Lean Six Sigma is a business methodology that combines principles from lean manufacturing and Six Sigma. Six Sigma focuses on quality while lean focuses on speed. The concept was developed by combining these principles because some believe that you cannot focus on speed only or quality only in a production process; both components are necessary in developing the most functional, efficient, cost-effective process.
The concept of lean manufacturing was first developed in an effort to optimize auto manufacturing in the 1950s. The focus is on pinpointing and removing waste throughout the manufacturing process to improve efficiency. It has since been used in various industries to create more efficient processes with the ultimate goal of reducing overhead and increasing profits.
The concept of Six Sigma was developed by an engineer in the 1980s as a manufacturing defect reduction process. The goal was to reduce the number of defects to 3.4 per every one million opportunities. This was a new standard that called for new methodology and cultural changes to improve the manufacturing process.
Since then, the concept has been applied to numerous other business purposes and is no longer as literal as “no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities”. Six Sigma is basically a methodology to improve the success of an organization through:
- Customer requirement understanding and management
- Alignment of business processes to achieve customer requirements
- Analysis of data to ensure minimization of variation in processes
- Implementing sustainable improvements to processes
Lean Six Sigma, lean manufacturing and Six Sigma are three methodologies that companies utilize to maximize the efficiency of processes, which ultimately saves money. Implementation of each of these methodologies is different at each company that utilizes them, as there is not one universal tactic that will allow a company to reach their goal of maximized efficiency.
Save Your Factory, a site sponsored by FANUC Robotics, helps companies to understand what can work for them to become more efficient and save money. Their ultimate goal is to convince businesses looking to move their manufacturing processes overseas to consider all other options. Case studies and recent articles are included on the site to provide real life examples of what has worked and what has failed. Click here to learn more.
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