Critical Success Factors of Lean Six Sigma Deployment in a Semiconductor Manufacturing Firm: A Case Study

The research is to study what is the Critical Success Factor (CSF) that makes a Multinational Company (MNC) in Malaysia successfully deploys Lean Six Sigma 4.0 (LSS 4.0) for its business excellence. The study examines the three major categories and their CSFs to assess what are the most important factors that succeed in the deployment. The CSFs are grouped into three major categories and apply the Fuzzy Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to analyze the collected data from 30 internal practitioners and consultants. This research revealed that the management initiative category is important in the LSS deployment, followed by involvement and engagement, which involves various parties in the transformation process. In contrast, technology and knowledge are the least critical category. The important CSFs are customer focus, communication, and understanding of the tools and techniques. This research further explores the adoption of IR4.0 in the LSS framework, which is named LSS 4.0, though the result shows it is the least important factor. The study disclosed that CSF prioritization varies by job function; it might depend on the subject’s job requirements and working environment. This research guides managers in semiconductor industries on continuous improvement deployment and transformation by integrating LSS and IR4.0 to plan and design the framework with the important CSFs. It shares the deployment strategy of respective important CSFs in the company as a reference and proposed a guideline for the execution of different CSFs.