(Lean Six Sigma) or (Lean and Six Sigma)

A lot of discussions I’ve heard recently about this two. Should it be together (as Lean Six Sigma) or separate but complementary (as Lean and Six Sigma) ?

If you search for this in web you will probably find Lean Six Sigma as the most apropriate one. You’ll find a lot of job positions, blog names, groups and even companies called that way. So,at the end of the day, you find a conclusion that this is right naming and approach. But I will a little disagree.

1) To do lean you need a different skills than for Six Sigma. You rather have to be extrovert, you have to see the whole so it means in most cases that you will miss some details.

2) To do Six Sigma you need to be detailed person, very project management oriented and not neccessary you have to see the whole as each Six Sigma project is focused on particular problem. F.e. person with Ph. D. will be excellent Six Sigma master.

3) You have to run Value Stream Mapping first. Based on results of it you can further define both Lean or Six Sigma projects.

3) Lean=waste reduction, Six Sigma=variation reduction. Lean is vary easy and simple, Six Sigma is complex to understand.

4) Lean is for everyone, Six Sigma is rather for engineers. Why f.e. HR should run six sigma projects ?

5) Why do lean six sigma if I reach the same results running only lean ?

Yes, I agree that this 2 programs we should run in parallel, but it should be rather inline (under 2 leaders) then combined together under one person, who is called Lean Six Sigma.

So, my opinion is that excellent lean leader won’t be necessary excellent Six Sigma Black Belt.

What do you think ?

No sustainability phenomenon

Every time we start to work on 5S it is understood (at least in the beginning) that we start to clean our area. What’s moreover, people have it so deeply stucked in their mind that sometime they don’t even try to listen about real purpose of 5S. Probably it is somhow connected with our culture not to listen “when I know better then you”.

Nevertheless first step is usually to clean the area, then they started to think what we really need (sort) and how we can handle this in future. During first 5S session I’ve never met a team, who thought about more than 3S. We think about current status rather then future, especially if we talk about not our own company but the company we are hired in. Let’s think about how we behave at home. What do you do to sustain changes you’ve made ? I usually try (if this is possible) to prepare poke-yoke. It prevents me from making the same mistakes in the future. Always I try to convince my audience to do the same. If you need some practical examples – go to IKEA

First headline of this post was at the beginning “5S phenomenon” … but I changed it to “No sustainability phenomenon”. I think we need to still learn a lot to think in “5S mode”, which in most cases means “think about the future”

Benefits for Business Process Excellence Programmes

A survey has been performed among european managers. The result is obvious for european and american cultures, I would say.

First place with 30% answers went to “Reduce Costs” (in Poland it would be probably ~70/80%). Usually, if you invest your money, you need quick results.  At least in european and american cultures. In japanese culture, for instance, it’s rather obvious that results will come later. But, the question is if this should be on the first place ? I don’t think so, there are much more important answers.

Second most popular answer was “Increase Customer Satisfaction” and third “Change Culture”.

My understanding is the opposite. First you have to change the culture to make your employees think in a continous improvement mode. Once you have it (or just started to do it), you will probably increase customer satisfaction (f.e. lower level of ppm’s), and by the way you will reduce your costs.

Yes, this probably you are not able to do in European companies. Culture change takes at least couple of years and who is gonna pay for this ?

This is also the answer of why Toyota is sharing the TPS knowledge with the rest of the world – nobody but them are able to sustain the change (or almoust nobody).

Does Lean Leader need motivation ?

If  you see most of articles about lean culture implementation usually you find description of a person, who is called lean leader (lean manager). That person has to drive the change. This is true and obvious. But what about his/her motivation ? Does anybody care if that person is motivated to his/her work ?

You might say that this is lean leader’s job to drive the programme – he’s getting money for that! This is true, however:

a) Lean Leader is extrovert (or should be) - the person gets very quick high level of enthusiasm but usually looses it very quick.

b) Without strong support of top management (rather I should put – STRONG) the person looses very quick credibility in a team and everything goes back to “normal” life.

c) With no big achievements there is no satisfaction and no award! And lean leader usually works for his/her appreciation, money are always (or at least should be) somwhere lower on the list.

d) This is probably not the most popular person in the company – remember that !

So, does lean leader need motivation ? YES, everytime you have an opportunity to award him – DO IT, everytime when project finishes successfully – congratulate, everytime when you just like his/her job – shake a hand and say he’s doing a good job!

Because in other way, you will loose him/her quickly

Why lean management is so interesting ?

This is the question you might probably asking yourself reading this blog. Recently I wondered if everybody, who is involved somehow in lean, knows why they are doing it. And believe it’s not so simple to answer.

First of all, you have to know all lean theory. This means Toyota history (as lean is based on TPS) and all tools they have being implementing.

Then, what is more important, you have to know what and when you should use this tools. This requires something called “experience”. This is not so simple to gather some. One of the most known company implementing TPS around the world is Shingujitsu Group. They hire only former Toyota employees usually when they retire. And this is for them experience.

After all the most important point, I think, is passion to what you are doing. Lean is delivering it for sure ! There is no repetable projects as people are always different. Usually, each project is different as businesses are not the same. What is the most interesting that lean is changing company’s culture from top to bottom and the other way around.

Consultant is most likely like a coach (with huge leadership skills and experience), who is using internal resources to change company’s direction on a continous improvement way to perfection. And this is for me so interesting and challenging …

3P in Restaurants

Yestarday I watched in TV an episode of Magda Gesler’s series about transforming not prospering well restaurants into good prospering one. As I watched it minute by minute I realized that this business is not so much different than f.e. production (products don’t matter). Because:

1. People – “It’s all about people” – this is what lean culture stands for. Here, organisational structure was exactely the same as in production … and with similar problems. On the one side we have a restaurant’s owner, not really convinced to changes, and a “small” dictator, I would say. On the other side, there is a great team merged by theirs disinclination to the boss. Task for the person from outside was to find the root cause (f.e. salary wasn’t paid on time) and biuld a new communication path between this 2 levels.

2. Process. We could observe no heijunka (leveled production – in this case prepared dishes and in result people were waiting for the food over 45 minutes), no standard work (waiters didn’t know what tables they are responsible for and in fact they forgot to serve some customers!), no 5S and visual management (papers with names of dishes were flying all over the kitchen) … From the lean point of view there was a lot of work to do with above tools to improve efficiency.

3. Purpose. This is what Magda did at the beginning. She changed completely the way restaurant should be organised – she set up new idea to run this business. The restaurant started to serve a specialised dishes and not selling all, what they can imagine having only 2 cooks. They changed also the inside outlook adding f.e. a fireplace.

All above 3P it’s not something new. Japanese companies have been doing it for 30 years at least. However what is really interesting (and real!) is fact that we can apply this rules to all businesses in the world. And this is some kind of argument/example for couple of change mindset blockers.

Continously Improving Ourselves

It’s amazing how many different communication channels we have nowdays in internet. I’m just launching another communication path (using Worpress) being already present on Facebook, Twitter … I’m just wondering how many other sites I would have to run to make sure I’m not behind competition in next f.e. 3 years.

What’s really amazing is that still this could be the same information, which is visible on 3,4 or many other webs. The only one difference is seen in popularity of site and different “shape” of  information – on Twitter f.e. is only 160 signs length.

What I really mean here in this first post is that as we are human beeings we need to improve every day. In Lean Management it is called continous improvement (called kaizen in japanese) and it’s 5th step of implementing Lean Culture in each company ….