Introduction
Lean Six Sigma is a methodology that relies on a collaborative team effort to improve performance by systematically removing waste and reducing variation. It combines lean manufacturing/lean enterprise and Six Sigma to eliminate the eight kinds of waste (muda):
- Transporting
- Inventory
- Motion
- Waiting
- Overprocessing
- Overproduction
- Defects
- Under utilization of employees
Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in (manufacturing and business) processes. Synergistically, Lean aims to achieve continuous flow by tightening the linkages between process steps, while Six Sigma focuses on reducing process variation (in all its forms) for the process steps, thereby enabling a tightening of those linkages. In short, Lean exposes sources of process variation and Six Sigma aims to reduce that variation, enabling a virtuous cycle of iterative improvements toward the goal of continuous flow.
Six Sigma is a business process for improving the quality, reducing costs, and increasing customer satisfaction. This name comes from statistics, where the high level of quality represents no more than 3.4 defects per million. The goal of Six Sigma is to identify and remove causes of defects. Plan‐do‐check‐act (PDCA) or plan‐do‐study‐act (PDSA) is an iterative method of continuous improvement. It is also related to the improvement cycle DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, and control). The DMAIC cycle is used for existing products, related to DMADV (define, measure, analyze, design, verify) which is used during product development.
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