What is Lean Six Sigma?

Lean Six Sigma is the integration of two most effective methodologies for improving processes, Lean Manufacturing on one side and Six Sigma on the other side, that trace the road to efficient value creation while increasing precision and accuracy; the quickest way to operational excellence. These very long time existing methods provide enterprises of all sizes with clearer information and process knowledge helping to achieve a stronger competitive positioning on the global market.

To understand their full impact, we must first be sure of the concept of process improvement. A process is a sequential series of defined steps to build a physical product or deliver a service. Everything in life is a process from going to work or to school, to sending a space ship to another planet. Thus improving a process requires us to have a better grasp on the current state of the process and how it functions, with the unique aim to remove the special causes that form barriers in each steps of the process to satisfy and exceed customer expectations. Since products or services are the end result of a process, gaining the analytical skills for the process to perform as mentioned above, is fundamental for the growth of an organization.

And this is where the critical context takes place. In most companies, professionals become experts at working in their process, with time they have learned to master their work so it becomes routine and easy, and they accommodate themselves. But they are not necessarily experts at working on a process. To work on a process requires unconditional education on and genuine practice of analytical skills. That’s where Lean Six Sigma comes in.

Lean Manufacturing is a philosophy, a culture with its own toolkit to make things happen in a more valued and agile way. Although it originated in the 1890s, it is not before the 1987 that it explodes as a new way of making a product or serving a customer, with the publication of the book "The Machine that change the world" by the famous University Massassuchetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Lean is a cultural approach to fine tune all types of processes, whether it is manufacturing or services, taking waste away from them to optimize continuous flow and deliver only value-added goods to customers.

Six Sigma is a strategy aimed at improving process output quality by taking defects away from it. As for Lean Manufacturing it originated in the 1987 with Motorola a the precursor. Six Sigma is the use of statistics on the process data to better understand its functioning. It basically states that behind the process numbers are hidden all the necessary information to make the rightest, fastest and most sounded decision with less defects, and do so consistently.

During decades Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma have been taught by experts, consultants, and teachers as two separate methods. It is mostly after 2010 that the line separating both had started to become finer and blurry, and that the analytical community started to talk and apply Lean and Six Sigma as a holistic method named Lean Six Sigma in order to reap the best of both worlds, and most of all reach true process excellence. Based on the Scientific Method, Lean Six Sigma provides a systematic and holistic approach to help companies build their problem-solving muscles and support their strategic mission and vision looking for a greater and tastier piece of the market pie. These muscles will be stronger when analytics to "consistently find a better way" becomes a daily habit.

The benefits of using Lean Six Sigma are multiple. Here are some relevant ones:

• Improved customer experience and increased loyalty through more value creation
  Efficient process flows with minimum variability to drive higher bottom-line results and lower operational cost
  Switch from reaction (error detection and fixing) to prevention (on time error removal)
  Increases capacity and profitability
  Engaging employees at all levels and accelerating people development