A Guide to Lean Six Sigma
High-quality services are always the most successful; delivering services with almost no mistakes at all times can increase the number of positive reviews from customers. To get the maximum amount of positive results, services must be as close to perfect as they can get.
In many different domains, this statement applies, whether we are talking about various businesses or even domains such as healthcare or ecology. Getting superior results is the key to success.
To ensure that the chances of making mistakes are low at all times, Six Sigma has been created. Six Sigma is a bundle of techniques and tools used for process improvement. Its goal is to remove all causes of defects that can lead to variables and to ensure a successful business process. A better version of this technology and a mix of two beneficial methodologies is Lean Six Sigma, and you shall learn all about it in this article.
What Is Six Sigma?
The term Six Sigma has statistical quality control at its origin; it refers to the fraction of a standard curve within six usual deviations of the mean. The mean is used as a measure of the defect rate.
The practitioners of Six Sigma use project management as well as statistics and financial analysis to reduce errors and detect them, all in pursuit of increased quality and efficiency.
The Six Sigma process consists of five phases: defining, measuring, analyzing, improving, and controlling. Shortly: DMAIC.
The first step, define, refers to having a team of Six Sigma experts choose a process to focus on, discover the problem, and then determine the best way to tackle it.
Next comes measuring the initial performance of said chosen process and pinpointing a list of inputs that could hinder the performance.
After measuring, the team analyzes by testing all the inputs as potential causes of problems.
Next comes improving and controlling, but to find out more about what these next two steps refer to, you can read the following article (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/six-sigma.asp).
What Are the Rules of Six Sigma?
The rules, also known as the principles of Six Sigma, are simple and only five.
1. The first rule is to work for the customer; it is considered that any change you make should be most beneficial to your customer, so you should establish a standard of quality early on and make sure that it is defined by what is demanded of the market or the customer.
2. During the re-tooling, you will for sure want to make some changes, and it is easy to get caught up in the desire to change things around and lose focus on the initial problem you were facing.
3. Remember always to find your problem and concentrate on it. Gather data that can show where the root of the problem lies and concentrate entirely on fixing it.
4. Remember to remove variation and bottlenecks but also to communicate clearly and train your Six Sigma team efficiently.
5. Lastly, make sure that you are flexible and responsive because change is something that comes with Six Sigma. Once a process or function is identified as faulty, you will need to refine it or remove it. So, change is quite often encountered with Six Sigma, and being able to adapt to it is an important trait.
What Is Lean Six Sigma?
Lean Six Sigma is a philosophy of improvement (https://www.6sigma.us/training-classes/six-sigma/) that focuses more on prevention than detection. It is fact-based and data-driven, and its purposes are to reduce waste, variation, and cycle time, ultimately contributing to customer satisfaction. Lean Six Sigma creates a competitive advantage, and it can be applied to almost any business where variation and waste exist; it also requires the involvement of every employee.
Lean and Six Sigma have been used together as a means to provide the best possible quality for customers and also to provide the best delivery and cost. Even though these two methodologies have a great many things in common, there are a few discrepancies between them, namely the approach of their common purpose.
A very noticeable difference is that Lean is more focused on waste reduction, whereas Six Sigma leans more towards variation reduction. While Lean achieves its goals by using less technical tools such as kaizen or workplace organization and visual controls, Six Sigma uses statistical data analysis as well as the design of experiments and hypothesis testing.
What Are the Different Levels of Six Sigma?
Six Sigma has different training levels, all unique in terms of training requirements, job standards, eligibility, and education criteria.
The first level is the white belt; while you are a white belt, your work will consist of collaborating with the team on problem-solving projects. At this level, all that is required of you is to know the basics of Six Sigma.
Next comes the yellow belt. At this stage, you will be able to take part as a project team member as you already know Six Sigma methodologies and DMAIC. You will be able to review process improvements.
The following levels, which are more experienced, are green, black, and master black belt. At these levels, you will already possess most of the knowledge and can share your experience and understanding of Lean Six Sigma with others.
Conclusion
Six Sigma is a bunch of quality control tools that are used by various businesses to relieve or perfect defects and errors in order to improve processes and increase their profits. This methodology follows a process named DMAIC and respects five simple principles. Another thing to know about Six Sigma is that its accreditations are different in terms of experience and knowledge. Still, each of these professionals is doing their best in their category. To maximize the positive effects of Six Sigma. It is often used in fusion with Lean, thus creating Lean Six Sigma. This mix of methodologies proves to be very effective even though it does have a few differences, mainly in the way they approach problems. Many businesses are flourishing because of their use of Six Sigma technologies. If you are a business owner, you should know that your company, too, can profit from an investment in this methodology.
