Lean Six Sigma — the methodology combining Toyota's waste-elimination principles with Motorola's statistical process control — has been practised in large Indian enterprises for two decades. The companies that adopted it early — primarily automotive, pharmaceutical, and electronics manufacturers supplying global OEM customers who mandated it — built genuine operational excellence capabilities. The broader Indian enterprise market largely did not.

That is changing, driven by two forces. First, the tightening of global supply chain quality standards — Indian manufacturers bidding for contracts with Apple, Foxconn, Samsung, and automotive OEMs are finding that Lean certification and demonstrable process control are qualification criteria, not differentiators. Second, the economic pressure of post-pandemic cost reality, as higher input costs and acute customer price sensitivity force enterprises to find efficiency that covers the cost gap without passing it to customers.

Lean Six Sigma provides the methodology to find that efficiency systematically. The DMAIC framework — Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control — is a structured approach to identifying the root causes of process variation and waste, designing solutions based on data rather than intuition, and sustaining improvements through measurement and control systems.

India's most impressive Lean implementations are in unexpected places. Narayana Health's approach to cardiac surgery — applying manufacturing efficiency principles to hospital operations — has produced world-class clinical outcomes at costs that are an order of magnitude below Western equivalents, a model studied by healthcare systems globally.