Lean Six Sigma in Higher Education: Systematic Review

Higher education is a complex and dynamic field that aims to provide students with the knowledge, skills and experience needed to succeed in their careers. To meet the growing challenges of quality, efficiency and student satisfaction, some higher education institutions are adopting process improvement methodologies, such as Lean Six Sigma. The goal is to improve procedures, optimize resources and improve the student experience, which is essential to the overall success of the institution. The objective of this paper is to examine in depth 28 general literature articles on the LSS approach in the higher education sector, in order to provide a detailed analysis of its implementation. The results of this study were ranked according to the number of citations in articles dealing with the LSS approach in higher education institutions. Based on our assessment, we found that 70% of the case studies examined the implementation of LSS in the academic context of higher education, while 30% of the articles dealt with the use of this method to improve administrative procedures in this sector. Subsequently, we found that 8 critical success factors are essential to ensure the sustainability and success of LSS implementation, in order to benefit from the 6 main benefits of LSS implementation in the higher education sector.