1 Assessment of value added activities: Lean versus Six Sigma K. Muralidharan 1 and Neha Raval 2 Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science Maharajah Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara- 390 002, India. 1 Email: muralikustat@gmail.com 2 Email: njr.sky@gmail.com Abstract: In the era of tough competition, organizations need to be searching for fundamentally new capabilities that will permit them to create value in unimagined dimensions. Most firms can substantially boost sales immediately if they find the mechanism for rethinking the value of their core product to their customer. Hence value specification and efficient delivery of value are important part of organizational strategies. In order to deliver product having substantial value from the customer view point, all the organizational activities can be scrutinize over Value added (VA) and Non value added (NVA) activities. Classical lean approach which addresses issues of identification of VA/NVA activities and modern Six sigma approach which address efficient delivery of value has been discussed in this paper. How this two approaches work in complimentary manner to levering the effect of VA activities has been discussed in this paper. Keywords: Value added activities; Non value added activities; Lean; value stream mapping; Six Sigma 1. Introduction Organizations now a day’s need to improve their product/process/service continuously and progressively. The improvement comes from different fronts like quality, cost, delivery, customer satisfaction and many more. Hence the process improvement approach has to be efficient enough to address all the aspects of business activities. Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is the holistic approach that addresses multiple aspect of organizational competitiveness. Snee and Horel (2007) identifies the major characteristics of this holistic approach as: • That works in all areas of the business • That works in all cultures, providing a common language and toolset