Lean Six Sigma
Dec 24, 2009 Business Management
The Lean Six Sigma process has been a mystery to its outsiders. Simply put, a business strategy makes companies streamline waste and measure target goals in order to create quality output and a quality process. Companies like GlaxoSmithKline, Staples, Ford Motors, and Bank of America have been able to take away obstacles that create errors and make their processes for creating products efficient processes. In fact, the Six Sigma model has helped many companies outperform their competitors and stay in successfully businesses for many years.
The original Six Sigma process was focused primarily on quality output. Many companies, though, have begun to integrate Lean principles, which emphasize quick turnaround time and eliminating waste in the manufacturing process. Lean manufacturing adheres to cutting actual process time, having zero inventories and zero wait time, and a production system built on the internal customer pulling the process rather than each department pushing the process along.
Each Six Sigma company has a core of process experts in the structure of the organization whose experience help move an idea or product toward a finish. Process experts can be certified as white belts, green belts, black belts, or master black belts, depending on their level of expertise. Companies benefit from these professionals monetarily: a black belt can save a company about $230,000 on a given project and does up to six projects per year. General Electric has revealed that during its first five years using Six Sigma strategies, it was able to save about $10 billion.
As a coveted sophisticated business secret, Six Sigma has suffered from one major thing, according to some business analysts. It has become so complex with the addition of statistics, formula-driven charts, and elaborate structures that there seems to be a learning curve for a process that does not really need one. It is not hard to understand how it got this complicated. The more popular a phenomenon becomes, the more people add and expand it and make it more complex.
Originally, the process was designed for companies that built or manufactured tangible goods. In the case of goods that have to be counted and accounted for, formulas and equations help managers keep track of proficiency and output. What has shifted for most of the people who are affected by Six Sigma, however, is the fact that many of the top companies in America now sell ideas instead of products. Based on statistics from Fortune magazine, only 32 of the top companies still make and sell products. The remaining 68 are idea pushers.
The Six Sigma Center of Excellence based in Indonesia has been a tremendous support mechanism for companies using Six Sigma. The Center deploys consultants all over the world to work with companies that want to improve their processes and their products. One of the most recent daylong conferences at the Center focused on how executives could use Six Sigma principles in uncertain times.
Those who are interested in streamlining their processes should not be intimidated by Six Sigma learning. The amount of waste that will be saved is worth the education you receive about the process. Six Sigma employees are sharp workers: they do not waste resources, talent or company time.
Want more information on Six Sigma? Please click here for more information on Six Sigma Lean SSCX Master Black Green Belt and LSS DMAIC Cost Transformation DFSS Improvement Process
Tags: business innovations, Business Management, business models, business strategies, management, six sigma
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.