Lean Six Sigma is an invitation to solve meaningful business problems by developing new approaches and working processes. It combines the power of a structured, fact-based approach with the inclusion of those who are closest to the problems encountered day to day. Acting as sponsors for Lean Six Sigma projects, managers learn to invite the participation and ideas from all levels of the business. The role of the Lean Six Sigma manager is to facilitate the process of creative problem solving, not to provide the answer. His or her most important contribution is to create an environment in which it is safe to challenge the status quo, bring forth new ideas and develop them through experimentation.

 

If a company opens the flood gates for new ideas from employees via a suggestion system, the issue will not be getting new ideas. The issue will be responding to them. Lean Six Sigma develops the organization’s ability to not just identify, but develop and implement new ideas. Without that, the ideas will land back on the desk of overworked middle managers who are busy keeping the shop running as best they can. The quadruple win Lean Six Sigma offers is:

1) A way for managers to facilitate the process of creative problem solving that brings heretofore disconnected parts of the organization together.

2) Visualization of the current reality and a compelling, innovative picture of the future around which people can rally.

3) Setting stretch goals that pull functions together and challenges the status quo.

4) Prioritization of resources and development of talent to more effectively execute cross-functional, cross-country projects.

 

If an organization wants its people to be more creative and productive, give them the tools and resources to simplify their day-to-day working practices. If a company needs improvements in productivity, challenge employees to pool, develop and implement the ideas that are there waiting to be harvested. Above all, a business should create an environment in which people are encouraged and comfortable to experiment and take risks. That is what leads to breakthroughs, the engine for continuous innovation.

A process takes input(s) and perform a set of activities to produce an outcome or result.

Innovation: The process of creating a product or service solution that delivers significant new customer value. The process begins with the selection of the customer and market, includes the identification and prioritization of opportunities, and ends with the creation of an innovative product or service.

Lean Six sigma is a collaborative team effort to improve performance by systematically removing waste, reducing variation and increase predictability. Six Sigma and Innovation are complementary yet opposite. Refer table below for how they complement and contrast and how they can work together.

	Six Sigma	Innovation
Contrast	·         Reduce variation ·         Optimize processes and product trade-offs ·         Be precise and data driven ·         Make money now	·         Encourage diverse thinking ·         Break the mold so trade-offs are unnecessary ·         Create “emotional” experiences ·         Create opportunities to make money by taking risks
How they complement	Helps create customer loyalty through stable & capable processes Frees up resources by eliminating costs Making execution of a new idea more predictable	--> creates foundation for innovation --> can be reinvested in innovation --> helps mitigate risks
What’s common	Both aim to meet customer expectations in cost effective manner
How does it help if they come together	Lean brings structure and predictability to innovation and sharpens the distinction between idea generation and development process. Lean can help bring discipline needed to develop and profit from new product and service offerings. Lean encourages focus on - listen to the voice of the customer, business and employee which will help innovate a profitable winning idea. Lean can help reduce risk.
Caution	Excessive adherence to Lean may kill innovation as people will not deviate from norm and thus no innovation.
Reason / Necessity for them to come together	Increasing competition, need to be more profitable and sustainable, pressure for cost cuts
Case Study for co-existence	Pixar is a live example of lean and innovation coexistence. Pixar believes in a method to the madness. Pixar has created a set of processes that emphasizes team based collaboration and continuous feedback loops to help overcome creative blocks and track deliverables. Pixar has setup structure that believes individual is as important to the team as team is to individual – this helps create structures that helps resolve roadblocks faster and encourages individuals to discuss problems and collaborate. They have practice of discussing daily progress and bottleneck / risks. Ideas that are likely to be doomed are therefore terminated early on. They nurture creative freedoms and yet reduce waste.
Techniques that can be used	Root cause analysis (RCA) Voice of customer (VOC) Quality function deployment (QFD) House of Quality (HOQ) Failure mode effects and analysis (FMEA) Value engineering analysis (VEA) XY Matrix, TRIZ method (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) PUGH Matrix Design of Experiments (DOE) Mistake Proofing DMAIC and application of above tools at relevant phases.

 

Conclusion: Not everyone is an advocate of Six Sigma. While the well thought-out process and constant benchmarking may seem to be restrictive however Six Sigma does not suppress free thinking. They complement each other and when used creatively and effectively can result in true benefits.

Lean Six Sigma is a methodology that helps us to organize our thoughts and approach the solution in a structured way.

 

To innovate solution for any problem we should understand the history that we are working with. Six sigma is not to bound ourselves by the process. Lean Six sigma will enable us to innovate a design, bound the solution with a process to implement and execute flawlessly. Structured approach for a problem will always help us to address the right root-cause. 

 

Along with innovation, Six Sigma will also help us to validate the confidence level of the solution and understand the impact of the solution for the said problem. In such a way we can save the precious time and effort before implementation of the solution.

 

Well, this is the question which was pinching me from long back and I forgot to ask while I did my BB :p.

 

Observation:-
What I observed is that it a very old controversy. Few experts said YES, it will stop innovation, few said NO! 

My Thinking:-
Actually, I think there isn't a clear-cut disjunction between innovation and Six Sigma processes say, operational excellence. There must be balance or else the firm will result in bureaucracy or anarchy.  

 

If we take the concept of an innovation fulcrum. Imagine the value chain of product development, marketing, operations, and customer service. If product development is uncontrolled in their quest to grow the top-line by "pushing" new products, then complexity grows. Like, for each new product, we will need a new production line to be created, marketing and PR teams mobilized, and customer service enabled -- all at the product level, to support the products. Indeed, all the "downstream" work and added complexity will increase the product costs than revenue.

Lean & Six Sigma seek to identify waste, variation, and unnecessary complexity and reduce or eliminate it. This goal can be a great thing for any firm, upstart or mature. 

So, I think the controversy persists because of the lack of specific definitions for both of these terms Innovation is vague because it was raised that way: the specific eureka moments, the right-brained child, etc. Innovation might change person to person. One very necessary characteristic of the definition of innovation from my point of view is - it must come up with a significant improvement in the process/new creation to the process/people/society/subject. When a process reduce time from 90000 to 90 hrs as per my view its innovation, if it helps some process/people/society/subject.

On the other hand, in innovation also we need some structure, if a process is certain, repeatable, reliable & predictable. And if we are speaking about structure - structure connotes Six Sigma.

 

So, one leading to or needing the other.

 

The definition of Six Sigma is also as hazy as that of innovation. "The dumbing down of Six Sigma is real, and Six Sigma does not mean the same thing today for many companies as it was originally intended. According to Mikel Harry, a legitimate founder of Six Sigma, Six Sigma was designed and introduced to generate breakthrough improvement. And that is going to require innovation". Attaining a certain percent time, say, 20 percent reduction in cycle time, for example, is not what Six Sigma is all about. "Six Sigma is about doing things significantly different in order to achieve breakthrough performance levels“. And that will require innovation. If Six Sigma did not mean innovation, Motorola, Amazon.com, Toyota, Mckinsey and, now eBay would not be around today and neither would Xerox, amongst many others. 

From a pragmatic point-of-view, both work together quite well. Some organisation/people may have generated their own definition of Six Sigma and maybe don’t really know what Six Sigma is all about. Or, perhaps, Six Sigma might have descended upon their domain and imposed some accountability. Here we need a clear balance in between.

 

Six Sigma Needs Innovation, and Vice Versa, with proper leadership. Leaders must nurture the conditions needed to derive the combined power of Six Sigma and innovation and when they are united, innovation and Six Sigma are an unbeatable force

 

Courtesy:
http://willprice.blogspot.in/2007/07/3m-six-sigma-vs-innovation.html
https://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/innovation/articles/six-sigma-and-innovation
 

An interesting and challenging question indeed… There are two, rather three parts in this Question.

 

1. Is a process as a significant roadblock in the effort towards creative design work?
2. There are many innovations that happened purely by accident !!!
3. Is there any value in the use of Lean Six Sigma in the world of product innovation?

 

To answer the second one first:

I tend to agree that there are/were many innovations that happened purely by accident.

Sometimes genius arrives by chance and not by choice. 

 

Examples are many including Coco-cola, Cornflakes, Microwave Oven, X-rays, Pacemaker and the list would go on. Another example close to my family, redbus.com, online bus ticketing portal, when the founder Phani missed a bus seat on a festive day and thought of starting first ever bus ticketing portal in the country.

 

All of these have been discovered purely by accident and the inventors have not started it as a process to discover any of these.

 

Answering 1^st  and 3^rd parts :

While there are innovations that happened by accident, NOT ALL the innovations in the world are the result of purely such accidents.

 

Also, would like to call out two words INVENTION and INNOVATION. An invention may at times come by accident and Innovation is difficult, as it is in most cases a combination of the invention, along with use, behavior, and business models, through a  rigorous process. A relevant example, i-phone that has been one of the greatest innovations in the technology. Inventions like touch screens, mobile communications for voice and data and many features of this gizmo were there for some time, but this innovation of i-phone is a result of a well-designed process making use of several inventions that were already made.

 

Ideation and groupthink are key components to innovation. Innovation is a journey.  Creating a corporate culture where the goals are measured in simplified KPIs and easily measured metrics might actually stifle innovation in many ways. Identification and improvements in these processes so that they fuel innovation can be achieved through Lean Six Sigma. 

 

Hence, I strongly feel a process is NOT AT ALL a roadblock in the effort towards creative design work and I see a tremendous value in the use of Lean Six Sigma in the world of product innovation.

Innovation needs not only good ideas but company’s ability to encourage, develop and implement new ideas.

 

Thomas Edison says “It is more about perspiration than inspiration”

 

If a company calls for new ideas from employees, the issue will not be getting new ideas. The issue will be responding to them. Lean Six Sigma develops the organization’s ability to not just identify, but develop and implement new ideas. Without that, the ideas will be just lying in backlog.

Lean Six Sigma offers:

·         A way for managers to facilitate the process of creative problem solving that brings heretofore disconnected parts of the organization together.

·         Visualization of the current reality and a compelling, innovative picture of the future around which people can rally.

·         Setting stretch goals that pull functions together and challenges the status quo.

·         Prioritization of resources and development of talent to more effectively execute cross-functional, cross-country projects.

 

Ultimately, if an organization wants its people to be more creative and productive, give them the tools and resources to simplify their day-to-day working practices. If a company needs improvements in productivity, challenge employees to pool, develop and implement the ideas that are there waiting to be harvested. Above all, a business should create an environment in which people are encouraged and comfortable to experiment and take risks. That is what leads to breakthroughs required for continuous innovation.

Product Innovation vs Six Sigma

 

Lean Six Sigma is generally taken as a methodology & data driven approach for improvement while Product Innovation is about delivering customer values through new ways. While Six Sigma stresses on measurement-based statistical approach, innovation requires creative design thinking. Due to this it appears that there is a natural conflict between the two.

 

Innovation is more of a skill-based process while Six Sigma is analysis-based but they surely complement each other in today's fast changing technological landscape. A number of Six Sigma tools e.g. the Cause and Effect diagram and the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) promote innovative thinking and team brainstorming. Tools like DoE, Pugh matrix & Poka-Yoke surely validates the target designs in the best possible way and put a confirmation on innovative ideas on whether they are sustainable and delivering the exact values they are intended to deliver.

 

It definitely needs a balance. Today's corporations seem to find that balance between structured methodology and free creative thinking and they have also established an approach to merge the two.

 

At Caterpillar Inc., stagnant revenue growth prompted the company to undertake a massive transformation in January 2001. Through a Lean Six Sigma initiative, the company developed a strategic vision and a road map for change guided by fact-based analysis. The initiative led to product innovations, like Caterpillar's phenomenally successful low-emissions diesel engine, and to redesigned processes, including a streamlined supply chain. By 2005, the company's revenues had grown by 80 percent. [ source: http://businessfinancemag.com ]

 

Six Sigma's focus on fact-based analysis and direct customer input , it is fit to transform, helping a company rethink its entire business and create a more innovative climate. The leading companies like IBM have deliberately expanded the scope of the methodology, using it to surface significant innovation opportunities that have impacts well beyond operations. Doing so has enabled these companies to improve performance and establish an organizational culture with an inherent inclination toward innovation.

 

 

 

Innovation is the key to survival in business. Creativity and freedom to innovate ushers in enthusiasm and thereby, a better workplace. Creativity does not necessarily mean chaos, it can be a process that is systematic and challenge any roadblock and set patterns. It can be an organizational change, which creates a revolution. It can be a change in how people think and approach work.  Here Lean six sigma plays a part.

 

Lean thinking encourages exploration of problems, finding its root cause which in turn provides the foundation for the development of new ideas. It gives the employees powerful tools to create and innovate. Risk taking is considered as a learning opportunity. This flexibility gives a more committed workforce.

 

By applying  Six Sigma, the distinction between desirable and undesirable variation can be recognized resulting in fast and stable results. This leads to effective innovation.

Thus, Lean Six Sigma techniques can take away unnecessary wasteful work out of a process and control its variations, which results in an increase in capacity, which is to be used for exploratory work leading to more innovation. In such circumstance, integration of innovation and Lean Six Sigma gives the best results.