Lean Six Sigma: What Is It?

Posted on 24. Apr, 2009 by carolesf in Articles

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Lean and Six Sigma

Most people in business today have heard the term “Six Sigma.”  Over the past few years, though, we’ve also begun to see the term “Lean Six Sigma.”  You may be wondering, “What exactly is Lean Six Sigma?  Is it different from “regular” Six Sigma?”

Originally, Lean and Six Sigma were seen as competing methods.  The Lean approach focused on minimizing lead time for a given process, seeking speed and efficiency.  Six Sigma focused on minimizing variability in a given process, seeking to minimize minimizing defects in output.  Followers of each approach were quick to point out the shortcomings of the other method.  A Lean process could still produce poor-quality outputs; and a Six Sigma process may not necessarily have been faster or more efficient than the process it replaced.

But why should you have to choose between quality and speed?  Shouldn’t the ideal business process result in both quality and speed?

This realization led business leaders to see Lean and Six Sigma as the complementary tools that they are.  Using the integrated Lean Six Sigma approach, a company can improve both efficiency and quality — at the same time.

Sound good?  Broadly speaking, here’s how Lean Six Sigma works.

The basic problem-solving framework is known as DMAIC:  Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. 

Define & Measure: 

Identify the process and problem we want to work on.  Then, measure the extent of the problem. 

For the target process, the Black Belt leading the project will produce a an As-Is map.  The idea here is to capture the process as it currently exists.  Not as it was designed to be.  Not as we wish it could be.  But as it is.  (This is typically quite an eye-opening exercise.)  The value stream map identifies costs in the process. 

Analyze

Next, the Black Belt will want to capture the voice of the customer, to identify issues that are critical to quality — in the customer’s eyes.  Remember, the customer is the key stakeholder in any business process.  If the business doesn’t keep its customers happy, none of the other stakeholders will be around for long.  Therefore, the costs in the value stream map can be put into one of two bins from the customer’s perspective:  Either value-add or non-value-add costs.  In other words, ask yourself this question about any of the identified process costs:  “Will the customer be willing to pay for this?”  If YES, it’s a value-add cost.  If NO — get rid of it; it’s a non-value-add cost. 

Here I want to remind you of something I said in an earlier post:  Defects are a waste that the customer does not want to pay for.  This fact illustrates why the Lean and Six Sigma methods of process improvement, in reality, work so well together:  Both approaches zero in on this point. 

Improve:

Now that the Lean Six Sigma team has identified areas of wasted cost, wasted time, and/or sources of defect-producing variability, we can revisit the process map.  Now we define what the process should look like. 

Control:

The team’s work doesn’t end with a new and improved process map.  We must also consider how to avoid a similar problem in the future, and how to recognize it more quickly if it does occur.  In other words, we must ensure that we can maintain control over this new process as it is moved from the Powerpoint slide into the real world.  This is the Control phase of the DMAIC framework. 

If the Lean Six Sigma team has done its job well, the new process should be shorter, faster, less costly, and more effective than the old process.

Welcome back to Lean Six Sigma Source! Thanks for your continued support.

Related posts:

  1. Value Stream Mapping: Get To Know Your Process
  2. What is Lean Six Sigma?
  3. Lean Thinking Generates Value — And Profits
  4. The Misuse & Abuse of the Term – Efficient
  5. Process Mapping: Creating Business Success

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