Basics Explained: Lean Six Sigma

What is Lean Six Sigma?

Six Sigma aims to increase the profits of the company or organization to increase the profits by getting rid of the variability, defects and the waste which will weaken customer loyalty. There are three levels to learn Six Sigma and they are metric, methodology and philosophy. To a person who is involved in Six Sigma for some time, it is a golden rule which cannot be violated under any situations. But for some others Six Sigma is started out of common sense and for some others, it is something that cannot be measured accurately which is to be improved to a point which it can be measured. All these statements are correct but there are drawbacks. More than 3.4 defects per million opportunities should not be produced by a process to achieve Six Sigma and the defect is described as anything outside the customer specifications.

It is necessary to learn the single fundamental hypotheses in the methodology of Six Sigma is that in any process the inputs and outputs as a whole and also the individual steps of the process can be accurately observed, measured and reported. You don’t have a true Six Sigma project in case of missing of any part and because of this the problem cannot be explained in terms of measurable defect, cannot calculate the potential improvement, cannot explain the expected outcome of the project in a measurable way and as a result you will never know whether the project was truly successful or not. The methodology of Six Sigma improves any existing business by regularly reviewing and re-tuning the process. The methodology used by Six Sigma is known a DMAIC to achieve this.

The combining of Six Sigma methodology has become famous for the last five years and most the efforts are aimed at manufacturing operations. The lean tools using with Six Sigma will result in the substantial cost savings. Before Six Sigma project may take about six to nine months to complete and the lean efforts through the one week bursts of activity called Kaizen mostly takes only weeks to deliver the projects with substantial improvements. So Lean Six Sigma is a method of business improvement which focuses on the reduction of variation in all work processes. Unnecessary side effects which include defects and inefficient operations are caused by the process variation. So the outcome of the reduction of process variation is the high quality processes will provide customer satisfaction and increase in profits. To execute this reduction of process variation the Six Sigma is now combined with powerful Lean tools and techniques.

The training of Lean Six Sigma is for executives or senior managers who has to understand the Six Sigma process, to understand the influence of Lean Methodologies and to assess their own organizational skills, to understand the potential benefits, to prepare a business case and for the planning of an effective deployment strategy. The participants or Lean Six Sigma Transactional Green Belt will get a thorough coverage to the tools and techniques which are necessary for the success of Lean DMAIC improvement projects in a service environment. The Green Belt program helps the participants to understand a business project which has to be solved using the tools and methods. Lean Six Sigma Operational Black Belt is used to understand the tool and methods which are used in Lean DMAIC improvement projects in a manufacturing environment. The participants of the Lean Six Sigma Operational Green Belt can understand the methods for successful improvement projects in an operational environment which can be used within their own business. Lean Six Sigma Transactional Black Belt will provide the tools and methods for the successful completion of Lean DMAIC improvement projects in a transactional or service environment.

The advantages of Lean Six Sigma is that it will give customer satisfaction with speed and quality, improve processes, work together for maximum gain and it is based on data and facts.

We are always available to help you clarify the deployment of these effective Lean Six Sigma tools. If you have more questions, contact us at 6Sigma.us.