The Basics

Lean Six Sigma is a structured approach to examine and redesign business processes in order to reduce the non-value added work and variation that is occurring within your organization.  It is a blend of two improvement philosophies: “Six Sigma” which focuses on reducing variation in processes to achieve higher quality and more consistent products and services.  “Lean” is focused reducing non-valued added work to reduce the time and effort it takes to execute a process.  We can recognize non-value added work as rework, errors, delays, searching, redundancy, etc.  It’s the work that costs us time and consumes resources but doesn’t move the product or service closer to fulfilling the customer’s need.

Within each of the philosophies are analytical tools, principles, and concepts that help people find and eliminate the causes of the non-value added work or sources of variation.  Most often, these improvements can be made with no additional capital investments – the processes are redesigned to use the resources you already have more effectively and efficiently.  The results are improved customer experience through faster and more consistent products and services, money savings through the better use of resources, and easier processes for the people doing the work.

Using Lean Six Sigma as an organization wide problem-solving approach engages everyone from the front line to the board room to examine work processes, identify the sources of errors, delays, or bottlenecks, and then work together to implement solutions to streamline the process.  Through the efforts of streamlining a process, efficiency gains of 30% to 50% or more with a single focused improvement project are common.  This simplifies the work and reduces the needed labor so employees can devote more time to other value-added work.  Above all, it creates a culture of problem-solving and collaboration where people work across department lines to improve the business.