WHAT IS LEAN SIX SIGMA?
We know very well that LEAN, SIX SIGMA, or LEAN SIX SIGMA are not common topics in personal life or - sometimes - even in a business environment.
Let’s see together what represents each one of them and how this could be a life changer for you.
Lean is a set of management practices to improve efficiency and effectiveness by eliminating waste. The core principle of lean is to reduce and eliminate non-value-adding activities and waste.
What is Six Sigma?
Six Sigma aims to reduce variation and defect rates in production processes through statistical analysis. To do this, Six Sigma uses one of two, 5-step approaches – either the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) or the DMADV Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, and Verify).
Why Six in Six Sigma?
There are 6 main principles is this is why is Six in Six Sigma. These principles are:
1. Always focus on the customer/main beneficiary
This means that there is also a main focus on the customer or the main beneficiary and their experience.
2. Continuous improvement is key
While most other approaches are focused on the end goal, Six Sigma focuses on continuous improvement. This means that as soon as the process ends, it restarts to seek for next level of quality.
3. Reducing process variation is critical
Using simple words, this means that standardizing processes is very useful to mitigate any differences in the approach used. To give you an example (thinking of EXCEL), if one person is sorting data by columns, and another person is sorting data by rows, it would be very difficult to consolidate data from the 2 persons.
4. Eliminating waste
In the Six Sigma vocabulary, waste is represented by anything that could be simplified. Again, using an example, if you need to go from point A to point B, and you make a turnaround by point C, that could be waste; making it simple, from A to B, that would be both efficient, and waste management.
5. Leadership development
In both professional and personal environments, there is always a leader. In the professional world, it’s easy to identify leaders by their influence among the other employees, or by their job role. In the personal context, there is the same, sometimes not that obvious, but there is a person that is being followed by others, consciously or unconsciously. And, leadership development refers to the fact that the more a leader is prepared, the more the individual or group outcome will be beneficial.
In the Six Sigma world, there are different “Belt” levels to indicate the individual's experience in the method.
The Six Sigma “Belts” are:
White Belts: Newbies to the Six Sigma method, white belts receive a few hours of training as a crash course introduction to the concept, but aren’t directly involved in Six Sigma projects regularly.
Yellow Belts: Yellow belts are a tad more involved than white belts. They understand Six Sigma and may play a supporting role in process mapping or improvement tasks within a larger project.
Green Belts: Green belts are mentored by someone with a Sigma black belt. They use Six Sigma methods daily in their work and may take leadership roles on some improvement projects.
Black Belts: Six Sigma black belts are typically the leaders for improvement projects. They have advanced knowledge in team management, Six Sigma project tools, designing processes, and using software to conduct statistical analysis.
Master Black Belts: Master black belts are the highest certification in the Six Sigma methodology. They manage black and green belts, mentor and train others in Six Sigma, and consult on particularly challenging projects.
6. Define and control the processes
Six Sigma is based on the RCA (Root Cause Analysis), meaning that it aims to fix the “core” problem that is generating all the issues that are linked to that problem. And, this is what we call Define. As an example of a Root Cause, we can imagine that a person is joining late meetings as it’s coming late to work. The obvious, or what would be the apparent issue, would be to have a discussion with that person to join earlier the meetings, but….most probably, it won’t work if the root cause is not coming from a behavioral perspective. By asking a series of WHYs (and we will see them in a bit), we can define the problem as being a mobile phone setup that impacts the alarm clock of the person and, consequently, they are not getting up on time, they arrive late to work, and they end by being late to meetings. So, fixing that mobile phone setup issue and constantly controlling the setup, would represent identifying the Root Cause and controlling the process.
Six Sigma methodologies
The main methodologies in Six Sigma are":
The RCA (as we saw it): understanding the real cause of the problem, and not the apparent impact.
5 WHYs (that we just saw): is the practice of asking WHY repeatedly whenever a problem is encountered in order to get beyond the obvious symptoms to discover the Root Cause.
PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, and Act): Six Sigma calls this the DMAIC method (define, measure, analyze, improve, and control). PDCA is also people-oriented, while Six Sigma is process-based.
5S System, a method for reducing waste through five steps (sort, set in order, shine, standardize, sustain).
What is Lean Six Sigma?
Lean Six Sigma combines the best of both, Lean + Six Sigma, for highly efficient processes. The “beneficiaries” of Lean Six Sigma are helped to eliminate waste. They also receive just-in-time (JIT) training regularly, and the tools they are given to identify and eliminate waste are designed to be easily understood and implemented.
Conclusion
Lean Six Sigma is a management approach and method that endeavors to eliminate any wasteful use of resources plus defects in production processes to improve employee and company performance, and ultimately people’s life.
If you want to learn more about Six Sigma, you can watch also this video: