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Lean Six Sigma (Part 4)
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One last post about Six Sigma, then off to other topics. Lean Six Sigma is an offshoot of Lean Manufacturing combined with Six Sigma. Given todays situation in Detroit, Lean Manufacturing is a lesson that they should have learned years ago.
Lean Manufacturing comes out of Toyota. Lean Manufacturing (also simply called Lean) can be boiled down to a set of two concepts:
Eliminate Waste - As you eliminate waste you improve the entire manufacturing process. Quality is improved as a result.
Concentrate on cleaning up the process, also called smooth flow.
These two concepts, albeit simple, might be viewed as the reason that "Detroit South" is outproducing Detroit. Now how does this affect Six Sigma? Six Sigma concentrated on improved quality through massive reduction of defects. DMAIC provides the methodology for that. Lean provides a different view of the manufacturing process. Lean stays - Look at HOW you're producing the product. The two methodologies go hand in hand. You might say that you improve your process through:
- Insightful Project Management
- Lean Management
- Six Sigma
The United States Army has adopted Lean Six Sigma as the core of its Continuous Process Improvement. In their website they state that:
- Lean cannot bring a process under statistical control
- Six Sigma alone cannot dramatically improve process speed or reduce invested capital
- Both enable the reduction of the cost of complexity
The Army goes on to state that the key concept is:
In short, what sets Lean Six Sigma apart from its individual components is the recognition that you cannot do "just quality" or "just speed," you need the balanced process that can help an organization to focus on improving service quality, as defined by the customer within a set time limit.
For more info: There are nearly two million google hits for the phrase Lean Six Sigma, however Google does return a set of books that deserve attention
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