Integrating Lean Six Sigma with ISO 9001:2015

Lean Six Sigma is a popular approach that promotes the improvement of systems, processes, or any other type of entity. On the other hand, quality management systems based on the ISO 9001 standard encourage organizations to adopt various forms of improvement to consistently enhance its overall performance, to better be able to meet customer and other stakeholder requirements, as well as to address their future needs and expectations. The integration of these topics has been gathering the attention of industry and academy communities, but no integration model was already suggested to articulate the new version of ISO 9001 published in 2015 with a Lean Six Sigma program. This paper proposes an integration framework where the life cycle stages inherent to a Lean and/or Six Sigma project can be systematically linked to the applicable clauses and sub-clauses of ISO 9001:2015.