Lean Sigma - a marriage made in heaven

I have been in the Six Sigma quality arena for more than eight years involved in roll outs. In my current position I am leading the deployment of a program on an European scale for a well known Japanese company. Over time I have noticed that rolling out Six Sigma is more challenging in Sales and Marketing than in Design and Manufacturing. Why is that you may ask? DMAIC and DFSS training for champions, Master Black Belts and Black Belts etc offers a lot of tools for them. The tools, however, could apply only and fully in a more technical area such as design and manufacturing. One of the key deficiencies I realized was the lack of pertinent data readily available. Selling the technical tools within DMAIC or DFSS such Statistical Process Control or Design of Experiment to sales and marketing people is tough. How does the application of those tools make a sales manager more successful, help him to achieve his targets? Project selection, execution and results consequently suffer. For the credit of DMAIC or DFSS of course there are some tools sales and marketing can apply. I am convinced that in sales & marketing key factors are people, their creativity, talents and experience to deliver innovative solutions to the business. So how to motivate colleagues and superiors and get buy in into such a program? To win them the offer should be tools they can fully subscribe to and help them to be more successful. As a corrective action what I did was take out the tools that did not work and replaced them with others focusing on process improvement in transactional areas. Last year I have come across Lean Six Sigma. Studying its content carefully I had realized that the tool box included tools that were very suitable for sales and marketing and serve the purpose of process improvement.

Lean & Sigma in joint harmony

We all know Six Sigma but what is Lean Sigma?

Basic elements of Lean are:

• Waste elimination
• Continuous workflow
• Customer pull
• Focused in the areas of cost, quality and delivery
• Inspired by Kaizen
• Employee empowerment
• Culture of process improvement
• Fast product development and manufacturing
• Collaboration with suppliers

How does Lean fit into the Six Sigma framework?

Six Sigma is a combination of scientific and system approaches to quality-based improvements, Lean is a systematic and endless elimination of waste, driven by customer expectations.

Let’s compare some of the key principles and practices of Six Sigma versus Lean

Principles & Practices	Six Sigma	Lean
Customer Satisfaction	Yes, primarily driven by customer service factors	Yes, it is about waste elimination as a roadblock to customer sat
Endless war on waste	Partial customer focus	Hallmark of Lean
Tools focused on common sense improvements	Not really, Six Sigma = quantum leap	Yes, Small incremental improvements with occasional breakthroughs
Problem identification and problem solving techniques	Yes, promotes root cause identification and elimination	Yes, promotes root causei dentification and elimination
Value Stream Mapping	No , promotes process flow and interaction flow	Yes, VSM focuses on much more detailed operational information – the what and why
Process Mapping	Yes methods are well developed	Sometimes, Lean places less emphases in process mapping
Business planning/Hoshin planning	No, by definition it is a problem focused method	Yes, this is a critical departure in similarities between Lean and Six Sigma

“The fusion of Lean and Six Sigma improvement methods is required because:

• Lean can not bring a process under control
• Six Sigma cannot dramatically improve process speed or reduce invested capital
• Both enable the reduction of the cost of complexity”- Michael L. George Lean Six Sigma for Services P.6

Just recently I exposed a large part of our organization to key Lean Six Sigma tools. Their feedback was very positive encouraging me to continue my new journey into Lean Six Sigma.

Michael-Alex. von Hirsch

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