New Practical Exercise in Lean Six Sigma for Masters Students in UiT – The Arctic University of Norway

Abstract

Lean Six Sigma has proven to be a valuable tool for improving flow and quality in any business activities. It is being implemented by almost all business forms globally. It is now an important curriculum for engineering and management students. UiT- The Arctic University of Norway, Narvik is one of the fine institutions which provide training course on Lean Six Sigma for Master’s students studying Industrial Engineering. For the past years, UiT-Narvik has been adopting this training exercise from external sources. Now, UiT aims to develop its own training exercise. This project is all about proposing a new training exercise for UiT. The new training exercise is a project based problem-solving exercise where the students (group of ca. 6) will run a simulation of a mini- beverage factory for at least two times, first run is for documenting current situation of the factory and next run is for improved process. The training activity follows DMAIC (Define Measure Analyze Improve Control) methodology and has been designed such that some of its contents are linked with other Industrial Engineering courses. The entire training kit has been built inside the UiT workshop lab. To facilitate the exercise, a separate student manual and an excel model have been constructed. This exercise is not only limited for engineering students. It has a full potential to be used for people with different professions.