Lean Six Sigma – a combination of methodologies for better results.

1. Work­ers are not just vari­able cogs in the sys­tem; they need to be tru­ly involved in all pro­duc­tion process­es, from the sim­plest to the most com­plex; this is pos­si­ble only with gen­uine respect from man­age­ment for employ­ees and an under­stand­ing of the need for con­tin­u­ous pro­fes­sion­al growth for each employ­ee of the company;
2. team task man­age­ment must inte­grate tech­nolo­gies, reg­u­la­tions, and human resources;
3. the key fac­tor for suc­cess is chang­ing the cor­po­rate culture.

Lean is a cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous oper­a­tional improve­ment in the com­pa­ny. It is an ongo­ing effort to elim­i­nate waste and increase effi­cien­cy. It is each employ­ee’s per­son­al atti­tude toward how effec­tive­ly they per­form their func­tions and how the process­es at their work­place pro­vide addi­tion­al val­ue to cus­tomers. In order to achieve max­i­mum oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy, it is nec­es­sary to improve all process­es not only from the per­spec­tive of the com­pa­ny but also from the per­spec­tive of the cus­tomer…

Igor Pol­ishakov, Trans­for­ma­tion Direc­tor of Kyivstar

Which com­pa­nies use Lean methodology:

• Gen­er­al Motors
• VALEO
• Ford Motor Company
• New Bal­ance
• Cal­tex
• Tikkuri­la
• “EVRAZ UKRAINE” and others.

It is encour­ag­ing that process­es aimed at the wide imple­men­ta­tion of this prac­tice have also inten­si­fied in Ukraine:

Today lean is one of the best glob­al prac­tices for improv­ing the effi­cien­cy of any orga­ni­za­tion, regard­less of its size or field of activ­i­ty. We believe that a deep­er under­stand­ing and appli­ca­tion of the cul­ture of lean pro­duc­tion will con­tribute to a seri­ous trans­for­ma­tion of Ukrain­ian busi­ness, enhanc­ing its com­pet­i­tive­ness in Euro­pean and glob­al mar­kets and ulti­mate­ly becom­ing a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the social and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment of the coun­try…

Sergiy Komberyano, Pres­i­dent of Lean Insti­tute Ukraine

What to read:

• Wom­ack, James P., Jones, Daniel T., ​“Lean Man­u­fac­tur­ing: How to Elim­i­nate Waste and Achieve Pros­per­i­ty for Your Company.”
• Michael Thomas W. Wad­er, ​“How to Assess Your Company’s Lean­ness. A Prac­ti­cal Guide.”
• Don Tap­ping, Anne Dunn, ​“Lean Office: Elim­i­nat­ing Wast­ed Time and Money.”

A lit­tle his­to­ry: what is ​“Six Sigma”?

1. Sig­ma (Greek let­ter σ) – the stan­dard devi­a­tion, which demon­strates the mag­ni­tude of devi­a­tions for a spe­cif­ic sam­ple (mea­sur­ing the results of a process under dif­fer­ent input data).
2. The more oppor­tu­ni­ties for vari­a­tion of inter­nal and exter­nal pro­duc­tion fac­tors, the high­er the lev­el of qual­i­ty deviations.
3. The small­er the range of val­ues for a spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter­is­tic, the high­er the qual­i­ty of the pro­duced goods.

• define
• mea­sure
• ana­lyze
• improve
• con­trol.

Visu­al­ly, the process of work­ing with the 6 sig­ma con­cept can be imag­ined as follows:

The method­ol­o­gy indeed works for var­i­ous fields and coun­tries, as:

1. The aver­age salary for pro­fes­sion­als with a Six Sig­ma Yel­low Belt cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is 68,294 US dol­lars (accord­ing to Burn­ing Glass).
2. Those who mas­tered the prin­ci­ples of Six Sig­ma earned more than those who did not: +12,475 US dol­lars in Cana­da (accord­ing to ASQ​.org).

In addi­tion, the method­ol­o­gy is used by com­pa­nies such as:

• Gen­er­al Electric
• Ford Motor Company
• 3M
• FedEx
• KrAZ
• Cater­pil­lar Inc
• Hon­ey­well.

What to read:

• Craig Gygi, Neil DeCar­lo, Bruce Williams, ​“Six Sig­ma for Dummies.”
• Peter S. Pendy, Robert P. New­man, Roland R. Keveneg, ​“The Six Sig­ma Way: How Gen­er­al Elec­tric, Motoro­la and Oth­er Top Com­pa­nies Are Hon­ing Their Performance.”

Ben­e­fits of Using Lean Six Sigma

• When talk­ing about the glob­al ben­e­fits of using the sym­bio­sis of lean man­u­fac­tur­ing and Six Sig­ma, their list resem­bles a puz­zle, where the short­com­ings inher­ent in lean method­ol­o­gy are suc­cess­ful­ly com­pen­sat­ed by the Six Sig­ma approach (and vice versa):
• The foun­da­tion of lean man­u­fac­tur­ing is the elim­i­na­tion of waste, such as defects (defec­tive prod­ucts). At the same time, it does not involve search­ing for and cal­cu­lat­ing the options of where this defect can come from. And, of course, there is no work done on find­ing ways to reduce the vari­abil­i­ty of inter­nal and exter­nal pro­duc­tion fac­tors. But in the Six Sig­ma con­cept, this is prioritized.
• Since the Six Sig­ma method­ol­o­gy was orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped in the con­text of improv­ing cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, all its key points are tied to track­ing the rela­tion­ship between ​“process fea­ture — end-user sat­is­fac­tion lev­el.” In lean man­u­fac­tur­ing, this met­ric rela­tion­ship is not monitored.
• The Six Sig­ma method­ol­o­gy requires the ini­tial estab­lish­ment of for­mal­ized pro­ce­dures for imple­ment­ing the con­cept. First and fore­most, the respon­si­bil­i­ties of man­age­ment, the specifics and tim­ing of train­ing, met­rics for track­ing progress or regress, etc., are defined.
• Lean man­u­fac­tur­ing deals with sev­er­al types of waste char­ac­ter­is­tic to the enter­prise, while Six Sig­ma focus­es on defect elimination.
• Time and ​“frozen” assets are very impor­tant fac­tors that can be opti­mized dur­ing lean man­u­fac­tur­ing, while in the Six Sig­ma method­ol­o­gy, these cri­te­ria are not considered.

Prin­ci­ples that Help Achieve Project Suc­cess Based on Lean Six Sig­ma (LSS)

1. Main focus – ful­fill­ing cus­tomer needs. First, it is nec­es­sary to estab­lish the bench­mark below which cus­tomer and mar­ket require­ments are not allowed to fall. It is also impor­tant to under­stand what is valu­able in your prod­uct for the cus­tomer and to devel­op it. And what does not rep­re­sent val­ue – to discard.
2. The guar­an­tee of suc­cess – data col­lec­tion to iden­ti­fy spe­cif­ic prob­lems and com­bat them. Sta­tis­tics are essen­tial! The caus­es of defects and cus­tomer dis­sat­is­fac­tion are often not obvi­ous. One should not try to tack­le every­thing at once. This will only lead to chaos.
3. Estab­lish com­mu­ni­ca­tion. All par­tic­i­pants in the work process must know the prin­ci­ples of LSS; oth­er­wise, it will result in dis­as­ter rather than progress. Edu­ca­tion is everything!
4. Track results and adjust them. Moti­vate indi­vid­ual and pro­fes­sion­al growth of employ­ees, with­out turn­ing them into silent execu­tors of orders from above.

• “Black Belt”: a per­son who will become the strate­gist of the com­pa­ny and glob­al­ly man­age the process of imple­ment­ing LSS;
• “Green Belt”: indi­vid­u­als who become the dri­ving force behind the imple­men­ta­tion of the Six Sig­ma con­cept, ide­al­ly, before start­ing train­ing, an employ­ee aim­ing for this title should choose a mini-task with­in the com­pa­ny that requires prac­ti­cal work dur­ing the training;
• “Yel­low Belt”: work under the direc­tion of ​“Green Belts”, per­form­ing nar­row spe­cif­ic tasks in which they can and should be true experts;
• “White Belt”: indi­cates that a per­son has mas­tered the basic set of knowl­edge and under­stands what the Six Sig­ma method­ol­o­gy is.

The results of apply­ing Lean Six Sig­ma are impressive:

Who Ben­e­fits from Using Lean Six Sigma?

1. Those who have very lit­tle time. Yes, Lean Six Sig­ma will enable opti­miza­tion of process­es and elim­i­nate what does not bring value.
2. Those who are not the giants of the indus­try. Per­haps they are not giants because they spend time and mon­ey elim­i­nat­ing their own mis­takes due to a lack of nec­es­sary skills?
3. Those who have lit­tle mon­ey. Imple­men­ta­tion of the con­cept can be start­ed with intro­duc­to­ry webi­na­rs (often free) and read­ing lit­er­a­ture (not so expen­sive, espe­cial­ly if you buy e‑book versions).
4. Those work­ing in the ser­vice sec­tor. Yes, this method­ol­o­gy is suit­able for any busi­ness with repet­i­tive oper­a­tions (order for­ma­tion, deliv­ery organization).
5. Those who are not very famil­iar with sta­tis­tics and do not have spe­cial­ists of that pro­file on staff. The for­mu­las for cal­cu­la­tions are quite sim­ple, and in gen­er­al: there are online calculators.

Which com­pa­nies are already using the methodology:

• AT&T
• New Style JSC
• Wal-Mart
• Agro­gen­er­a­tion
• Star­bucks
• DTEK Ener­gy
• Mer­ck
• ATB
• Kyivs­tar
• Mar­i­upol Ilyich Iron and Steel Works
• Coca-Cola.

Tools need­ed for devel­op­ing Lean Six Sig­ma in the enterprise:

1. 5S — the sys­tem of orga­niz­ing and ratio­nal­iz­ing the workplace;
2. Makiga­mi maps;
3. Ishikawa dia­grams;
4. 5 Whys;
5. poka-yoke (baka-yoke, poka-yoke);
6. sta­tis­ti­cal tools;
7. Gantt charts;
8. Pare­to charts;
9. and more.

What to read:

• Michael L. George, ​“Lean Man­u­fac­tur­ing + Six Sig­ma in Ser­vices: How the Speed of Lean Man­u­fac­tur­ing and the Qual­i­ty of Six Sig­ma Help Improve Business”.
• Jeff Cox, D.J. Jacob, Susan Berg­land, ​“New Goal: How to Com­bine Lean Man­u­fac­tur­ing, Six Sig­ma, and The­o­ry of Constraints”.

Con­clu­sion