What is Lean Six Sigma?

Lean Six Sigma is a business management strategy with the core idea of reducing waste and increasing process efficiency to ensure sustainable value for the customer. This method helps companies detect inefficiencies in their work process and figure out how to remove them to develop and deliver stronger products and services.

What Does Lean Do?

Lean has become a universal management tool and is widely used in all industries such as manufacturing, finance, healthcare, IT, military, construction, education, services, and government. This methodology aims to help organisations become more agile and responsive to change. Using the right structured approach to a lean management system, you will form a coherent structure and get benefits such as:

• Increased process efficiency
• Standardised and simplified process
• Cost reduction
• Increased team engagement
• Strong customer relationships
  
  
  

How to Become Lean

The Lean Six Sigma methodology is a holistic strategy for optimising business efficiency. Using its techniques, you can identify the origin of the problem in your process and adopt a new management culture in your organisation. Here are the fundamentals to help you do it successfully.

1. Shared Leadership

Lean thinking is not the sole responsibility of senior leaders—it form part of every employee’s role. The true purpose of lean thinking is to transform the organisation’s culture at all levels, from the top to the bottom. Involving your employees in a change process and listening to everyone’s ideas will help you identify challenges, plan improvements, and create buy-in, making it easier to implement change and sustain progress over time.

This methodology is based on consistent leadership and a standardised work process, and its success depends more on the overall efforts of all staff than on the efforts of individual experts.

2. Getting Staff Ready for Change

Be aware that changes are never easy, and people can resist them, but if you involve your employees early in the process, they are more likely to agree with them. The success of any business lies in creating an environment where each employee understands the philosophy and ultimate goal of the organisation. They should be easy for everyone on the team to understand.

3. Using Lean Principles

• Identify Value – Define the value of products or services your customers expect through their feedback
• Identify the value stream – Identify all the actions and people involved in delivering the final product or service, from receipt of a demand to delivery to the customer
• Create flow  – Once the activities that do not add value have been identified, remove as many of them as possible so the process runs smoothly
• Establish pull – Create as many products as is required to meet customer demand. This means that work is produced only when there is demand for it
• Strive for perfection – Don’t stop improving once you’ve achieved results, as new problems may arise. Use the ‘Plan, Do, Check, Act’ (PDCA) cycle model to control, protect and continually improve the process

For a team without experience implementing a lean management system can be a challenging task. Change Consulting Scotland has extensive experience in delivering Process Improvement and provides lean consulting, training, and coaching to help analyse, design, and improve the existing processes and operational efficiency. Our experts will help you define the scope, create a roadmap and drive results.