What is Lean Six Sigma?

Have you been curious to learn what is Lean Six Sigma? Lean Six Sigma is the combination of two world-class approaches to organizational performance improvement Lean and Six Sigma.

The basic idea behind Lean Six Sigma is to blend the two root methodologies into one approach that optimizes the quality, speed, and the cost of doing business.

Really, the connected goals of better, faster, and cheaper all exist to overcome some shortfall preventing optimum operation, like any shortfall that exists in the human body. Everyone has some areas of compromised functioning in their bodies — some part of the spine, some aspect of the organs, some system that is not functioning optimally.

Don’t pigeonhole Lean or Six Sigma. Be careful not to say Lean as good for one thing (like waste removal and cycle time reduction), and Six Sigma as good for another (like defect and cost reduction). Doing this will take your mind off of thinking “Lean Six Sigma” – thinking of every performance challenge in terms of what both approaches can do together.

Organizations are no different, as they do not function in an optimal manner. In fact, organizations tend to get more complex, disorganized, and inefficient over time. The only reason they don’t get more efficient over time, is because those who run them are constantly improving what they do and how they do it.

Organizations that were earlier using only the lean tools or the six sigma tools, have moved toward using the integrated methodology of Lean Six Sigma as they find much better results, when the two methodologies are used together.

The same process when both the tools of Lean as well as Six Sigma are implemented has been shown below:

So, did we answer What is Lean Six Sigma? Its recommended that you also understand about lean and six sigma.