• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Bob Emiliani

Leadership for the Digital Age

  • About Bob Emiliani
  • Speed Leadership
    • Overview
    • About
    • Book
    • Workshops
    • License
  • Books
  • Brain Food
  • Blog
  • Contact

What About Six Sigma?

August 6, 2013 by Bob Emiliani

Do you wonder why I focus on Lean and not Lean Six Sigma in teaching? Let me explain the reason for this first from a management perspective and then from a teaching perspective. I do not join Lean with six sigma as a management concept or practice for the following reasons:

  • Lean is a management system, while six sigma is a set of project-focused tools for process improvement. The two are not equivalent, as the phrase “Lean six sigma” implies.
  • Adding six sigma to Lean indicates a convention mindset of “more is better,” versus the Lean mindset of less is more.
  • Six sigma requires specialists (particularly when complicated statistical methods are required to analyze data), and so continuous improvement activities in organizations will therefore be paced by the capacity of the specialists. Undesirable bottlenecks can be created, resulting batching of information vs. flow.
  • With Lean, you want everyone in the organization to be able to identify a problem, determine its root causes, and identify and implement practical countermeasures – not just specialists. You want everyone doing this all the time (flow).
  • It is enough of a challenge to understand and practice Lean management. Why make it more confusing or complicated by adding six sigma?

When it comes to Lean teaching, my focus is the application of Lean principles and practices because it can be applied to teaching its entirety: the principles, tools, and methods. I have found some quality management tools, common to both Lean and six sigma, to be very helpful in Lean teaching such as: check sheets, control charts, histograms, Pareto analysis, root cause analysis.

Filed Under: Conventional v. Lean Thinking, Lean Teaching, Lean Tools and Methods, LeanProfessor.com

Primary Sidebar

Blog Categories

  • BobEmiliani.com
  • Continuous Improvement
  • Conventional v. Lean Thinking
  • Funny Stuff
  • Kaizen
  • Lean Leadership
  • Lean Practices
  • Lean Principles
  • Lean Teaching
  • Lean Teaching Q&A
  • Lean Tools and Methods
  • Lean University
  • LeanProfessor.com
  • Question & Answer
  • Real Lean v. Fake Lean
  • Respect for People
  • Shared Learning Resources
  • The Back Story
  • Time Machine
  • Voice of the (Student) Customer

Footer

Contact Bob

[email protected]

Providence, Rhode Island

  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube

Goodies

Amazon Author’s Page

YouTube Channel

Faculty Home Page

Sign Up For News

Search Footer Widget

Cubic LLC
© 2021 · Bob Emiliani · Website by Ella J Designs