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What is Six Sigma?
Six Sigma, created by the Motorola Corporation, is a five-step methodology used to understand customer requirements and to map, analyze, measure and improve processes in order to deliver 99.9997% defect-free products and services, improve cycle time and eliminate non-value added activities.
More information Glossary of TermsCEO ViewPoint Interview with Anand Sharma CEO of TBM Consulting Group and the LeanSigma Institute
Anand Sharma is co-author of The Antidote: How to Transform Your Business for the Extreme Challenges of the 21st Century and The Perfect Engine: How to Win in the New Demand Economy by Building to Order with Fewer Resources. He was named a Hero of U.S. Manufacturing in 2001 by Fortune magazine, was awarded the 2002 Donald C. Burnham Manufacturing Management Award by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and is a member of the Shingo Prize Academy.
Anand has more than 25 years experience within the manufacturing industry and held a number of line and staff positions with American Standard, Inc. before becoming vice president of operations for one of its leading operating divisions. Immediately prior to establishing TBM Consulting Group, he was executive vice president at Productivity Inc. and headed the firm’s consulting and training practices.
Question 1: It’s commonly thought in the continuous improvement community that TBM Consulting Group and the LeanSigma Institute is a lean focused consulting and training organization. Is this true?
“No, we integrated Six Sigma into our trade mark LeanSigma methodology over 10 years ago because we saw the benefits of using the best features of both of these powerful continuous improvement practices. We believe lean practitioners should adopt the discipline and reliance on data of Six Sigma and Six Sigma practitioners should adopt the team work and speed of Lean. Lean is a more effective tool at the beginning of the improvement journey and when the focus is narrow in a particular area and you can see the waste. Six Sigma should be utilized when there are multiple variables and you cannot see the waste like in the continuous process industries.”
Question 2: How does your company integrate lean and Six Sigma?
“TBM uses kaizen to implement Six Sigma to harness the creative power of a focused team. The same amount of time is given to the project, but instead of a single Black Belt spending 500 hours on the project over the span of many months a team of people condense those 500 hours into two weeks. The events are compact and focused allowing the problem to be solved quickly and efficiently while following the discipline of the DMAIC methodology.”
Question 3: When should a company start to use Six Sigma and lean? Should they be used simultaneously?
“First and foremost the most important strategic objective of any business is to grow faster than the industry by gaining market share for long term survival. The best method of implementing Six Sigma and lean, or what we call LeanSigma, is to help the business achieve that growth by improving responsiveness and reliability and doing more with less. When we use these tools for this type of strategic goals the profitability should actually improve faster than the revenues and thus assuring long term survival. No program of continuous improvement is successful unless it is tied to the business strategies of the company. Lean is generally used first to remove the obvious waste. Once all of the obvious waste is removed, Six Sigma should be used to create evenness in production by improving process capability as well as to improve product design for reduced variability .”
Great thanks to Anand Sharma for this interview, for more binformation about TBM
telephone: 800.438.5535 or visit their web-site: www.tbmcg.com
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