Lean Six SigmaWhat is Lean Six Sigma? More often than not, the term speed has got some dangerous vibes attached to it. When this gets translated to business processes, business managers start worrying as that will impact their results. Lean Six Sigma is a set of practices that allows business managers or business owners to reengineer their business processes to achieve quality results with speed. Why is it so important? The term "results with speed" is not entirely misplaced with increased customer satisfaction. With the primary objective being, delivering products or/and services with speed and quality, Lean Six Sigma strives for business processes to achieve excellence in customer satisfaction. Businesses can gain a lot by adopting the Lean Six Sigma approach to increase their profitability. After all, Lean means greater speed and hence lesser costs. How can one integrate the Lean Six Sigma approach to existing business processes? This indeed is a tricky question to answer. The solution should ideally start from the business manager asking the questions "How effective are we in terms of speed and quality in delivering our products to the customer?" and "What does the customer desire in terms of quality and timeliness?". More often that not, answers to these two questions would conceptualize the Lean Six Sigma approach to your business processes. Integrating a Lean Six Sigma approach to your business would mean creating a smooth process flow which would streamline activities done by various personnel or departments. In ideal terms, all the resources and departments contributing to the product development or the service provision must be involved in this process map. This could be kicked off with simple steps like the SIPOC (Suppliers, Input, Process, Output and Customers) and the Resource - Process Map. What is so different about Lean Six Sigma?
As said, Lean Six Sigma is an approach by which you combine speed with quality which allows you to exceed customer expectations almost every time. |