Lean Six-Sigma – Breaking the Myth Surrounding the Concepts

In the last few years, as I started interacting with peers, engineers, industry leaders and managers on various levels of the corporate world within Pakistan, I begin to realize that trends and directions are changing across the board. Industrialists, manager and entrepreneurs are increasingly becoming aware and open to the ideas of Incorporating efficient processes, quality systems and above all to adopt a knowledge-based approach that can turn their organization into profitable ventures by focusing on cost reduction tools.

From ERP to Process Re-engineering to Lean & Six-Sigma, the words are buzzing the discussions in board meetings and on factory floors. Lean Six Sigma philosophies for continuous improvement is one larger dialogue that seems to be widely misunderstood in our industrial and service sectors

The concept vs the certificates

• Lean & Six-Sigma are not company certification concept unlike ISO 9000 or ISO 14000 series of standards against which organizations are certified and could use a certificate hanging on CEO’s back wall stating that XYZ is a certified company.

• Both Lean and Six Sigma are a philosophy, a method and a culture change to be embraced by all levels and areas of a firm to announce that “they have taken the step to go lean, efficient, innovative and optimum in all directions”.

• Lean, Greenbelt and Black belt certificates may be awarded to individuals that go through the rigorous training on tools and concepts and pass relevant examinations and fulfil the respective requirement

Tools and scope

Lean Six- Sigma stands above all past and present methodologies to impact the organizations’ bottom line directly and forcefully. From developing and selecting between strategies with the use of Lean, SIPOC, DMAIC, gate reviews, brains storming to the analysis of business situations by deploying value stream mapping, cause and effect analysis, statistical tools, scatter diagrams, design of experiments and Pareto a comprehensive Six Sigma strategy provides for optimizing at every stage. Six- Sigma drives the managers to start thinking of managing with data and facts.

Results and the impact

Unlike TQM, ISO9000 (which is not even an improvement philosophy), deploying Six Sigma methodology is a focused company-wide effort that is linked to hard targets and corporate financial goals and strategies. From Motorola to Honeywell, GE and many more large conglomerates achieved billions of dollars in targeted real savings year over years once their executives started to lead in the Sigma ways.

Competing on processes is the answer…

All quality philosophies or tools ensure defect-free products/services that conform to customer requirement. Service organizations (as well as manufacturing divisions) must focus on sustaining these defect-free environments. The only way to achieve this level of quality is to ensure that we focus on process control and improvement and reducing variations in the processes and human interactions that use these processes to ultimately ensure incident-free output over and over again.

I make the case for deploying the mindset of using “Quality and operations excellence as a competitive strategy”. Eliminating non-value-added activities and ensuring zero interruptions in supplier processes and deliverables are key to winning in this domain.An organization does not need to adopt a single tool… use them all as needed. What I call the Lean & mean approach is the “Lean – Six Sigma” as an over-arching operational strategy to bind all tools. Six-Sigma philosophy is preferred over say going as a TQM company or Toyota Way; the reason being Six Sigma in its truest understanding sense explains why variation is enemy in processes as it corrupts products and services.

Syed Mehdi Hasnain
CEO
Tohfay

Mehdi has extensive leadership experience with major corporations in Pakistan, North-America and Far-East, recently as CEO for The Hunar Foundation and Head of Operations for International Steels Ltd. In North America he served as Global Director of Quality with Schneider APC (American Power Conversion) and Global Manufacturing & Quality Champion for ITT Automotive division, MI both Fortune 500 multibillion-dollar organizations. An engineer, double MBA and Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Mehdi is an expert trainer in lean and quality methodologies and specializes in team building, motivation, operations excellence and process reengineering areas.