What is Lean Six Sigma and How Can it Benefit your Business?

Posted by    on 13-04-2020
What is Lean Six Sigma and How Can it Benefit your Business?

Many business owners do not realize how much time and effort they waste regularly on menial tasks that can easily be eliminated if the correct procedure is implemented in their offices. According to research, up to 21.8 work hours are wasted every week, fulfilling small and unnecessary tasks.

Every business requires a structured process to unlock its full potential. Lean Six Sigma is a combination of two different process improvement techniques; Lean and Six Sigma. Both of these have been proven to effectively eliminate “waste” and allow businesses to run much more smoothly.

With the proper implementation of Lean Six Sigma, business owners can easily get a lot more done without even increasing the number of hours worked or having to hire more employees.

What are the benefits of implementing Lean Six Sigma?

Implementing the Lean Six Sigma improvement methodology can be highly beneficial to a business and help them in a variety of ways, including:

  • Eliminating long-term and short-term business problems
  • Removing “waste” or extra and unnecessary tasks
  • Improving working conditions
  • Reducing variability and increasing predictability of outcomes
  • Improving business responses to customers’ needs
  • Improving customer satisfaction
  • Increasing business profits
  • Maximizing efficiency

By carrying out Lean Six Sigma, every business can ensure they are utilizing their time and resources in the most efficient way possible to turn over the most profit for their time and energy.

When a business owner has many different sectors to their business, it can be nearly impossible to keep everything running smoothly. That is unless there is a proper procedure put in place; that’s exactly where Lean Six Sigma steps in.

How does Lean Six Sigma work?

Lean Six Sigma focuses on three main elements to give business owners the dream results they want: Tools and Techniques, Process and Methodology, and Mindset and Culture. Through the use of very comprehensive tools and analytical techniques, a series of stages to organize problems and resolve them at their root cause, and encouraging data-derived thinking, these three elements build on top of each other to optimize the output of any business.

No analytical technique can be carried out successfully without the right tools and procedures put in place. Lean Six Sigma ensures everything is taken into consideration to help businesses thrive at its absolute best.

Since Lean Six Sigma is a combination of two different systems, let’s look at each system independently:

Lean

Lean is a system centred on eliminating waste for a large-scale business. It was originally developed by Toyota to help increase its vehicle production efficiency by reducing waste. There are five main principles of Lean: Value, Value Stream, Flow, Pull, and Perfection. These five factors work together to ensure all three types of waste (Muda, Mura, and Muri) are reduced as much as possible during the manufacturing process.

Muda waste is any type of work that is not adding value to the manufacturing process. Mura waste is when the flow of work is uninterrupted and uneven because of a lack of consistency in the method, and Muri waste is produced when essential resources are unnecessarily overburdened beyond their means.

Though Lean was originally intended for large scale businesses, its principles can be applied to any sort of business, no matter its size.

The take-home notice from the Lean method is to reduce waste as much as possible in order to save time and resources and increase profit as much as possible.

Six Sigma

Six Sigma, on the other hand, does not focus on eliminating waste, but rather focuses on improving the quality of the system by eliminating errors and removing anything that creates frequent variation in the process. Motorola first developed this method in the 1980s by an engineer named Bill Smith.

The main purpose of removing all forms of variation is to improve the predictability of daily business endeavours. Six Sigma has five main phases, Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. Through these five phases, any business or service can actively and practically work to achieve their desired goals as this process works based on data.

Lean Six Sigma combines these two individual designs because though they may be different, they also complement each other at the same time. Both these processes rely on defining value according to customer experience. They both also use a flow map to organize and understand their processes. Furthermore, they both rely on data to analyze performance. These similarities help them flow together when implemented simultaneously.

There are some differences between the two, but these differences simply add to the overall result they provide to the business. The main difference between the two is their view on identifying problems. Lean focuses very much on eliminating waste, while Sigma focuses on putting an end to variation to increase predictability. Lean also focuses on using visuals for analysis, whereas Six Sigma is dependent on quantifiable data analysis.

What are the main principles of Lean Six Sigma?

Lean Six Sigma focuses on solving the root causes of inefficiency and lack of productivity in businesses. It uses both a top-down and bottom-up technique to ensure absolutely nothing is left unnoticed, and no extra task is being performed that is unnecessary to the productivity of the business.

Apart from solving real problems, Lean Six Sigma focuses on teamwork and makes sure the entire team contributes to the efficiency of work and production. It has been implemented in nearly every industry, including:

  • Call Centers
  • Hospitals
  • Manufacturing companies
  • Finance
  • Sales
  • Legal
  • Maintenance
  • Manufacturing
  • Agri-Business
  • Banking
  • Marketing

Lean Six Sigma is a highly efficient method for analyzing processes. Any business owner can benefit greatly by implementing its teachings to improve their process, efficiency, customer satisfaction, and profit at the end of the day. Any business owner looking to turn up their profits and establish a working system that can allow them to both improve their process and measure it for further analysis at the same time should seriously consider implementing Lean Six Sigma.

For more information on Lean Six Sigma, call Amsaxum at 905-315-6847 or contact us here.

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