Before discussing about the integration of Lean Thinking Management tools with Six Sigma, lets discuss in brief about the two.

What is lean Management

Lean is an evolution of waste elimination and process streamlining techniques that were founded in the Just-In-Time, Toyota Production System, 5S, Focused Factory, TOC and Visual Workplace concepts and applications from as far back as the early 1950’s. One of the mottos of Lean is to only do “what is needed, when it’s needed, in exactly the right quantities, with a minimum amount of resources”.

The core idea of Lean management is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. Simply, lean means creating more value for customers with less resources. Businesses and Leaders in all Industries and services including healthcare and government today are finding ways to apply the principles of lean as a means of producing goods and delivering services that creates value for the customer with the minimum amount of waste and the maximum degree of quality. Many organizations choose not to use the word lean, but to label what they do as their own system, such as the Toyota Production System or the Danaher Business System. Lean Management is applicable for every business and every process as it is not a tactic or a cost reduction programme but a way of thinking and acting for an entire organization.

What is Six Sigma

Six Sigma is one of the most powerful business improvement approaches to evolve in the last decade. Six Sigma is both a business improvement program AND a powerful set of statistically based improvement tools. It is a business management strategy, originally developed by Motorola, that today enjoys widespread application in many sectors of industry. Six Sigma seeks to identify and remove the causes of defects and errors in manufacturing and business processes. It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization (”Green Belts, Black Belts” etc.) who are experts in these methods. Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified financial targets (cost reduction or profit increase).

Reason for Integration

There exist no single system or technique, which is self-sustainable and can be applied alone for the targeted results. Every system has its own merits and demerits. The Lean thinking has its weakness for strategic and operation business needs, sub-optimal application with quick-hit kaizen-type approaches, inadequate substantiation of bottom-line expectations and validation of financial impact, and poor ability to resolve critical variation and defect generating bottlenecks in the process. Although Six Sigma has been proven highly successful in many industries and functional applications, one of the critical weaknesses is the lack of a fundamental methodology for leveraging strategic and operational opportunities to drive the selection and execution of high priority projects.

Integration of Lean Management with Six Sigma

The integration of Lean management tools and Six Sigma produces a synergy that can work wonders for many companies. Companies experienced in the application of Lean and Six Sigma techniques have for some time recognized the compatibility and power of combining these approaches under the umbrella of a single business improvement program. There is a natural linkage between Lean and Six Sigma both at the program-level as well as the project execution level

Some of the tools and principals of Lean marketing can safely be introduced with the Six Sigma Framework.

1. Cause-and-Effect Diagram or Ishikawa and 5 Whys: When the concrete statistical data is not available in the Analyze phase of the Six Sigma, it becomes difficult to identify the root causes of the problem. In such a scenario applying 5 whys of Lean thinking in conjunction with the cause and effect diagram can make the job easier. It is a visual tool to logically organize possible causes of a problem area to the root cause
2. Value Stream Mapping: During the Analyze phase, a value stream mapping map helps categorize value enabling, value adding and non-value adding activities. The introduction of value mapping helps in identifying and eliminating the non-value added activities in each process, thus leading to the reduction in the waiting period between consecutive steps wherever possible. It can also be made a part of Kaizen Cycle that is included in the Analyze and Improve phase.
3. Takt Time: The German word “Takt” meaning ‘beat’. It refers to the time in which a project is completed to the fulfillment of customers’ demand. In the Analyze phase, the cycle times can also be taken into account for comparing it with the current SLAs (Service Legal Agreements). A tolerance level can be set and in case of exceeding tolerance levels, process improvements should be imitated for matching the cycle time with the takt time.
4. Heijunka Or Load Balancing: The load Balancing System of production design is used for getting a more consistent and even flow of process work. In the Design phase, the principle can be used in the Analyze phase to eliminate the bottlenecks that may have been identified during the Analyze phase.
5. Mistake-Proofing or Poka Yoke: The Japanese phrase “Poka Yoke” means mistake proofing. The process is useful when creating a new system with DMADV (Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, Verify) using Six Sigma Technique The Pareto analysis and Ishikawa chart bring out the problems of the current process. During the Improve and Design phases, different ways for elimination of errors can be investigated and the process improved or redesigned in its entirety

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