| Lean tools
are traditionally developed by Industrial Engineering to improve
productivity and eliminate wastes while Six Sigma tools are
originally used by Quality Engineering to improve quality,
reliability and defect level of products and services. The barrier of these
two engineering disciplines are diminishing slowly and both are
converging into a new powerful and practical discipline, namely as
Lean Six Sigma in general and LeanSigma
X-Plan and Service
Lean Sigma and Lean
Sigma Design under our own branded service.
Past was
Lean. Focus in
eliminating non-value added waste in a process with goal of
reducing process cycle times, improving on-time delivery
performance and reducing cost.
Six Sigma. Using
statistical techniques to understand, measure and reduce process
variation with the primary goal of achieving improvements in
service quality and cost.
Today is
Lean Six Sigma. An
integrated and balanced combination of the speed and variation
reduction power of both Lean and Six Sigma to achieve business
management process full optimization.
Six Sigma is deployed
mainly for innovative, breakthrough and continual improvements
under the black belt projects led by Black Belts and Master Black
Belts while Lean is deployed mainly for daily continual
improvements and performance sustaining activities under the lean
kaizen events led by Line Engineers and Supervisors.
Why
do we need Lean Six Sigma?
This below chart
illustrates more steps in the process bring down the overall yield
at various sigma level. Note: This chart is modified from a study
done by Motorola Six Sigma Research Institute.
- Lean eliminates
non-value added steps or waste from the process.
- Six Sigma improve
quality of value add steps by reducing the variability in the process.
Lean
Six Sigma DMAIC Integration Model
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