It is a long time since I mailed you .I am now in mid of my business tour to Europe . Here, with the last six months time period, I was able to visit many prominent business houses , manufacturing industries , health care industries , automotive car plants , Universities and few important consumer durable chain stores in Europe.
This experience is definitely an eye opener to me to learn and update my personal skills. The good news is as a valuable reader you will also benefit from the rich experience I have gained.
I will share this learnings in the future newsletters.
From this week you will start receiving my regular bi-weekly newsletters and free downloads ranging from lean to six sigma.
Please let me know if there is anything that has to be done from my side.
Now over to my regular weekly newsletter.
Integrating Lean and Six Sigma creates a win win situation. The combined effect of Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma leads to improvements in product quality and turnaround time.
These improvements will result not only in cost reduction, but also the possibility of presenting these improvement stories to the customer, building the reputation of the company as a leading supplier of quality, and thereby increasing the probability of getting higher volumes of business.
The philosophy of Lean provides the strategy and creates the environment for improving flow and eliminating waste. Empowered staff are encouraged to continuously improve to create value adding opportunities that otherwise would not be identified. Six Sigma helps to quantify problems, makes evidence based decisions , helps to understand and reduce variation and identifies root causes of variation to find sustainable solutions. Furthermore, it quantifies the financial benefits and savings. This helps to focus efforts in the areas that offer the most potential for improvement.
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Free download “Integrating Lean and six sigma” a special case study
Six Sigma and Lean are both management philosophies and a set of tools. When
comparing, contrasting and integrating, we must look at philosophy and tools separately. You can find a high degree (maybe 90%) of overlap in the philosophies and less of an overlap (maybe 25%) in the tools. However, the differences in the tools are minimized because they are all about improving processes and all based in analytical methods and variation.
The list below outlines philosophy similarities.
Both Lean and Six Sigma
1. are management philosophies associated with improving the performance of a
business
2. require top management commitment and involvement
3. utilize and respect the talents of front-line workers
4. utilize analytical tools and stress the use of data
5. stress empowerment and involvement
6. reduce costs
7. yield short-term results, but are long-term cultural change initiatives
8. focus on improving processes and systems
9. require a focus and closeness to the customer
10. require close relationships with suppliers
Where they differ (slightly):
1. Six Sigma achieves productivity improvements as a result of quality
improvements, Lean more directly attacks productivity through process design
and the elimination on wasted activities and tasks
2. Both focus on process, but Lean seeks to reduce waste in the process, Six Sigma seeks to reduce variation in process parameters that affect Quality characteristics of the product.
