Leaner Six Sigma

Making Lean Six Sigma Easier and Adaptable to Current Workplaces

Terra Vanzant Stern, PhD

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138387928
• eBook ISBN: 9780429759574
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Since the 1980s, Lean and Six Sigma have been used independently to make existing processes better, faster and more cost effective. For almost twenty years, countless companies have embraced the power of blending the two process improvement methodologies. This has resulted in major financial successes throughout the world, but no one denies that we have learned a lot in the last two decades.

Just in time to meet the challenges we will experience in 2020, and beyond, SSD Global Solutions has introduced Leaner Six Sigma (LrSS). LrSS makes the concepts and tools within these two popular methodologies easier and quicker to understand. Regardless, if you plan to take an industry-standard exam or simply want to apply critical-thinking and problem-solving models to your daily life, this book helps you rapidly navigate your path.

Originally, to steer our way through traditional Six Sigma, it was necessary to understand complicated statistics. Then, with Lean, the heavy emphasis on manufacturing made it difficult to apply theories to the service sector. After the combination of Lean and Six Sigma became widespread, many of the core concepts still involved understanding historical references.

Fast-forward, we now have spreadsheet-based calculators and programs that build charts and graphs in a couple of clicks. Many "Best Practices" have been established which allows for process improvements without re-inventing the wheel. Over the years, talented subject matter experts and practitioners have discovered useful shortcuts to make Lean Six Sigma, Leaner.

This groundbreaking work shows how LrSS reduces the learning curve for those unfamiliar with quality initiatives. It streamlines the fundamentals for students wanting to take exams in Lean, Six Sigma or Lean Six Sigma. LrSS also provides the mature Lean Six Sigma practitioner, innovative techniques to explain Lean Six Sigma theories to the new user. Lean Six Sigma has served us well, but it is time to utilize all the lessons learned and software tools available today. It is time to embrace next-generation thinking with Leaner Six Sigma!

Terra Vanzant Stern, PhD is also the author of Lean and Agile Project Management: How to Make Any Project Better, Faster, and More Cost Effective.

Section VI

Additional Resources

Important Names in Lean Six Sigma

There are many contributors to Lean Six Sigma and several were the original pioneers of the Total Quality Management movement.

WALTER SHEWHART

Walter Shewhart (Shewhart) is often referred to as the “Grandfather of the quality movement.” Both Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran were students of Shewhart. Dr. Shewhart believed that lack of information greatly hampered the efforts of control and management processes in a production environment. In order to aid a manager in making scientific, efficient, economical decisions, he developed Statistical Process Control methods. Walter Shewhart was the first honorary member of the American Society of Quality in 1947.

EDWARDS DEMING

The most popular name associated with quality remains Edwards Deming. Deming is credited with improving production in the United States during the Cold War, but is best known for his work in Japan. For his efforts, he was awarded the Second Order of the Sacred Treasure by the former Emperor Hirohito. Japanese scientists and engineers named the famed Deming Prize after him. It is bestowed on organizations that apply and achieve stringent quality-performance criteria. The Deming Prize is still awarded today. Two documents still referenced frequently are the Deming’s 14 Points and Deming’s Seven Deadly Sins. Both documents refer to conditions and thoughts about business entities in general.

JOSEPH JURAN

Joseph M. Juran helped establish the field of quality management and wrote the Quality Control Handbook, which taught manufacturers worldwide how to be more efficient. This book is a textbook that is still used as foundational material in most quality engineering programs. His work in quality contributed to both Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing. He created the Pareto principle, also known as the 80–20 rule. This rules states that 80% of consequences stem from 20% of causes. Today managers use the Pareto principle to help them separate what Mr. Juran called the “vital few” resources from the “useful many.”

MALCOLM BALDRIGE

Malcolm Baldrige was nominated to be Secretary of Commerce by President Ronald Reagan on December 11, 1980 and confirmed by the United States Senate on January 22, 1981. During his tenure, Baldrige played a major role in bringing quality concepts to the government. Baldrige’s award-winning managerial excellence contributed to long-term improvement in economy, efficiency and effectiveness in government. Within the Commerce Department, Baldrige reduced the budget by more than 30% and administrative personnel by 25%.

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement Act of 1987 established the Baldrige award which is given annually to companies showing the best quality approach and process improvement. Many of the basic criteria established for the award are built into the Lean Six Sigma process.

GENICHI TAGUCHI

Genichi Taguchi contributed in several areas related to Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing primarily in the area of statistics. Three of his major contributions included the Loss Function, where he devised an equation to quantify the decline of a customer’s perceived value of the product. His other major contribution was of the concept of “noise,” which meant distractions could interfere with process improvement. He also created Design of Experiment screening and factorial analysis models.

ELI GOLDRATT

Eli Goldratt in Lean Six Sigma is known for his work on Theory of Constraints, which is now also called Constraint Management in the business community. The Theory of Constraints states that we know before beginning a project that constraints will be contained within the process. Goldratt gives direction and ideas on how to handle those constraints. Goldratt is also the author of a book published in the early 1990s called The Goal. In this book, a novel about a businessman’s view of his company, Goldratt brings out many concepts such as empowerment, win-win opportunities and life balance that have been adopted philosophically by many textbooks on Lean Six Sigma.

KAORU ISHIKAWA

Kaoru Ishikawa wanted to change the way people think about work. He urged managers to resist becoming content with merely improving a product’s quality, insisting that quality improvement can always go one step further. He is best known for the Ishikawa diagram, a popular fishbone chart used in process improvement and his thoughts that the job of quality belonged to everyone. This view was also supported by Joseph Juran.

Ishikawa also showed the importance of the seven quality tools: fishbone (Ishikawa diagram), control chart, run chart, histogram, scatter diagram, Pareto chart and flowchart. Additionally, Ishikawa explored the concept of quality circles.

BASIC QUALITY CONCEPTS

Leaner supports basic quality concepts such as:

• Customer Satisfaction

• Supplier Satisfaction

• Continuous Improvement

Both customer and supplier satisfaction are based on the principle of the customer or supplier feeling that process improvement is in place and not based on Return-on-Investment or other revenue factors. In all quality efforts, making things better, faster and more cost effective (continuous improvement) are the keys to success.

Summary—Core Tools Used in Leaner Six Sigma (Lrss)

This section is designed to summarize information gathered throughout this book and can be used for review purposes.

Lean Six Sigma defines process improvement as making things better, faster and more cost effective. Better is another word for quality. Quality always comes with a cost. Faster, which means more efficient, when used by the Leaner Practitioners, can only be achieved by eliminating or reducing a step in the process. Cost effectiveness relates to profit, savings or cost avoidance. A project that does not have the opportunity to make things better, faster or more cost effective may simply not be a process improvement project.

QUALITY IMPACT

Lean Six Sigma is a mistake-proofing program that believes prevention is always better than detection and is a primary belief in securing process improvement. Additionally, recognizing all inputs and outputs and how the inputs ultimately impact each output are constant considerations. How the inputs and outputs impact the customer is constantly assessed and reassessed. Leaner generally refers to Inputs as X and Outputs as Y. However, the term Key Process Input Variables (KPIVs) and Key Process Output Variables (KPOVs) are also used as well as the Vital Few Xs and the Vital Few Ys—a term used often by Joseph Juran.

There are several methods used to measure process improvement. One of the most popular being the Return-on-Investment. There are several formulas available to calculate both savings and profit. Financial terms commonly used in Lean Six Sigma are Return-on-Investment, Earned Value and Net Present Value. Many industries like to use the Balance Scorecard technique. This technique measures improvement in the area of finance, process, training and customer impact.

Another measure especially useful when presenting an idea about quality improvement is Cost-of-Poor-Quality (COPC). In other words, what if we did not make this improvement? Would there be a ramification or penalty to pay? Industry benchmarks and metrics are also an effective way to measure both the as-is state and the actual process improvement, once it is realized.

LEAN SIX SIGMA TOOLS

The most popular tools used in Lean Six Sigma are the Seven Tools of Quality often referred to as the 7 Analytical Problem-Solving Tools or the Seven Tools of Process Improvement. Definitions of these tools are included in the Leaner Six Sigma Glossary available online at www.SSDGlobal.net. They include:

• Fishbone

• Flowcharting

• Check Sheets

• Histogram/Fr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Author
• SECTION I The Basics—Making Things Better, Faster or More Cost Effective
• SECTION II The DMAIC Model
• SECTION III Standards
• SECTION IV Leaner Environment
• SECTION V Leaner Six Sigma Body of Knowledge and Competency Models
• SECTION VI Additional Resources
• Index