 |
 |
Testimonials
What is Lean Six Sigma?
Every morning a Gazelle wakes up in Africa. It knows it must run faster than the lion or it will be eaten. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the gazelle or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle, when the sun comes up, you had better be running.
Globalization, more competition, increasing customer demands, whatever the challenges faced, the need to improve has never been greater.
The question is, what do we improve and how?
All organisations operate processes that transform inputs into outputs. These processes are used to provide services or goods, or indeed the support activities that are required, for example recruitment, invoicing or purchasing.
Any process can be considered to have two dimensions of performance, how effective the process is in meeting its objectives (for example quality of output supplied, whether it is supplied when agreed), and efficiency (the resources consumed by the process, for example people, equipment, utilities or time).
Effectiveness
An effective process will satisfy the customer of the process. Customers will judge the quality or adherence to requirements of the product or service, and whether it was delivered in the agreed time.
Efficiency
All processes consume resources. The resources consumed will vary depending on the process involved. Resources consumed include the following:
- People
- Equipment
- Utilities
- Space
Most resources cost money. An efficient process will consume the minimum amount of resources required to transform inputs to outputs and therefore be cost efficient. An efficient process can also be said to have no waste.
To improve organisation performance involves making processes more efficient, more effective, or both, these are the only options for improving existing processes.
The Lean approach has developed from the Toyota production system, and its principles are to identify and eliminate waste in business processes to make them more efficient in the way resources are used. Six Sigma has been made famous by Motorola and GE, and the principles are to develop processes that are more effective for both the business and the customer by identifying and controlling the factors that impact on process variability. Although the two have different objectives, in reality there is a significant overlap as when a process is made more effective, often the efficiency improves, and when waste in a process is reduced, invariably the process becomes more effective.
There is in fact a third option for improving the organisation, and that is to create new products, or new processes. The third component of the Lean Six Sigma system is called Design for Six Sigma, or DfSS for short. The DfSS approach uses methods and tools to reduce risk, improve lead-times and consistency of output for new developments.
The combination of Lean, Six Sigma and Design approaches has become known as Lean Six Sigma. Lean Six Sigma is a systematic approach to identifying and improving important business processes so that they operate efficiently and effectively to achieve customer satisfaction and the organisation's business goals, and developing new products and processes when these are required. Lean Six Sigma tackles improvements on a project-by-project basis, using the organisations own people working together.
Lean Six Sigma uses specific methodologies and tools for tackling improvement projects to achieve success within the framework of People, Projects and Processes. For tackling the improvement of existing processes, whether the requirement is reducing waste or reducing variation, a 5 stage methodology is used. The 5 stages involved are Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control. Lean Six Sigma practitioners refer to this as DMAIC (pronounced D'May-ic).
For the development of new processes or products (often called Design for Six Sigma) a different methodology is used, DMADV (pronounced D'Mad-V), standing for Define, Measure, Analyse, Design, Validate.
The Lean Six Sigma approach has enabled companies both large and small to improve performance and profits dramatically by streamlining operations, improving sales, reducing risk and eliminating defects in everything the organisation does.
Author Biography
Chris Rees - Director of Operations - read more about Chris Rees here
Quick Enquiry or Call Back
Get in touch, ask us anything! How can we help?
Six Sigma Yellow Belt | Six Sigma Green Belt | Six Sigma Black Belt | Six Sigma Master Black Belt
Locations : Lean Six Sigma Training in Birmingham | London | Newcastle | Leeds