I was certainly qualified to do the cost accounting in any situation. Some of the so-called "MBZ folk" (my own acronym/abbreviation for "millions, billions, and zillions") actually create real net savings, but in their rush to "prove" (some might say "improve") their numbers, they often "rob Peter to pay Paul" and the reported saving is many multiples of the actual net delivered to the bottom line of the organization.
That said, it doesn't mean the quality initiatives are either good or bad when 6S folk do them. My primary objection has always been the short payback window targeted by 6S folk. Often, those short-term savings are not sustainable because they are like arbitrage profits in the stock market - you have to unwind the position at the end of the trading day. I have seen some short-sighted folk create profits at the expense of another Division within the same organization, resulting in a net loss because of the salary and overhead cost of the 6S folk.
I, myself, used the equivalent of a 6S intiative to generate a one-time $500,000 profit (limited to the operation) over a 14 month period, but it was after I had created an ad campaign that was too successful and we "burned" one year's worth of sales leads generated because they overwhelmed our staff and we alienated countless prospects who were never converted to customers. There is no way to put an accurate figure on that loss of real money (advertising that generated unusable leads) and lost opportunity (alienated prospects) to the organization, but my advertising tab alone was $300,000. I considered myself lucky if I only broke even and didn't lose key staffers to burnout and frustration with so many leads we couldn't handle because funds needed to expand staff and work capacity couldn't overcome the lag time needed for training of new personnel and installation of equipment.
GE was infamous for MBZ claims of 6S savings which rarely made their way to the bottom line of GE at the end of the year. Did that mean the 6S savings weren't real? No! It only meant that large organizations have lots of ebb and flow in operations. Savings in one operation are often offset by unplanned losses in another, regardless of whether 6S was involved.
The big question in many minds is whether the intense focus on a 6S project diverts attention away from other operations which are allowed to deteriorate. Would I have scrambled so hard to find a $500,000 savings if I weren't stinging from my ad fiasco? Desperate people do desperate things, which is why some 6S projects cannibalize other projects not protected by a BB.
The reason the moderators shut the thread down in JSW05's example is that experience has shown some folks lose all rational behavior when someone pushes their 6S buttons (pro or con.)