Is Lean Six Sigma really worth the investment?

What’s your take on Lean Six Sigma? Big fans? Not so much? Or are you unsure who, what, when, where or how it even works? Well, some are of the opinion that it isn’t worth the investment, but we’re here to tell you otherwise…

Developed primarily in the manufacturing industry, Lean Six Sigma is a problem-solving methodology used to improve business processes, and create a culture of continuous improvement. It’s a meeting of two separate philosophies:

• Lean: aims to improve efficiency by removing waste from organisational processes
• Six Sigma: aims to reduce errors or defects by effectively solving problems during production processes

Tackling issues with quality management, including defects, errors and other forms of ‘waste’, Lean Six Sigma works by first identifying the root cause of issues, before designing a solution based on these findings — in other words, it is problem-driven rather than solution-driven.

Although some may argue that following best-practice models can achieve similar effects, the advantage of using Lean Six Sigma is that, instead of tackling issues that are common to all businesses, it takes a more dynamic and innovative approach and breaks down the specific issues of a given organisation.

So far so good, right? So why are some less convinced?

Isn’t Lean Six Sigma just for manufacturing?

There is a common misconception that, because Lean Six Sigma was birthed in the manufacturing industry, it is only applicable in a production environment within that sector. But think of it this way, it’s not only machines that can show faults — humans are just as capable of getting things wrong and needing improvement.

Likewise, issues and defects are not unique to manufacturing; problems occur everywhere and in every organisation, so a problem-solving methodology like Lean Six Sigma that is designed to resolve these issues, can be applied to any and all sectors, and can be used by organisations that deliver services, rather than products.

I don’t know anything about it!