Six Sigma

May 5 2016

The Downside of Six Sigma | Don Peppers | LinkedIn Pulse

“Revered for decades as one of the world’s most innovative companies, 3M lost its innovative mojo when it began using Six Sigma to try to improve its operational efficiency. James McNerney, the CEO named in 2000, was a Jack Welch protégé from GE. He introduced the Six Sigma discipline as soon as he took the helm of the firm, streamlining work processes, eliminating 10% of the workforce, and earning praise (initially) from Wall Street, as operating margins grew from 17% in 2001 to 23% by 2005.

But when McNerney tried to apply the Six Sigma discipline to 3M’s research and development processes it led to a dramatic fall-off in the number of innovative products developed by the company during those years.”

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.linkedin.com

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

Don Peppers describes “eliminating 10% of the work force” as part of implementing the “Six Sigma discipline,” but I don’t recall seeing anything on that subject when learning about Six Sigma.

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Oct 26 2015

Unilever’s new program for WCM | business-improvement.eu | Jan van Ede

“Unilever changed their approach in 2012. Within Fiat they discovered a balanced WCM-program, developed by professor emeritus Hajime Yamashima. He integrated Lean and Six Sigma from the start in the TPM management pillars. The result: more focus, better opportunities for cross-departmental improvement, and more attention to the role of the people.”

Sourced through Scoop.it from: business-improvement.eu

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

In the late 1980s, as part of Kei Abe’s MTJ team, I went to Unilever facilities in the Netherlands, Italy, the UK, and the US to help them implement what had yet to be called “Lean.” Unilever was impressive as an organization in that, in markets including detergents, processed foods, mass-market toiletries and prestige cosmetics, they were afraid of nobody, anywhere.

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May 28 2015

Why Your Lean and Six Sigma Improvement Efforts Aren’t Driving Better Results | IndustryWeek | John Dyer

“Don’t expect a positive ROI from your lean and Six Sigma investments if they are nothing but a pretty picture.

I once had a plant manager tell me his factory had implemented Six Sigma, but there was not a single statistical process control chart.  How is that possible? Another had the control charts in place but refused to allow the operator to shut the process down when it indicated an out-of-control condition.  Another plant claimed it was lean but had a dozen bins of parts stacked on the floor as part of a two bin system.  Another plant routinely violated the daily production plan by rescheduling orders, and then the plant blamed the supply chain for causing it to frequently run out of parts (which then drove it to change the schedule… a vicious circle).”

Source: www.industryweek.com

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Apr 3 2015

The one thing Lean Six Sigma got wrong about Lean | Erwin van der Koogh | Guest on Lean Blog

“[…]In 2002, Michael George and Robert Lawrence Jr. published Lean Six Sigma: Combining Six Sigma with Lean Speed, a book that started a revolution that quickly took hold in boardrooms around the globe. Total Quality Control and Six Sigma had always appealed to senior managers, but now it came with the added bonus of increased speed and reduced cost. It was a very welcome addition in the post “dot-com bubble” era and was always too good to be true.[…]”

Source: www.leanblog.org

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

This is a guest post on Mark Graban’s Lean Blog.  Like Mark, I agree with enough of what Erwin says to recommend reading it. Approaches like Lean or Six Sigma emerge out of specific contexts where they are successful, but then their boosters go global cosmic.

Six Sigma started out as a modernization of the tools used to achieve process capability in various segments of the electronics industry, with the goal of making statistical design of experiments a common practice, and the belt system was a way to propagate this body of knowledge. Success in this limited endeavor did not justify selling it as a business panacea.

Lean started out as TPS, which is, to date, the best known way to make cars. TPS has a much broader scope than Six Sigma, encompassing management and technology. It includes human resource management as well as designs for welding lines. The “Lean” label for TPS was a way to allow other car companies to apply it without explicitly referencing Toyota, and to package it for use beyond the car industry. While it’s clearly applicable in many industries, it’s not a panacea either.

What happens when you try to expand an approach beyond its range of applicability is that you drain it of substance in order to make it generic, as has happened to both Lean and Six Sigma, not to mention Lean Six Sigma. All you are left with at that point is homilies.

I have explained my perspective on these matters in the post “MIT article comparing Lean, TQM, Six Sigma, “and related enterprise process improvement methods.”

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing

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Jan 30 2015

Lean six sigma the oxymoron | Troy Taylor | LinkedIn

“In the beginning Toyota created TPS, then came Motorola in 1986 with their six sigma process. In 1988 John Krafcik coined the term Lean in his paper entitled“Triumph of the Lean production system” which was quickly popularised by Womack, Roos and Jones in 1991 with the publication of their book “The machine that changed the world”. Then in 2002 Michael George and Robert Lawrence junior published their book entitled “Lean Six Sigma: Combining Six Sigma with Lean Speed”.

Ever since this point organisations have been attempting to mesh the 2 methodologies into one business improvement technique and failing.”

Source: www.linkedin.com

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

Troy speaks from experience. Mine is similar, but I am not as negative on Six Sigma as he is. I think of Six Sigma as an approach that is useful within a range of applicability and is limited in scope.

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing

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Feb 24 2014

One on one with John Shook | Lean Management Journal

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“LMJ Editorial Director, Jon Tudor, meets chairman and CEO of the Lean Enterprise Institute, John Shook, for the second in our One on one series. Jon asks some tough questions posed by a select few of the lean community’s …”

See on www.leanmj.com

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