Lean Six Sigma as an organizational resilience mechanism in health care during the era of COVID-19 Gaganpreet Singh Hundal, Senthilkumar Thiyagarajan, Manal Alduraibi and Chad Matthew Laux Department of Computer and Information Technology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA Sandra L. Furterer Department of Engineering Management, Systems and Technology, University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio, USA Elizabeth A. Cudney John E. Simon School of Business, Maryville University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, and Jiju Antony School of Management and Languages, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this study was to investigate how Lean Six Sigma (LSS) may help mitigate the impact of COVID-19 within health care environments. The goals of this study were to understand the current knowledge of LSS and COVID-19 through a systematic review of the current literature, identify the gap in the current knowledge of LSS in COVID-19 mitigation within health care environments and define the principles of LSS, within organizational resilience that support a health care organization’s ability to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. Design/methodology/approach – A narrative literature review was conducted to identify relevant research. A total of 21 subject matter experts (SMEs) meeting the inclusion criteria were approached through a guided interview process. Content analysis was conducted to describe how LSS principles contribute to supporting health care organizations operating in the era of COVID-19. Findings – Study results report that personal safety is the primary subject, followed by supporting dimensions of process redesign, and telemedicine. LSS topics that directly relate to COVID-19 are in four thematic areas: tools, applications, benefits and challenges. Particular areas of application, techniques, challenges and benefits are identified and discussed that could be applied proactively and reactively, to organizational and supply chain resilience to recover from COVID-19. Research limitations/implications – There were a number of limitations to the generalizability of this work. The sample size was small and purposeful, thus, external validity of the study results are not determined. The SMEs in this study have not implemented the practices noted in the results at the time of the study, and knowledge of results is limited to the study aims. Special thanks to the subject matter experts who were interviewed for this study. Resilience mechanism in health care Received 23 November 2020 Revised 9 December 2020 Accepted 11 December 2020 International Journal of Lean Six Sigma © Emerald Publishing Limited 2040-4166 DOI 10.1108/IJLSS-11-2020-0204 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-4166.htm