turkish context, they could not be shared with global academic area due to the national language usage. LSS implementations have an increasing trend in last years and highly focused on manufacturing sector and large companies. The lack of structured way of applying LSS, especially not using project prioritization and selection methodology takes attention. This paper shows the gaps and future directions in Türkiye for researchers and provides a groundwork to develop a roadmap for Turkish organizations.