Lean or Six Sigma?
Advice from Joe De Feo, President and Executive Coach
Yogi Berra, the famous Yankee catcher, said it best, "it is déjà vu all over again." Of course he was not referring to Lean and Lean Six Sigma, but it applies just the same. The debate on which methodology, Lean or Lean Six Sigma, is "better," or "easier," or "even faster" is here again.
This is not a new debate. In the 1980's, after Lean made its way into manufacturing companies looking to reduce waste and manage production systems with the Toyota Production System, many organizations abandoned their "quality improvement methods" in favor of Lean. The mantra then, and now, is that Lean was easier, faster, and enabled the involvement of more employees without extensive training classes. The reality is that Lean or kaizen techniques, the way most organizations implement them, are better, easier, and faster, BUT only for the problems they are applied to. The type of problem your organization faces should drive the decision to use Lean or Lean Six Sigma.
If you are solely concerned with process speed and lead time reduction, you can easily use the Lean Rapid Improvement events to tackle the constraints in your system. If you want to have better equipment maintenance, then you should use a Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) program, which is at the heart of maintaining equipment up time. If you are a service company and have no physical goods, no equipment, and few variables, do not use tools that are unnecessary.
If you are trying to solve a problem that has a high risk if the solution is not correct or timely, such as reducing inventory, reducing labor costs, and fixing customer complaints, then the Lean tool set may not be the right choice.
Six Sigma, and now Lean Six Sigma, are today's most popular continuous improvement techniques to solve these more difficult problems. The popularity of these techniques stemmed from Six Sigma Black Belts realizing that many of the critical to quality characteristics from their customers were related to not just solving a defect, but also speeding up throughput and reducing waste. In many cases that is all the customer wanted, as is the case with many service companies. So instead of using the DMAIC tools the Belts began to use the Lean tools. This wider use of Six Sigma with Lean tools has led to Lean Six Sigma. Lean Six Sigma is used to describe the need to focus on both speed and defect reduction. This concept of bringing the two camps, the "lean folks" and the "quality and six sigma folks," together under one system, has created Lean Six Sigma, Sigma Lean, Lean Design for Six Sigma, and so on.
Many executives learn the hard way when they are not completely informed of the similarities and differences between methodologies like Lean and Six Sigma. Many times good methods are abandoned, or worse not chosen to solve company problems, because of a lack of knowledge among the internal process excellence departments. To avoid becoming one of the frustrated many, watch for these five signs your organization is headed for trouble:
When internal experts and external consultants state:
- Lean is faster, better, and cheaper.
Remember this. Lean works best on problems that will benefit from this tool set. Toyota did not begin their quality improvement campaign from Lean; Lean came from their quality improvement efforts.
- Six Sigma will solve all of our problems.
Six Sigma is best used on multi-functional processes or quality problems where the need to improve performance is paramount to business results. You do not need your internal staff over-analyzing simple problems with design of experiments tools when a simple analysis of data will do, or even a PDCA or Root Cause analysis approach. Use Six Sigma on important business problems when you are looking for breakthroughs to occur.
- We do not need both methods, one will do.
Both methods are useful, and even necessary, at some point in time. To avoid false improvement program starts and stops, include education on both Lean and Six Sigma to all employees. This will ensure your employees know the similarities and the differences. If you have other tools or methods in your organization, include them as well. At some point in time, your employees will see the need to use them both at the right time.
- Six Sigma is dead. Lean is dead.
Over time, the methods of continuous improvement evolve. The name of the methods may change, but the ideas remain the same. We went from quality improvement teams, to Six Sigma Teams, to Lean Teams, and now Lean Six Sigma Teams. There will be something next, BUT the core of the method will probably be the same. Heart surgeons replaced clogged blood vessels in the 1980s with a set of techniques different from that which they use today. Similarly, process improvement methods will change, but their purpose will be the same.
- We do not need to improve anymore, let's stop using the methods, they are too expensive.
If you hear this ask yourself one question, do our scorecards tell us that we are meeting our business needs and customer needs, warranting us to stop? More than likely, when someone wants to stop because it costs too much to improve, they do not understand the costs of poor quality or measuring ROI. You should pause some of your programs, but never stop. Why? Because your customers' needs always change. This will force your organization to change its processes to meet their needs. Do not fall behind because your competitors did not stop continuously improving and you did.
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