The Journey of Lean Six Sigma So Far

One thing that was made abundantly clear at this conference is that the validity of integrating Six Sigma and Lean is no longer an issue. The two methodologies do work together. It would not be an over-statement to say that most of the companies who presented to the conference use both Lean and Six Sigma, and successfully so. The variable now facing Business Improvement professionals is what is the best way for them to work together?

Paul Docherty, CEO of i-Nexus, devoted his presentation – Making Your Programme Sustainable: Lessons Learnt About Infrastructure from Major Deployments - to why Lean Six Sigma deployments fail to realise their full potential, and ran a workshop on a similar theme. i-Nexus have found that three years into their LSS deployment, two-thirds of the companies could not categorically say they had received a return on their investments, whilst a third had actually cancelled the initiative altogether.

In 1999, Mr Docherty reflected, there was a need to learn more about Six Sigma Tools, statistics, training, and how many Black Belts there were in an organisation. Today however, there is much more of a call to understand how to strategically align the LSS programme to meet companies’ goals, and on how to sustain roles and resources.

Further research by i-Nexus found that companies who excelled in their deployment had formalised an improvement cycle, whereby they not only realised where they were in the execution of their projects but also applied a measurement on their performance based on their own stringent expectations. This consequently led to a standardisation of the way they worked, and reinformed the next selection of projects in a systematic way. It was about connecting measurement with action and standardisation.

Celestica, an electronics manufacturing services company, is enthusiastic about its Lean Six Sigma programme, but they used to keep the two methodologies separate. George Dramowicz, Director of Corporate Quality, presented at the conference on how Celestica discovered that in keeping the two separate they not only created inefficiencies, but defects in their process. The two groups were effectively fighting against each other in many areas, and confusing the customer who had to talk to separate people from each group about the same things. When they were integrated, the improved communication and particularly the combined toolbox greatly benefited not only the organisation, but the customer as well.

For some companies, the issue is not the wholesale integration of the two methodologies, but using the right one at the right time, as required. Nimbus develops and implements a process mapping and performance management solution called control-ES, and their co-founder, Richard Parker, gave an interesting presentation concerning the implementation of control-ES as part of the business improvement programme at Toyota.

It is an interesting fact that whilst Toyota are rightly held in high esteem for their hugely successful Lean programme, this is only in their manufacturing departments. In all other areas of their organisation, Toyota face the same challenges as everyone else and in their implementation into these areas there is no differentiation or definition of Lean or Six Sigma. They simply use the correct tools as they are needed, and this way of applying the methodologies – the right tool for the right job - was repeated many times during the course of the conference.

Richard Parker told the conference that “…one of the key things that [Toyota] are looking at [at this stage of implementation]…is that we need to deliver process management capabilities to drive sustainable Lean processes. We can't get to the SS type tools and variability type issues yet because we don't have one way of working."

Using Lean at the initial stages of a quality initiative, before gradually implementing a longer-term, rigorous Six Sigma programme, was identified by several organisations as being particularly beneficial. Jean-Pierre Scarlakens described how Sauer-Danfoss Europe used the best aspects of both simultaneously: Lean to get rid of wastes and improve throughputs; and Six Sigma to stabilize processes and decrease defects. M. Scarlakens said, however: “If I could start again, then I would start with Lean, not with Six Sigma.” Use Lean tools to address the big issues fast and get the focus, before bringing in Six Sigma for more rigorous culture change.

It therefore became apparent that it is the combined toolbox that the two methodologies brings that is the most important and beneficial thing. As Tina Hüsing of Motorola said in her presentation: “It's about people, it's about change management, it's about simple roadmaps. It’s not about using all of the tools that are out there, but just using what is important to solve the problem to drive the business. That's all there is."