Integration of Lean and Six Sigma

[pmg-20130220]

Why Lean and Six Sigma integrated Approach?

 

[harry]

I thought you've answered yourself in an earlier post?

Lean Six Sigma is a combined process-improvement methodology that accelerates processes, increases efficiency, and reduces or eliminates variation. Lean Six Sigma projects comprise the Lean's waste elimination projects and the Six Sigma projects based on the critical to quality characteristics. ........

 

[ashsok.jl]

Why Lean and Six Sigma integrated Approach?

Lean, Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma are different methodologies which points the fundamental concept of doing things faster, better, and cheaper, but from different approach. Lean Six Sigma is a evolution of the process improvement approach to improve manufacturing. It starts with a focus on improving quality in order to lower the cost of producing defects. This applies similar principles to improve process efficiency by waste elimination, instead of filling warehouses. The Differences Between Lean, Six Sigma & Lean Six Sigma: Lean and Six Sigma are both points continuous improvement, but have differences in approach and objectives. Lean aims to eliminate waste and increase process efficiency by focusing on process improvements w.r.t speed and cost. Six Sigma aims to reduce defects by eliminating variation by focusing quality improvements. Lean Six Sigma as a whole integrates both of these disciplines. It takes a holistic view of process improvement by focusing on what is important to the customer. It combines the waste reduction strategy embedded in Lean with the analytics of Six Sigma, this helps us arrive a flexible solutions to address the problems. DMAIC is the fundamental framework of Six Sigma and was adopted by Lean Six Sigma, especially for projects targeted to improve existing business processes.

 

[Hemanta Bhatt]

Lean and Six Sigma, taken together, make the toolkit available for any process improvement project much richer than either of them taken singly. Six Sigma traces its origins to the application of statistical methods in an industrial context (starting with the adoption of Statistical Quality Control at Western Electric through the pioneering efforts of Walter Shewhart) whereas Lean traces its origins to Japanese quality concepts (a lot of which came from Lean manufacturing methods used at Toyota).

Leaving apart the differences in the two methodologies, it is always a good idea to use whatever helps to improve a process- Six Sigma alone, Lean alone, Six Sigma + Lean together as well as Six Sigma + Lean + any other tool/concept. Knowing which tool/concept to use requires thoughtful consideration but once the tool/concept to use has been identified its application is perhaps relatively easier.