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Evolution of ‘Lean Six Sigma’
You might have observed that today everybody speaks about ‘Lean Six Sigma’ instead of ‘Six Sigma’ or ‘Lean’ alone, why? It’s pretty simple and obvious, because ‘Lean’ and ‘Six Sigma’ complement each other. Though both were discovered at different time frames and different places in the world, smart professionals soon realized the synergy of the two streams.
Lean took birth at Toyota, Japan, and soon became the norm of all the automobile industry because of its deep penetrating ability within any organization to improve the operational efficiency and overall improvements. Later, it was embraced by all sorts of industries from IT to Healthcare to Finance and so on.
Whereas, Six Sigma was discovered at Motorola, USA. It’s entry was perfect at the time when the whole world was in dire need of a structured approach to solve chronic business issues. It sold like a hot cake within the top fortune 500 companies. In fact both Lean and Six Sigma co-existed in isolation for quite a long time before few smart people bundled them together.
Six Sigma, which in itself is a powerful methodology, but it becomes deadly when it gets blended with Lean. It’s capable of providing long term sustainable solutions for all sorts of business issues convincingly. This is the reason why the whole fraternity around the globe is now practising Lean and Six Sigma together to gain maximum benefits with optimum resources.
So, in a nutshell, ‘Lean management’ and ‘Six Sigma methodology’ complement each other synergistically, and provide effective sustainable solutions for chronic business issues of all sorts of organizations. These solutions always serve value propositions to customers.
Continuous Process Improvement: Toyota and Lean
Deming's teachings and the need for Japanese industry to make a successful comeback following a catastrophic war combined to bear fruit for Toyota. Toyota’s leadership had visited the concepts of quality prior to WWII, but improved performance and efficiency became a more critical goal given the nature of Japan's economy and resources in the 1940s and 50s. Taking manufacturing ideas attributed to Henry Ford, Toyota leaders applied statistics and new quality concepts to create a system they felt would increase production and allow for variable products while reducing costs and ensuring quality.
Several individuals were instrumental in the ultimate development of the Toyota Production System. They infused the process with automated machinery, quality controls to keep defects from occurring, and efficiency tools that had not yet been applied with such detail and consistency. One man, Kiichiro Toyoda, had previous factory experience. In his previous jobs, he added efficiencies to processes in textile mills through conveyor and other automated systems.
Toyoda introduced the same concepts on certain lines in the Toyota manufacturing process. Later, Eiji Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno introduced concepts known as Just-in-Time and jidoka, which are the pillars of the Toyota Production System.
The principles driving Toyota's system, and later, the foundation of Lean Process Management or Lean Six Sigma, include:
● Defining customer values
● Identifying the value stream for customer needs and desires
● Identifying waste in the process
● Creation of a continuous process flow
● Continually working to reduce the number of steps and time it takes to reach customer satisfaction
Lean management is highly concerned with removing waste from any process. Waste increases costs and time spent on a process, making it undesirable in any form.
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