Lean6Sigma In The Food-processing Industry:the Nestle Continuous Excellence Model

The Lean6Sigma approach is a blend of two concepts:Lean, which aims at reducing waste and increasing value through operational excellence and continuous improvement; and Six Sigma, which focuses on the reduction of production process variability (errors) by using statistical tools.Lean was first used at the end of the1980s by car manufacturer Toyota to optimize its automotive production processes.6Sigma was first developed by telecommunication corporation Motorola in1985for the same purpose. These two well-known methods were then combined to create an even more efficient optimization technique:Lean6Sigma. This customer-centered approach helps companies reap the benefits of faster processes with lower cost and higher quality. First applied to the automotive industry, the Lean6Sigma approach has since then successfully started to enter other business sectors, such as aeronautics and pharmaceutics. However, in the2010s, application of Lean6Sigma in the huge food-processing industry is still left-behind, though extremely promising. This thesis will focus on the analysis of successful implementation of Lean6Sigma in the food sector, with a case study on Nestle, the largest food company in the world, and its optimization program Nestle Continuous Excellence (NCE).After detailing the Lean6Sigma approach, the goal of this thesis is to provide a specific analysis of the successful NCE program, showing its historical development and current state through concrete examples based on empirical data provided by the company. Furthermore, the success factors of Lean6Sigma in the food industry will be identified and a general implementation methodology will be described, in order to be comprehensively extended to the food sector as a whole, no matter the company size. The final aim of this study is to point out Lean6Sigma’s main challenges as well as trends and possible future developments in the coming years.