Frequently Asked Questions

For Lean and Six Sigma

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Lean Six Sigma is the combination of Lean and Six Sigma Methodologies to eliminate waste, improve processes and increase Customer Satisfaction.

What Is a Lean Enterprise in the 21st Century?

Lean is simply a method of streamlining a process, resulting in increased revenue, reduced costs and improved customer satisfaction. Many companies today are becoming lean enterprises by replacing their outdated mass-production systems with lean systems to improve quality, eliminate waste, and reduce delays and total costs.

The lean enterprise of the 21st century is on track to expertly match supply to demand, the first time, every time.

A Lean process is faster, more efficient and economical. Lean system emphasises the prevention of waste: which is activity not required to complete a process, any extra time, labour, or material spent producing a product or service that doesn't add value to it.

A lean system's unique tools, techniques, and methods can help your organisation reduce costs, achieve just-in-time delivery, and shorten lead times.

The Goals of the Lean Enterprise

Your organisation can apply lean system's unique tools, techniques, and methods to your services, product-production and business processes to deliver better value to your customers and improve product and service quality while simultaneously reducing costs that helps you remain competitive in the marketplace.

  • Lean process improvement methods create business and manufacturing processes that are agile and efficient.
  • Lean practices will help your company manage its total costs and provide a fair ROI to its stakeholders.
A lean initiative has four main goals:

Goal #1: Improve quality.

Quality is the ability of your products or services to conform to your customers' wants and needs (otherwise known as expectations and requirements).

Goal #2: Eliminate waste.

Waste is any activity that takes up time, resources, or space but does not add value to a product or service. An activity adds value when it transforms or shapes raw material or information to meet your customers' requirements.

Some activities, such as moving materials during product production, are necessary but do not add value. A lean organisation's primary goal is to deliver quality products and services the first time and time. As a lean enterprise, you accomplish this by eliminating all activities that are wasteful and then target areas that are necessary but do not add value.

Goal #3: Reduce lead time.

Lead time is the total time it takes to complete a series of tasks within a process. Some examples are the period between the receipt of a sales order and the time the customer's payment is received, the time it takes to transform raw materials into finished goods, and the time it takes to introduce new products after they are first designed. By reducing lead time, a lean enterprise can quickly respond to changes in customer demand while improving its return on investment, (ROI)

Goal #4: Reduce total costs.

Why are these goals important? Implementing lean tools and techniques will enable your company to meet its customers' demand for a quality product or service at the time they need it and for a price they are willing to pay.

What is Six Sigma?

The term Six Sigma refers to a business philosophy of focusing on continuous improvement by understanding customers' needs, analysing business processes, and instituting proper measurement methods.

Using Six Sigma reduces the amount of defective products manufactured or services provided, resulting in increased revenue and greater customer satisfaction. It is a methodology that an organisation uses to ensure that it is improving its key processes.

What does "Six Sigma" mean?

Sigma is a statistical concept that represents the amount of variation present in a process only produces 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO). When a process operates at the six-sigma level, the variation is so small that the resulting products and services are 99.9997% defect free. Six Sigma reduces variation, so products or services can be delivered consistently as expected.

Having less variation in your processes provides the following benefits.

  • Greater predictability in the process
  • Less waste and rework
  • Products and services that perform better and last longer
  • Happier customers who value you as a supplier

"Six Sigma" is commonly denoted in several different ways. You might see it written as "6o,” “6 Sigma," or "6s."

What is LEAN Six Sigma

Lean Six Sigma is a combination of two popular and powerful, proven methods of improving business efficiency and effectiveness.

Here are the key principles of Lean Six Sigma Business Transformation to bear in mind:

  • Focus on the customer
  • Identify and understand how the work gets done (the value stream)
  • Manage, improve and smooth the process flow
  • Remove Non-Value-Added steps and waste
  • Manage by fact and reduce variation
  • Involve and equip the people in the process
  • Undertake improvement activity in a systematic way
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