Six Sigma is the process of improving quality by eliminating errors in the production process. This in turn is where the money comes from. But what does being Lean add to Six Sigma?
The Lean part comes from the lean manufacturing methodology that is centered on a simple working principle: create more value with less work. Thus, Lean Six Sigma proves to increase quality by eliminating errors in product development while accelerating the company’s decision making process that gives rise to a high return of investment. This means that an organization will drastically reduce costs during product development.
But more than that, Lean Six Sigma takes on the perspective of the customer to enhance the whole experience. The focus is to eliminate any non value added consumption of resources and errors by equipping the people who work for the company with all the strategies and techniques to do so. With Lean Six Sigma, anything that the customer would not be willing to pay for if left on his device will be eliminated. These are the errors in the process that are causing a lot of money wastage for the company.
Improve Company Efficiency
Most of the issues center on speed, quality, and cost. Some of these inefficient errors include transportation and inventory issues, unnecessary movement of persons or equipment, time management failure, over production and over processing, and defective products. In the long run, all of these cause significant money from the company and these costs will be passed to the customers. This is definitely not the way to increase return of investments and Lean Six Sigma will fix this wastage to come up with a more cohesive, functional, and productive process.
Of all the issues, speed gets the highest emphasis in Lean six Sigma as it shows how high productivity is tied with speed. There are two principles implemented with Lean Six Sigma:
- Delight your customers with speed and quality; and
- Improve process flow and speed.
This shows how bonded speed is with excellence. But it is not just any kind of speed. The speed that Lean Six Sigma teaches focuses on identifying the core processes of a company and applying focus on how to make them as highly efficient as possible. When you streamline the core processes, days will be cut off, inventories will decrease, and productivity will be high. It is all about adding discipline to the process to get products and services done on time with good quality and when you can do both, customers will be highly satisfied and the money takes care of itself.