Lean Six Sigma

Lean Six Sigma

• A rigorous and structured approach to help manage and improve quality and performance, and to solve potentially complex problems

Lean Thinking

• Focuses on enhancing value for the customer by improving and smoothing the process flow and eliminating waste
• Much of Lean was developed by Toyota
• Many tools come from service organisations (surprisingly?)
• Slight slant towards "efficiency" orientation? (vs Six Sigma)

Lean Principles

• Understand customer and their perception of value
• Identify and understand the value stream for each process and the waste within it
• Enable the value to flow
• Let the customer pull the value through the processes, according to their needs
• Continuously pursue perfection (continuous improvement)

Six Sigma

• Systematic & robust approach to improvement, customer need focused
• Originally out of Motorola
• Sigma: a measure of variation that reveals average difference between any one item & the overall average of a larger population of items
• Slight slant towards "effectivness" orientation? (vs Lean)

Six Sigma Principles

• Understand CTQs of customers & stakeholders
• Understand organisational processes & ensure they reflect customer CTQs
• Manage by fact and reduce variation
• Involve and equip the people in the process
• Undertake improvement activity in a systematic way

Bringing it together

• Lean Six Sigma takes the features of Lean and Six Sigma and integrates them to form seven principles

Lean Six Sigma Principles

• Focus on the customer
• Identify & understand how work is done
• Manage, improve, smooth process flow
• Remove non-value-adding steps & waste
• Manage by fact & reduce variation
• Involve & equip people in the process
• Undertake improvement activity in a systematic way

Process and Tool oriented

• DMAIC
• Value Stream Mapping
• Many other tools
• Accreditation: green, black belts

How can we use Lean Six Sigma?