We will look at two examples of Lean Six Sigma applied to paper manufacturing. First to generic papermaking, and second to producing baby diapers.

In a paper titled “An Application of Customized Lean Six Sigma to Enhance Productivity at a Paper Manufacturing Company” Nabeel Mandahawia, Rami H. Fouad, and Suleiman Obeidata present a process improvement study applied at a local paper manufacturing company based on customized Lean Six Sigma methodologies. The project focused on enhancing the performance of the cutting and printing machines.

They provide the details from Problem Statement through each of the Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control Phases. 

You can access their paper here. 

From applying Lean Six Sigma in generic paper manufacturing, let’s move on to the specialized world of producing paper baby diapers.

In a paper titled “Weight Variation Reduction for Baby Lido Products through Six Sigma Methodology and Tools” the same authors Nabeel Mandahawia, Rami H. Fouad, and Suleiman Obeidata discuss Six Sigma methodology applied to minimizing weight variation in the production of Baby-Lido products.

Again, the authors take us through the details of the problem and each of the Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control Phases.

You can view that paper here.

While it’s a different production line than mentioned in the above article, it is interesting to see how paper baby diapers are actually made in this video from How It’s Made.

You can view the video here.