How to identify Lean Six Sigma projects

Simply, Lean means creating more value for customers with fewer resources.

A Lean Organisation understands customer value and focuses its key processes to continuously increase it. The goal is to provide perfect value to the customer through a perfect value creation process that has zero waste.

Six Sigma is a disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects (driving toward six standard deviations between the mean and the nearest specification limit).

Overall, Lean Six Sigma is a methodology designed to significantly improve business strategies and workflows. The primary goal of Lean Six Sigma is to eliminate defects in a process. The desired outcome is improved quality and efficiency for the business.

This overall result is achieved by streamlining business processes and eliminating wasted effort and resources.

Importance of Selection

Why Project Selection Matters

Improvement project selection with whole organisational benefit is often lacking in organisations, but it is important that improvements are constantly implemented.

Why Project Selection Matters

After all, the survival of an organisation can depend upon how well these improvement projects are chosen and executed. Organizations should measure the potential impact of projects before selection to ensure alignment with strategic goals. Selecting the right project is a critical component of project success.

Consequences of Poor Selection

Project Failure

If sufficient effort is not put into selecting the right opportunity for improvement, a project can end in a disaster or create unnecessary work and complexity for the project team. Using various tools for project selection and analysis, such as Pareto charts and control charts, can help prevent project failure by ensuring data-driven decisions and effective prioritization.

Strategic Alignment

Without a well-defined strategy, pinpointing a Lean Six Sigma project can be a complex process. Therefore, a clear, long-lasting mechanism for project selection is needed. This is so that the business benefits and silo-only-benefit projects are avoided.

Need for enterprise-wide benefit

A methodology is needed where enterprise-wide measurement improvement needs “pull” for projects that will enhance key performance indicators (KPIs), and owners of these metrics are asking for timely project completions.

So, how can the integrity and direction of such a system be created and maintained through the frequent leadership and organisational changes that often occur?

Planning Importance

• Importance of Planning Period: Many organisations improve processes through certain plans or strategies, and it is important to understand the methodology that your organisation uses.
• Goal Alignment: There needs to be a planning period in which goals are aligned, established and agreed upon.

Leadership Responsibilities

• Mission Statement: A mission statement needs to be created alongside a business model by the senior management team.
• Business Model Creation: A clear and transparent business model must be designed by the senior leadership team.

Performance Assessment

Strengths and Improvement Areas

A performance assessment of the organisation is to be conducted, which will outline strengths and areas for key improvements.

How Projects Become Visible

At this very stage, Lean Six Sigma projects will naturally become evident.

Project Sequencing

The right projects in sequence still need to be considered, and aligning with organisational strategic direction remains important.

Gap Analysis

Current vs. Desired Performance

A gap analysis study shows the distance between where your organisation’s current performance is and where it aspires to be.

Strategic Action Plan

Create your strategic action plan and communicate it throughout the organisation.

Organisation-wide Buy-in

This determines the strategic direction and creates buy-in at all levels.

Lean Six Sigma’s Role

Bridging Gaps

Lean Six Sigma is designed to bridge the gaps discovered in the gap analysis study. It can supplement the action plan phase of a strategic planning process.

Supporting Strategic Execution

Once the plan is in place, figure out how Lean Six Sigma aligns with your organisation’s goals, aspirations and plans of action.

If business modelling is a part of your organisation’s strategic planning process, it can tell you a great deal about where the business stands in terms of market growth and competitive positioning.

Policy Deployment

Translating High-level Goals Into Projects

Once you’re confident of your organisation’s standing within its market, you can combine the action plan with the main goals that will most benefit the organisation. This is called policy deployment.

Team and Individual Ownership

It involves setting goals that are high-level and functional, then integrating those goals into Lean Six Sigma projects for individuals and teams to conduct.

Core Business Processes

Products, Services, Customers

Every organisation operates through layers of processes. At the highest level, these focus on creating products, information, or services for customers. This is usually known as the core business process.

Supporting Processes

Detailed, Operational Processes

Beneath core processes are more intricate operational activities. These require a specific sequence of steps and actions to keep the core organisational functions running efficiently.

Where Lean Six Sigma Works Best

It is these underlying, intricate series of processes where Lean Six Sigma can exert its most relevant work. Nevertheless, it won’t be optimally effective if an organisation does not understand its core business processes first.

Understanding Core Processes

Audits, Reviews and KPIs

Lean Six Sigma can only achieve optimal results with a clear understanding of core business processes. Therefore, these business processes must be reviewed, audited and measured regularly for effectiveness. KPIs will also help to identify any main issues here and then

Real-Time Problem Focus

Projects Addressing Current Customer and Process Issues

Lean Six Sigma project teams focus on real-world problems that affect customers and operational activities. Addressing such issues can help maintain efficacy and competitive advantage.

Project Impact

Efficiency and Goal Achievement

Once a Lean Six Sigma project is underway, it can significantly boost efficiency and goal achievement in any organisation.

Lean Six Sigma as Ongoing Improvement

Lean Six Sigma is an ongoing journey, during which an organisation begins to experience transformation and excellence.

Cultural Transformation

Empowered Employees

After completing several rounds of projects in multiple critical and non-critical functions, the newly developed organisational culture will help the management to develop empowered employees.

Sustainable Improvement Mindset

These employees naturally identify and drive improvement ideas as they occur. This process tends to foster a sustainable improvement mindset across the organisation.