A Fusion of Pan-Pacific Process Improvement

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A Fusion of Pan-Pacific Process Improvement Lean Six Sigma: A Fusion of Pan-Pacific Process Improvement Malcolm T. Upton Master Black Belt, George Group [email protected] Charles Cox Master Black Belt, Lean Master, George Group [email protected] Abstract Statistical Process Control, Total Quality Management, The Toyota Production System, Just-in-Time, Lean Enterprise, and Six Sigma have roots and histories on both sides of the Pacific. Lately, the most recent of these, Lean Enterprise and Six Sigma, have begun to be fused into a more powerful and effective hybrid, addressing many of the weaknesses and retaining most of the strengths of previous traditions. Using TQM as a baseline, the strengths and threats of Lean Enterprise and Six Sigma are highlighted and a more powerful Lean Six Sigma fusion is discussed. Specific areas examined are organizational infrastructure, career path/incentives, analysis tools and methods favored, depth and type of organizational deployment, methods included in addition to process improvement, project identification strategy, project portfolio management, methodology for tool use, project review methods, speed-cost-quality focus, and methodology bias. Some additional discussion on the role of complexity management in augmenting the value of Lean Six Sigma will also be included. TQM, Lean, & Six Sigma: A Comparison The end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century has seen increasing and continuing pressure from customers and competitors for greater value from their purchases whether based on higher quality, faster delivery, or lower cost (or some combination) in both manufactured products1 and services2. In many industries, this has encouraged companies to adopt Six Sigma as their process improvement approach. Perhaps the most well known of these are Motorola, GE,3 and Honeywell4. 1 M. George, Lean Six Sigma: Combining Six Sigma Quality With Lean Speed, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2002. 2 M. George, Lean Six Sigma for Service: How to use Lean Speed & Six Sigma Quality to Improve Services and Transactions, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2002. 3 R. Basu, IIE Solutions, 33, (7), 28 (2001). 4 Annual Report, 1999, Honeywell International, Morristown, NJ, 2000. 1 Craft Eli Whitney - Production Product Taylor – Standards Time/Motion Studies Industrial Scientific Shewhart – Production Management Statistical Ford – Methods Work Statistical Analysis Process Control Juran – Assembly Simplified Process Line Manufacturing Manufacturing Analysis Quality Organized Sloan – Control Labor – Modern Tunner – Taguchi – Worker’s Management Berlin Airlift Customer Rights Focus Mass Simplified Production Quality Service/Process Engineering Toyoda, Deming – Ohno, Systems Shingo Cox – Italian Thinking Tractor Co. TQM - Toyota Total Quality Simplified Production Management Product Smith System Harry – (Motorola) – DMAIC Womack Statistical & Jones Rigor Six Lean George & Wilson – Sigma v1 Enterprise Optimized Welch/ Complexity Bossidy – George, Lockheed Organizational Martin, others Infrastructure Six Sigma v2 Lean Six Sigma v1 Lean Six Sigma v2 Figure 1. Historical developement of TQM, Six Sigma, Lean Enterprise, and Lean Six Sigma. In other industries, this has driven companies to adopt Lean as a method of improving speed to customer and overall cost. This is especially true in the automotive5 and 5 J. P. Womack and D. T. Jones, Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth In Your Corporation, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996. 2 aerospace6 industries. What is becoming increasingly obvious, however, is that a combined approach shows far more potential than either alone7,8. Many of us, however, have heard this all before, during the TQM era in these and other companies and industries. In most cases, however, TQM failed to live up to its potential. Is there any way that Lean, Six Sigma, or the Lean Six Sigma amalgam can avoid the deathtraps that compromised so many promising TQM implementations? Total Quality Management (TQM) has roots that can be traced into ancient times but is usually identified with the establishment of product standards and statistical methods. With the additions of Juran, Deming, and a host of Japanese thinkers, the Statistical Process Control of the early 20th century became the TQM of the later 20th century9. Lean has roots stretching back to the beginning of mass production. Generally, many of the ideas of Henry Ford and the TQM contributors, as interpreted and applied by Taiichi Ohno of Toyota and as documented by Womack & Jones are seen as the basis of Lean thinking10. Six Sigma began when Smith applied more statistical rigor to TQM11 and became the organizational powerhouse when Welch and Bossidy developed the organizational infrastructure elements that characterize its modern implementation12. Lean Six Sigma is an integration of Lean Enterprise and Six Sigma that has been created independently and with greater and lesser degrees of success on numerous occasions13. This historical development is summarized in figure 1 (preceding). One interesting thing about both Lean and Six Sigma, however, is their common TQM roots. The question of why Lean Six Sigma would work where TQM failed is important, especially since many of the TQM failures were in organizations and industries that are currently attempting implementations of either or both of these or an integrated Lean Six Sigma effort. Table 1 compares TQM, Six Sigma, and Lean14. The dark green cells indicate strengths for one of the implementation traditions. Light green cells indicate that more than one of the traditions have strengths in that area. 6 E. Murman, T. Allen, K. Bozdogan, J. Cutcher-Gershenfeld, H. McManus, D. Nightingale, E. Rebentisch, T. Shields, F. Stahl, M. Walton, J. Warmkessel, S. Weiss, and S. Widnall, Lean Enterprise Value: Insights From MIT’s Lean Aerospace Initiative, Palgrave, New York, 2002. 7 See notes 1 and 2. 8 B. Wheat, C. Mills, and M. Carnell, Leaning Into Six Sigma: The Path to Integration of Lean Enterprise and Six Sigma, Publishing Partners, Boulder City, NV, 2001. 9 J. Folaron, Six Sigma Forum Magazine, 2, (4), 38 (2003). 10 LM21 Lean/Six Sigma Black Belt Training, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Bethesda, MD, Module 23, 2001. 11 See note 3. 12 See note 9. 13 See notes 1, 2, 8, and 10 14 Much of the TQM/Six Sigma comparison is based on G. H. Watson, ASQ Six Sigma Conference 2002: Delivering Organizational Value, (2002). 3 Table 1. Comparison of TQM, Six Sigma, and Lean Total Quality Management Six Sigma Lean Infrastructure: Quality Infrastructure: Champions, Infrastructure: Senior Council, Process Sponsors, Leaders, Sensei Improvement Teams Green/Black/Master Black Belts Haphazard incentive or Some incentive, frequent Haphazard incentive or career development career development career development Basic Data Analysis Advanced Statistical Basic Data Analysis Analysis (preferred) Part of everybody’s job Everybody’s job Part of everybody’s job (Yellow/Green Belts) – dedicated resources (Black Belts) Process-centered Process-centered, some Process-centered, some Product-centering system of processes thinking “Popular” project Strategy-driven project “Popular” and strategic identification identification project identification Portfolio of tools Structured tool use Portfolio of tools, some (DMAIC) structure Haphazard project review Gated review at the end of Updates during Kaizens, each DMAIC phase communication at end Focus on quality Focus on reduction of cost Focus on reduction of cycle improvement and variation time and WIP Bias to quality for quality’s Bias for analysis (Projects) Bias for action (Kaizen sake (Quality Circles) Events) Lessons From Six Sigma The strengths of the Six Sigma tradition in comparison to other approaches has been detailed before15, but in this case, we want to look specifically at what Six Sigma could bring to a Lean Six Sigma fusion. To that end, we will divide the characteristics of Six Sigma into three groups, strengths unique to Six Sigma, strengths that can be drawn from Six Sigma and other traditions, and threats to the Six Sigma tradition that need to be considered and mitigated in a Lean Six Sigma fusion. Unique Strengths of Six Sigma Six Sigma has a number of unique strengths, explaining in part both the endurance of its appeal and the demonstrated power of the approach. Among these are the infrastructural elements and career development paths that were developed and added to Six Sigma under Jack Welch at GE and Larry Bossidy at Allied Signal (now Honeywell). A strength 15 M. Goldstein, Six Sigma Forum Magazine, 1, (1), 36 (2001). 4 of Six Sigma related to this is the presence of dedicated resources, namely Black Belts, in addition to the general expectation that everyone will be involved. Finally, the structure to improvement projects provided by DMAIC and the use of gated reviews at the end of each DMAIC phase are two additional strengths unique to Six Sigma. Let us examine each of these in more detail. Detailed Infrastructure One of the primary and perhaps the most valuable addition that Bossidy and Welch added to the Six Sigma program Motorola began was the infrastructural roles they defined for their implementations16. Despite attempts by some organizations, notably the American Society for Quality, to provide specific definitions to at least the Black Belt role, what specifically is meant by each of these roles varies significantly from company to company and training organization to training organization. Generally, the roles of Champion, Sponsor, Master Black Belt, Black Belt, and Green Belt are part of the picture with the roles and responsibilities of at least the first four being generally similar. Green Belt roles vary significantly and in some organizations, other roles including Yellow Belts and others, are added. This paper will attempt to provide a general definition for the most common of these infrastructural roles. Champions. Champions often have different names, and occasionally are left out of an implementation. When used, however, whatever their name, they are usually a member of senior management who are charged with leading and energizing the Six Sigma effort and most often theirs is a full-time position. They are often the ones that choose who will be Black Belts and Master Black Belts.
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