Lean Six Sigma - The synergistic approach to transformation

"I always get questions like "which project should we do first?" ......"how can we get the benefits from this project quickly?"
my answer to the first one has always been 80/20 rule. the second one has been tricky many times as in the effort to get there quickly we miss many important steps which are necessary to sustain what is achieved by any process improvement."


Recently I came across this while reading a book:
"Its not Lean or Six Sigma , its not Lean then Six Sigma but Lean and Six Sigma" - Lockheed Martin

suddenly I realized why we had not seen any major turnaround despite successes with lean at various processes. we lacked the system to bring the process under statistical control.

More I read about Lean Six Sigma(LSS) I am more convinced that this the way to go. I have been trying to put all the pieces together over the year, like how to best capture the customer needs into your product, develop and launch products in quickest ways, control the production and quality , respond to the design changes in quickest way and above all how to incorporate all this into the corporate strategy , deploy it and execute it. I believe LSS will to bring all this under one platform giving better visibility and understanding of what it will take to make a great organisation.

Being involved and responsible for activities ranging from product development , production control, process improvement and to some degree of business development and strategic planing; you cannot have different goals or plans for different function. It forces you to be organised and understand the need for a unified plan to align all these activities. LSS will give this unified plan along with speed and control for the transformation process.

Now the biggest success factor which need to exist is the Management commitment and complete engagement. This would be a big challenge for small company with no previous experience of even a statistical process control. Thus I believe this can only be successfully communicated in the language that any top level executive understands...... Monetary Benefits!