Lean Six Sigma for Higher Education

Special issue call for papers from International Journal of Lean Six Sigma

Lean Six Sigma for Higher Education

Special issue call for papers for the International Journal of Lean Six Sigma

Indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index. 2016 Scopus CiteScore 2.23

Guest Editors

Dr Jiju Antony, Professor of Quality Management, Department of Business Management, School of Social Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, UK. j.antony@hw.ac.uk
Dr Chad Laux, Associate Professor, Computer and Information Technology Department, Purdue University, US. claux@purdue.edu
Dr Beth Cudney, Associate Professor, Missouri University of Science and Technology, US. cudney@mst.edu

Important Dates

Submission deadline: May 25, 2018
Publication of the Special issue:  IJLSS Volume 10 (early 2019)

Introduction

Lean Six Sigma is a powerful business strategy that increases process performance, resulting in enhanced customer satisfaction and improved bottom line results in hard cash savings. It has been widely used in industry for over 15 years, but its application in the context of HEI’s is still in the embryonic stages. There is a clear misconception across many public sector organizations that Lean Six Sigma is suited solely to manufacturing companies, however the situation within the HE sector is very similar to that of firms within the manufacturing and service industry - facing fierce competition, limited budget availability, government funding slashed and students adopting a consumer approach to their learning.
Some of the proven benefits of using LSS in Higher Education (HE) include:

• Promotes cross-functional collaboration and thereby provides a means to effectively communicate and resolve problems
• Reduces the Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) which adds no value to customers
• Captures the Voice of the Customers accurately in the first place and how well they can be fulfilled
• Creates transparency of various processes which were not at all visible to employees and thereby different forms of waste can be identified and reduced or even eliminated in some cases
• Helps to pinpoint variation in various processes including some of the academic processes (e.g.: turnaround time for marking and feedback by various academics for similar courses and class sizes)
• Improves the admission process by reducing some of the non-value added sub-processes and steps across the admission process

This call for papers is based on the success of the Fourth International Conference on Lean Six Sigma for Higher education held at Purdue University, USA in May 2017. This Special Issue seeks papers on Lean or Six Sigma in the context of Higher Education. This may include the application of Lean or Six sigma tools for tackling business processes in HE Institutions, application of Six Sigma methodology, literature review papers on Lean or Six Sigma in Higher education, Theoretical Models or Frameworks or Roadmaps showing how to get started with Lean or Six Sigma in HE settings, Lean or Six Sigma Sustainability in Higher Education, Leadership for Lean or Six Sigma, and so on.

Subject Coverage

The following is an indicative list of topics which will be of interest to this Special Issue.

• Lean in Higher education
• Six Sigma in Higher education
• LSS for Higher Education
• Lean /Six Sigma Leadership for HE sector
• Case studies of Lean/Six Sigma/LSS in Higher education environments
• Tools and Techniques of Lean/Six sigma applied to Higher Education processes
• Kaizen in Higher Education
• Other quality improvement methodologies applied to HE sector
• Literature review papers on continuous improvement methodologies relevant to HE environment.
• Design for Six Sigma in Higher Education

Submission guidelines

In preparing manuscripts, authors are asked to follow the Author Guidelines available on the journal homepage at http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/ijlss.htm.  
 
To submit your paper online you must first create an author account at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijlss then follow the on-screen guidance which takes you through the submission process. If you have any queries about the submission process, please contact the journal’s Publisher, Claire Jackson, at cjackson@emeraldgroup.com.