What is Lean Six Sigma in Wisconsin?
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Before making decisions about the methods you will use in your company or in what you are going to invest your time as a professional or someone trying to learn new things, make sure you know the basics about your options. In this case, it is the same since you need to ask yourself what is Lean Six Sigma before anything else. This methodology has been popular for over 3 decades and although people and companies decide to rely on it for process improvement or boosting their career options, they tend to make the decision based on popularity, not because they took the time to research beforehand. Therefore, here is the first step you need to take when considering Lean Six Sigma: start quick research about the concepts and basics. Just knowing what it is should be a great start.
Now, how can you answer this question or clear doubts considering there is a lot of information on the Internet? After all, not all pages mention the same and it can be confusing when you have zero knowledge. Here at Lean Six Sigma Experts of Wisconsin, our main role is to offer you services and solutions for your needs and goals with the methodology. But before you decide to go for it or involve yourself with Sigma, we want to make sure you are able to understand why you are making the decision in the first place. This means you can expect an introduction to LSS and get to know a bit more about it below.
Let’s start with the Obvious: What is Lean Six Sigma?
The main definition is that it is a process improvement methodology that entails more than one area or objective for a company. You can take improving processes as the main result you want to obtain, but in order to accomplish it, you have to go over other needs and goals in the company implementing Sigma. Now, to understand what is Lean 6 Sigma, you need to know that it comes from other two methodologies: 6 Sigma and Lean. Individually, these also process improvement methods and allow companies to achieve it to a certain degree, but they are not as complete as integrating LSS. It can be quite ironic considering that their combination is what creates Sigma.
However, they only provide tools, concepts, principles, and certain elements. By itself, Lean 6 Sigma continues to be a methodology that integrates its own objectives although some of them are based on the other methods. To make it simpler, you have a combination of Lean and 6 Sigma, but that does not mean that every aspect of LSS is based on those only but rather has more elements and principles to consider. With that in mind, it is a great step to start by learning about Lean and Six Sigma individually to understand what LSS adapts from them.
In the case of Lean, the main objective of reducing waste by understanding processes along with the principles and methods to make it possible, is what you will notice when implementing Sigma. But what are these methods and principles?
- Lean principles: identify value, map the value stream, achieve flow, rely on the pull, seek perfection.
- Lean types of wastes: overproduction, overprocessing, defects, unutilized talent, waiting, transportation, motion, and inventory.
The principles are actually considered the steps to accomplish the reduction of waste in the company. However, you have to understand that other tools from the methodology are used based on the situation and how the project is moving, but the essentials ones that LSS integrates are the previous elements. Now, what about Six Sigma? It is focused on reducing variations and bottlenecks, and it is the start of a special focus on LSS: problem-solving.
For Six Sigma, variations are what make companies inefficient and unable to obtain the desired results. Although they are not directly related to waste like in Lean, you will notice that variations have a lot to do with it, which is why the combination between Lean and 6 Sigma is effective. With that clear, the same is included from Six Sigma to LSS: principles and methods.
- Six Sigma methods: the main one used is DMAIC, which stands for Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control.
- Six Sigma principles: focus on the client, find and solve problems, reduce variations and bottlenecks, more employee involvement, flexibility, and change must be included.
Can You Implement Six Sigma and Lean?
Implementing them is not an issue considering they are methodologies before anything else, but the question you should be asking yourself is if it is worth it or not. Both methodologies lost relevance due to the creation of LSS, and there are very few companies that actually decide to integrate them when they have a complete one already that includes the best from there and more aspects that achieve better results. Lean Six Sigma is not only a combination—as we were mentioning before—but rather the best version of both methodologies + objectives that can be achieved at once.
That being said, you can choose to integrate Lean or Six Sigma, maybe both, but the project will end up being more expensive compared to LSS or even take longer considering that you will have to focus on two processes instead of one that is properly handled as an entire integration. At Lean Six Sigma Experts of Wisconsin, we always encourage the integration of LSS, not of the other two and this is for any person who decides to work with us or not. After all, we want the best for you.
We know it can be confusing considering you learned about both methodologies, but when you think about Lean 6 Sigma allowing you to reduce waste, variations, bottlenecks, solve problems, focus on the customer, and aim for all these goals and issues, you know it is the right one. And if you make the decision of implementing it or wanting to get trained, we will be here with the services required for any of these and more.
There are so many areas or regions where we offer these services with most of them being cities.
However, if you need any of these services, you need to contact us. The list below comprises the areas where we offer these services.