First of all, Thank you VK for the invite on Forum (might have been routed thru Benchmark i guess) its indeed enriching. My experience with any type or fashion of Lean Manufacturing is fairly new as my largest stint was in IT, ITES where Six Sigma was the last word. Whereas Six Sigma has been in vogue at most of the 1990-2000 organisations, Lean Manufacturing i believe has been applied in various forms since 1910 by taylor as scientific management or by Demming then on. I saw many write up and queries on Six Sigma but could not find anything on Lean Manufacturing except for tools. Also many topics mention Six Sigma and Lean in one line but could you relate them as a tool and practice respectively.



Thanks

Punita

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

Thank you Arup

Your mail and the video link made me feel like I have come on to the first bench in the lean classroom and so far i was just somewhere sitting and wondering where the mix of Industry approach lead to. I am sure I will gain more by reaidng the books you suggested and will keep writing.

Thanks again

Punita

The video link was a good introduction to Lean. Thanks for posting it. 

Some of the Lean Manufacturing tools are rather simple to understand (such as 5S) but one has to be cautious when deploying some of the more advanced tools like Value Stream Mapping (VSM). Some companies have totally destroyed their processes by doing the wrong things in their future state VSM.

I feel that hardest part of Lean is deploying and sustaining it within a company. It involves a change in culture of the company and it takes a lot of persistent effort to change the behaviours & attitudes of people.

SJ

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

thanks friends for quiet meaningful exposer on  the topic.

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!!

Just to add on to this useful discussion, a book worth reading is "Toyota way field book" . It is also by Jeffrey Archer and Meier. This book is like a practical guide about TPS implementation. It is based on famous 4P philosophy of Toyota ( Philosophy, People and partners, Process , Problem solving) and gives how to do tips on various aspects of lean which covers many things like defining purpose of our organisation, building leaders, root cause identification etc. Excellent book to understand and implement lean.

Best regards,

Madhavi

Hi All,

Iam Ram working in Titan Industries. We a completed a Lean-Sixsigma project for reducing the leadtime of New products which I can share with you.  

You can send me a mail to [email protected] if interested. i can send you the project file. Its better that you give your personal mail Id as the project file size is close to 10mb.

Just to make you clear, Lean+Sixsigma is just like Pepper + Salt. You need to use them in required proportion to take achieve your goals.

All the best

Ramabadran

Dear sir,

As you stated about lean that, a huge amount of literature is available but it can be very confusing. As you are the professional in this subject and recommend that lean six sigma is the best.

My humble request is could you pl. Provide me the confusions points strucked you.in Lean Manufacturing. As professional you take very less time to come out of the facts and figures.

Thanking you sir.

Warmregards

Abdul muneeb.mohammed

Madhucon projects ltd

Mob: 9603829918 / 9848759712

Thanks for share