Arup Banerjee

Nice summary VK. Another similar example is airline flight safety, which operates at 6 sigma levels but I don't think many airlines follow the methodology. Exception would be GE Aircraft Engines thanks to it being a GE company. (although it is not an airline).

In one of the organisations I worked in previously (which is into Six Sigma in a big way with 200 Black Belts like me hanging around), we actually invited the Mumbai Dabbawalas to our office to share their story. They candidly admitted that till an external agency came and told them they were operating at 6 Sigma levels they had no clue what Six Sigma was all about!! If by Six Sigma application we mean DMAIC then these people definitely did not use DMAIC to get where they are. However, we could say they (unwittingly) applied DFSS principles to design a process that delivers at six sigma levels from the very beginning without any formal training in DFSS principles. I guess that echoes the thoughts of many people in this thread that it is all about understanding customer requirements deeply and designing a robust process that can deliver using basic process management principles (aka common sense).

Based on my experience as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt with a GE subsidiary, the recommended umbrella approach should be to create a culture of customer focus & continuous improvement based on a robust process managment framework across the organisation rather than debating between Lean & Six Sigma. As pointed out by several people in this discussion, the two are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. While GE started with Six Sigma as its umbrella approach it has adopted Lean in a big way now. However, Six Sigma continues to be applied to areas where root causes cannot be arrived at by simply doing Why-Why analysis, and therfore, some data analysis is necessary.

Most welcome ... the site I referenced now has a video that provides an excellent overview to 5S - a very popular but often misunderstood Lean tool. Another must-read book for anyone interested in Lean is the 'The Toyota Way' by Jeffrey Liker. An interesting point to note is that although Toyota is where concepts of Lean production originated nobody in Toyota used the term Lean Manufacturing!! Toyota simply referred to their system as the Toyota Production System (TPS). What is even more ironic is the fact that the founders of Toyota's automobile business got their initial ideas from Henry Ford!!

Agree with you completely SJ ... deploying and sustaining Lean by changing mindsets is definitely the core challenge. In fact we are strongly recommending to the organisations where we are involved with 'Lean Transformation' initiatives that they need to think long-term and develop Lean Thinkers/Leaders internally rather than depend on outsiders (like us!!). Unfortunately, in today's economic scenario everyone wants to see quick results and therefore hurry to launch tool-centric initiatives that (as you pointed out) result in little or no sustainable benefitis. Arup

Hello Punita, Having worked in one of India's largest BPOs interacting with GE companies globally, would like to highlight fact that Six Sigma is not the last word in IT/ITES. Many IT/ITES companies are now looking at both Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma as approaches to work with depending on the business issue being addressed ... a phenomenon which is now popularly called Lean Six Sigma. In my opinion rather than debating which approach is better what is relevant is developing a thorough understanding of both approaches and selecting what works best. Six Sigma material is fairly structured and as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt I found (surprisingly) Six Sigma easier to understand than Lean ... Lean is much more than a set of tools and there is a huge amount of literature available on Lean that can be very confusing. There is no equivalent of DMAIC or DMADV in Lean and one of the best places to start is by reading 'Lean Thinking' by James Womack and Daniel Jones followed by 'Lean Solutions' by the same authors. Both books are easily available in India. If you want a quick introduction to Lean then take a look at the video in this link http://www.gembaacademy.com/launch/pre-launch-videos.html Happy learning. Arup

Hi Nitin, I think you have many good responses to your question. My only addition to this would be to leverage something called a Process/Product Drill Down tree that maps the key processes/products in the business along with the CTQs. What you end up with is a grid that displays all possible process-CTQ combinations and then you can select the combinations that need attention. Subsequenly one can apply the set of questions in this thread to prioritise which areas need attention and of what kind. As pointed out by Vijay not all Six Sigma projects need to be complex and long ... there are always low-hanging fruits that can be attacked quickly. In the organisation I worked with it all Black Belts/Master Black Belts were advised to create a Process/Product drill down tree in order to identify improvement opportunities that links to organisational objectives. Regards Arup