The Similarities and Differences of Six Sigma, Lean, and Kaizen
Six Sigma, Lean, and Kaizen are all strategies that hold their roots in business for the positive improvement of functions for particular entities. These strategies are unique in their global applicability and specific processes and yet similar with regard to the manner in which they are structured. They can be applied to improve processes for anything from large scale manufacturing to something as simple as gardening. The purpose of this paper is to introduce these individual strategies and then illustrate the similarities and differences among them.
Individual Strategies
Six Sigma was first introduced in the 1980’s by none other than Motorola. It was not however necessarily a novel concept at the time so much as it drew from a conglomerate of proven manufacturing principles. It is strikingly similar to the scientific method in design. Six Sigma approaches areas that may not necessarily be viewed as problematic with an open mind. It seeks to analyze problems or questions with a stepwise, statistical, and quantitative focus in order to discover, fix, or disprove problems that may or may not exist within a process. By doing this Six Sigma can improve efficiency and therefore improve positive outcomes for whatever the endpoint may be (Mast, Bisgaard, & others, 2007).
Lean is a similar concept to Six Sigma. It is a method designed to improve a process to ultimately save value in some way. Lean was originally
Lean Six Sigma concepts were introduced in the book titled Leaning into Six Sigma: The Path to Integration of Lean Enterprise and Six Sigma (Lean Six Sigma). Lean Six Sigma methodologies combine lean manufacturing and Six Sigma strategies to rely on improved performance from a collective team effort that systematically reduces variation and removes seven kinds of waste, known as Muda. Muda includes any unnecessary motion, transport, wait time, inappropriate processing, excess inventory, overproduction, and defects (Lean Six Sigma). Furthermore, Lean Six Sigma methods aim to provide customers with the best possible quality, cost, and delivery (ASQ.org, n.d.). In all, Lean Six Sigma is a business performance improvement strategy that uses a systematic approach to improving the way people advance processes. Its methodologies allow for systematically enriched processes to satisfy the customer and make money. Simply put, Lean Six Sigma as a business enhancer, ingrained with tools and techniques people can use to learn how to improve their processes (iSixSigma,
1. Six Sigma is a management philosophy that sets objectives, collects data and analyzes results as a way to remove wasted expenses from its processes and help reduce the number of defective products produced. Six Sigma uses quality measures to strive for near perfection by eliminating errors and variables.
Production practices have had an important role in satisfying the dynamic market. Many approaches have being developed in order to respond effectively to specific business requirements. In fact, some areas of management have focused its study on the overseeing, designing, and controlling the process of production in an effort to find the best methodology that ensures the business success and performance. However, complexities arise in this field because many variables such as costs, inventory, scheduling, suppliers, etc have to be considered in any business. Lean approach and the traditional approach are two points of view that aim to address this complexities, and those will be examined in this essay.
Successful deployment of Lean Six Sigma is often considered a function of the inputs with those being shown below in figure 1.1. As the companies are evaluated keep in mind those critical X’s are often evaluated as the function Y = f(X) or Outputs = f(Inputs). In other words by controlling the inputs an organization can predict the output of the Lean Six Sigma implementation. This point is key when evaluating the difference between successful and not-so-successful implementations.
Lean production and Six Sigma help a company to make the production and the workers work more efficient. The processes allow different types of programs to be put in place to ensure the workers and the production process operate at the optimal levels. The processes ensure that each element of the production and looks at each step to ensure that the process is working in a more efficient way (Wisner , Tan, & Leong, 2012).
Lean Six Sigma combines Lean’s time-focused waste-elimination philosophy to dynamic analytical problem solving toolkit of Six Sigma.
Lean Six Sigma is a combination of two business-improvement systems, Lean and Six Sigma. Lean refers to the reduction of waste, or the elimination of unnecessary steps to increase speed and productivity. Six Sigma is the reduction of variance to improve system performance. Ultimately, the depot’s bottom line is a process that frequently produces a high-quality product, on time and within or below established budgets, so that equipment can be returned to the Warfighter quickly and at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer.
Design can be related to the creation of products goods and services for the benefit of customer satisfaction. When a product is not created effectively the organization could be plagued with costly problems down the line. However, Six Sigma uses tools that will allow companies protection from future problems and widespread liabilities (Kumar et al., 2009). If an organization implements six sigma in well planned out and methodical way, the benefits for the organization could be endless and have a positive effect well into the future of the organization. Therefore, main focus of Six Sigma is to ensure speedy breakthrough performances, substantial financial outcomes, and to have long lasting effects. Another component of Six Sigma is Total Quality Management which focuses things such as strategy, process, and the end
Six Sigma is a highly disciplined process that helps us focuses on Problem solving and delivering near-perfect products and services. Why "Sigma"? The word is a statistical term that measures how far a given process deviates from perfection. The central idea behind Six Sigma is that if you can measure how many "defects" you have in a process, you can systematically figure out how to eliminate them and get as close to "zero defects" as possible. The Six Sigma methodologies are a business philosophy and initiative that enables world-class quality and continuous improvement to achieve the highest level of customer satisfaction. Metrics established that align an organisation’s strategic goals and values to that of their customer’s needs and
Lean Thinking is an integrated system of standards, procedures, tools, and techniques that focus on harmonizing work flows, managing differences in production flows, and lessening waste. The process provides several standard solutions to common organizational problems like complexity reduction and visual management. The
Lean Six Sigma approach is recognized widely and has been implemented predominately in manufacturing rather than other industries. To illustrate the point, this paper draws attention to the adoption of Lean Six Sigma in various industries with a case study. The combination of Lean tools and Six Sigma methodology is used to improve the process and quality by eliminating the variations and creating workflow in a process. The hypothesis of this study was that the Six Sigma technique can be used along with lean tools in order to improve process and quality in any area of industries. The review of case study discovered the use of
Lean is defines the manufacturing philosophy that reduces the time between the shipping and customer demand, which based on the systematic method by eliminating waste, that means giving the customer what they want when they want it, and don 't waste whatever. Rahmana, Sharif and Esa (2013) suggested lean production is mentioned to improve the company 's performance from the philosophy in reducing waste in order. That means, lean system destination is the decrease cost by removing the non-value activities, which they are applying a category of tools and techniques for checking and eliminating defective in the production process. In the Evenort Company should emulate the five overriding principles of lean thinking in terms of implementing lean that there is guarantee the company has been driving correctly in the lean manufacturing (Cardiff 2015) as can show in table 1.
Before, Six Sigma and Lean have now and again been seen just about as opponent philosophies, with some organizations picking either as their essential change vehicles. Two of the most capable powers in assembling and now the more extensive inventory network are Six Sigma and Lean. Generally, numerous organizations have embraced either as their essential way to deal with operational change, or now and again utilized both however as genuinely autonomous devices. Progressively, in any case organizations are seeing the advantage of joining the two strategies into a more coordinated procedure that uses the best of every methodology, which can be very correlative. Numerous trust this Six Sigma Lean technique is the most ideal approach to enhance general store network results and handle process change all the more comprehensively. Incline, the name given to the Toyota Production System in the book The Machine that Changed the
Looking at the success of Motorola, many companies like Texas Instruments, Allied Signal etc started using Six Sigma methodology to bring organization-wide improvements.
Lean is a process where creating more value to customers by minimizing wastage, time with less resources. Lean organization understand the customer value and try to increase proceed which adding more value to the business. In order to accomplish the lean thinking