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Let’s start with the meaning of Lean and Six Sigma. A direct translation might be „streamlined Six Sigma,“ for example. In reality, they are two distinct approaches – Lean Management and Six Sigma – aimed at process improvement.
„Below is an excerpt from our Blue Book, pages 230–245.“
Lean Management + Six Sigma is a combination of two approaches to optimize processes and products. Processes become faster after optimization. Activities in the processes as well as the corresponding products become more defect-free. As a result, companies achieve the highest efficiency and quality. To find optimizations in processes, one looks for causes that reduce the speed of a process or the quality of the product. The reasons why these causes occur can vary greatly in nature. With Lean Management one pursues organizational reasons, with Six Sigma technical reasons. Therefore, the tools used to find these reasons are also different.
Lean Management was made big at Toyota with the Toyota Production System (TPS). Depending on how the users of Lean Management define it for themselves, it can be seen as a method, a program or even a holistic philosophy. Lean Management increases a company’s efficiency by reorganizing processes as well as management.
Through this reorganization, a process requires less time for each activity, thus freeing up more capacity. Reorganization focuses on unnecessary activities that do not add value or worth to the product or service. These needless activities are: unnecessary transportation (T), unnecessary inventory (I), unnecessary human or machine movement (M), unnecessary waiting (W), unnecessary overproduction (O), too much labor invested in an activity without necessity (O), and defects (D) – abbreviated to TIMWOOD or known in lean management as waste.
Six Sigma can also be interpreted as a set of methods, a program, or a philosophy. It was made big at Motorola. The goal of a Six Sigma “program” was to have as few defects in the process as possible. The fewer defects, the higher the quality. The result of a Six Sigma process would statistically produce only 3.4 defects per million defect opportunities. However, that is only a hypothetical goal. The real goal is to get steadily better by eliminating variance in a process, thereby producing fewer defects. Using methods from statistics, quality management and project management, one analyzes processes and reduces errors. This “program” or the methods of the program can be used in all areas of the company – not only in production.
The defect count of 3.4 defects per million defect possibilities takes into account that processes can fluctuate over time. This increases the number of defects. In theory, a Six Sigma process without variation could generate only 2 defects per billion defect opportunities.
Six Sigma stands for the reduction of errors with technical causes. Lean Management stands for the reduction of unnecessary activities in processes that have organizational causes.
The money is in the process! When introducing improvement initiatives in companies, there is often a rejection on the part of the employees, since people are fundamentally skeptical of anything new. Experience shows that this initial rejection is less with Lean Management than with Six Sigma. This is due to the fact that with Lean Management, quick successes can be achieved with simple means. The learning curve for employees is faster when Lean Management is introduced because the tools and methods from Lean Management are easier to understand.
Another plus point for Lean Management is that the majority of companies tend to struggle with improvements whose causes are organizational in nature. This also means that there is a higher number of potential projects for the application of Lean Management.
Lean Management is often close to the process – exactly where the action is. Six Sigma is concerned with quality improvements through the reduction of errors. The causes of these errors, as mentioned at the beginning, tend to be technical in nature. Pure Six Sigma projects generally take longer, but offer very significant benefits. Six Sigma is based on numbers, data and facts with the help of statistics. Lean + Six Sigma is a fusion of the tools and methods of Lean Management and Six Sigma, which can be used depending on the problem.
Projects that can be handled with organizational – i.e. Lean Management – tools and methods usually do not have a long turnaround time because these means are easy to understand. Many of these means are partially comparable to common sense. Projects with purely technical reasons are different. For these, one often needs statistics as well as quality and project management tools, depending on the complexity.
Situation 1
Imagine a situation at a checkout in a department store: at 2:00 p.m. On certain days of the week many customers have to wait too long at the checkout; or customers have to wait too long during specific department store events. Simple means, such as signals, redistribution of staff at certain times or even fast checkouts, can solve such problems. Lean Management tools and methods are available to help you solve such problems in a structured way.
Situation 2
Now imagine a situation where an engineer is to investigate the wear of a road surface. In this case, the traffic situation varies greatly throughout the year. The engineer has to prepare a report that not only records the current situation, but is also expected to provide advice on how to optimize the pavement and use the best possible materials. For such problems one needs more in-depth project management tools, statistics and quality management tools.
As a rule, when selecting a project, care should be taken to ensure that a project or problem can be handled well using Lean Six Sigma and its tools. This requires certain prerequisites. A project that is not about development but about process optimization should also contain a process that is measurable. That means the result of the process, e.g. a product, should be measurable in quality as well as in speed. A Lean Six Sigma project has both of these facets. Fast processes are efficient and good quality means minimal defects in the product. With Lean Six Sigma, processes can be accelerated while reducing defects. To achieve the best results in your project, it is necessary to look at both facets. Always start your project by optimizing the organizational issues, i.e. first look through the Lean lenses, then through the Six Sigma magnifying glass.
In the case of complex problems, it is often not possible to determine right at the beginning whether the project is a Lean Management or a Six Sigma project. First of all, the problem should be defined precisely. This will help determine what possible resources might be needed to work on your project.
Another important requirement for a Lean Management and Six Sigma project – in addition to process and measurability – is complexity. This means that the solution should not be obvious or already known. If the solution is known, you take money in hand and implement it. A simple solution to this problem is therefore not complex. In simple Lean Management projects, the solution or the approach is rather known and only needs to be worked out. In workplace organization, which is usually carried out with the Lean method 5S, there is a clear procedure. For complex Lean Management projects, such as optimizing inventories in a company, Six Sigma statistics should be used in addition to Lean Management tools. This allows probabilities in customer orders, fluctuations in suppliers’ ability to deliver, and the company’s own quality issues to be incorporated into the design of inventories.
Although Lean Management and Six Sigma have opposing goals, they fit together perfectly because normally you can break down any problem within a process to the speed and number of defects.
Lean Six Sigma contains a variety of tools and methods that can be used for almost any problem. The best element from Lean Six Sigma is the Roadmap and the Process Model. The roadmap divides a project into 5 phases. This prevents jumping from the problem to a solution immediately, without prior measurement and proper analysis of numbers, data and facts. In each phase certain tools are expected, which are inquired about by the client of the project (sponsor) at the end of each phase. In addition, these phases are logically connected by the Lean Six Sigma process model. We will describe the process model later in this chapter.
You will see that it is not so easy to find organizational reasons for the causes of problems. However, you can fix these reasons with simple means. For a technically skilled person it is easy to find technical reasons for causes of problems. However, it is often not possible to fix the reasons with simple means. In project management, these means are generally called tools and methods. A method is usually a process that has a fixed procedure in which tools are used to achieve a goal. A tool, on the other hand, stands independently and is a resource that is used in methods.
| Tool | Method |
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The tools of Lean Management date back to the early 20th century and were shaped by Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo, as well as other co-founders of the world-famous Toyota Production System (TPS) and by the Ford Production System. When it comes to its origin, the tools of Six Sigma cannot be exclusively traced back to one creator. In fact, parallels to quality assurance and lean management can be seen. Furthermore persons like Dr. Walter A. Sheward (theory of the statistical process control) or Dorian Shainin (principle of the few important and the many insignificant influence variables) coined Six Sigma later on. Motorola is often cited as the final “inventor” of the Six Sigma methodology.
| Tool/Method | Goal |
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MSA |
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TIMWOOD |
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SPC |
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SMED |
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5S |
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DOE |
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Hypothesis test |
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B&E |
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Project charter |
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Network diagram |
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For a Lean Six Sigma program to be a success, certain roles and functions are required. Just like in a good movie, the actors should play their roles to the best of their ability. Project owners are called Sponsors of a project. The role of a sponsor is to request results from the team at the end of a project phase. If the results are not satisfactory, the project team must do rework before moving on to the next phase. The sponsor can be compared to an auditor in quality management. Auditors in quality management are usually well trained to ask the right questions and identify weaknesses. The director of a good Lean Six Sigma system is the Champion. A champion’s job is to select the right projects and oversee their execution to make Lean Six Sigma a success.
Another, often unnamed, role in a Lean Six Sigma program is the CEO. If management does not get behind the program and supports all efforts, success will not occur.
Lean Six Sigma (LSS) should not be implemented as a program if management thinks it is something for shopfloor personell. Lean Management and Six Sigma – properly applied – cut the turnaround time of optimization projects in half. Management makes the difference in whether a program or initiative – in whatever form – becomes a success and therefore best results can be achieved faster and more sustainably.
The Lean Six Sigma Champion is a leader who responsibly rolls out Lean Six Sigma across the organization. As a champion, you are the top proponent of LSS and assist in the generation, prioritization and selection of LSS projects. You will help release resources and oversee the successful execution of projects through a monitoring system. As a champion, you will support the roll-out process during the implementation of the Lean Six Sigma program at the top management level.
The champion must be named within the company, as the champion is the “flag bearer” of the program. In larger corporations, there is a champion for each business unit so that this responsibility can be spread over several shoulders. Lean Six Sigma should not be seen as a burden by the leadership, but as a support to achieve the goals faster and better. The champion should be able to convince the leaders accordingly. We always recommend a champions workshop with the executives to bring management on board for this journey.
A champions workshop can be combined with a sponsor training or management training. This means that not all participants have to be present on all days and you save personnel resources.
Lean Management and Six Sigma can exist independently or side by side. The benefits of integration are enormous. They speak one language in the company: “Lean Six Sigma-ish.” There is a unified way to use limited resources, plus a unified improvement strategy for the organization to align goals with. Synergy effects between departments, productivity and profitability increase.
The real key to the success of Lean Six Sigma is that the tools of Lean Management and Six Sigma are used in a phase model – the DMAIC roadmap.
The phase model (roadmap) of Six Sigma contains 5 phases into which a project is divided. This was defined by Motorola. In each phase, tools and methods are used to fill the phase with information. At the end of each project phase, the collected information is reviewed by the project sponsor in a so-called gate review meeting. Since the sponsor is normally part of the management, support from the top should be a given.
With more than 4,000 projects and case studies, Alphadi is a leader in the field of Lean Six Sigma and Sales Process Engineering. We advise you holistically so that your goals are achieved sustainably and in the long term.
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