What do Lean, Six Sigma, and Design for Six Sigma mean, and when should they be used? Explore Lean Leadership as well as how to choose the training that suits your situation.
Lean and Six Sigma are methods for improving business processes, enabling organizations to systematically, objectively, and effectively enhance their processes. The result is a culture of continuous improvement where the company's performance, as well as customer and employee satisfaction, improve by streamlining processes. Lean and Six Sigma are generally helpful whenever improvement is desired, for example, in the following situations:
Lean thinking is a management philosophy that focuses mainly on eliminating unproductive activities (waste). The goal is to produce and deliver the right quantity, the right product or service, at the right quality, while creating a culture of continuous improvement within the company. Read more: What is Lean?
Six Sigma is a business process improvement methodology that reduces variation based on data. Six Sigma also has a systematic project model and includes many tools for demanding improvement projects. Six Sigma is rarely used as a stand-alone improvement methodology anymore, but has been combined with Lean Six Sigma.
Lean 6 Sigma combines the benefits of Lean and Six Sigma, enabling rapid, flexible, and effective improvement of very diverse processes in various organizations. It's often beneficial to start process improvement with Lean Thinking and Lean methods and expand to Six Sigma when there is abundant data and/or results are no longer achieved sufficiently through Lean-based methods. Learn more about what Lean Six Sigma is and how it works: What is Lean Six Sigma?
Results are usually not achieved through technical methods alone, but often a great deal of energy and time is spent on changing the way employees behave, i.e. getting them to accept change. About 30% of the Lean Six Sigma training at Jaatinen B.V. includes methods related to change management, so-called "soft skills". We basically focus on three areas:
Management plays an important role in Lean (Six Sigma): achieving organisational goals and creating a culture of continuous improvement is challenging and requires a lot from change leaders. Successful change is characterised by, among other things, clarity of strategy, its translation into measurable objectives at all levels of the organisation, monitoring of objectives, and active commitment by management and employees to achieve common goals. Read more about the role of management and change management in the blog "Lean Leadership: 6 factors to achieve more results."
Learn more about and Six Sigma training for managers: Lean Leadership Training
Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is a design methodology for developing new processes, products and services. DFSS is suitable for situations where something completely new is being created or where an existing process/product cannot or should not be further improved. DFSS is usually only worth starting once a company has some experience with Lean Six Sigma.
The effectiveness of DFSS is based on factors such as:
DFSS incorporates project management methodology, including a comprehensive Gate Review process spanning the entire organization, along with numerous tools for challenging development projects, such as Quality Function Deployment (QFD), Design of Experiments (DOE), Robustification, and Response Surface Methodology.
Read more about our DFSS trainings: the DFSS Black Belt Training and the DFSS Yellow Belt Training. If you would like help in applying the DFSS in your organisation, please contact us.
The choice of improvement methodologies to use for enhancing existing processes depends on the maturity level of the organization. It's not advisable to employ overly complex tools too early. It's better to start with simpler techniques for improving existing processes and gradually introduce more methods and tools as the need arises.
Below is a diagram illustrating the selection of a suitable improvement methodology based on the organization's situation and maturity level:
There are many different types of Lean and Lean Six Sigma training and choosing the right training can be difficult. If you have no previous experience with Lean or Six Sigma, we recommend starting with Lean training. If you already have Lean experience and/or have a lot of data and need tools for data-driven process improvement, Lean Six Sigma trainings are a good choice.
To facilitate your choice, we organise Lean training in 3 modules. You can participate in the different modules as you wish or enrol for the whole 3-module package in one go. You can start with a two-day Lean Thinking training, where you will learn the "basics" of process improvement. As your needs grow, you can move on to the next module and train as a Lean Kaizen facilitator. If you also want to learn how to implement Lean in your organisation, you can train to become a Lean Change Leader. Read more about the choice of a Lean training. Or check out our Lean training courses at the link: Lean training courses.
In Lean Six Sigma, the different roles are divided into the Belt levels familiar from judo: Yellow Belt, Green Belt and Black Belt. Each Belt level has its own training. In the blog "Lean Six Sigma Belt levels: which level is needed?" is an explanation of the most common Lean Six Sigma Belt levels for choosing the right training. You can also check out our Lean Six Sigma trainings directly at the link: Lean Six Sigma trainings
We're also happy to help you choose. Contact us and we'll find the most suitable option for you.
