ISO 9001 Compliance

What do you get when you combine two of the best methodologies in the business world or specifically the manufacturing industry? Lean Six Sigma; that’s what you get. While Lean is related to focussing on removing things that can be isolated from the organization or specific processes without causing any kind of setbacks to the running of the systems, Six Sigma emphasizes on quality and how practices within a company can be worked around and modified to give the best in terms of quality and satisfaction to the customer. As can be understood then, lean six sigma works on the joint principles of quality and speed.

Lean and Six Sigma both have been long considered to be totally opposite and rival methodologies when it comes to improving the techniques and practices that are prevalent in the industry. This is primarily because while lean has the speed based approach wherein their prime focus is on getting things done and getting them done fast, Six Sigma focuses on the satisfaction aspect of the customer. For them, the end product should be good enough so that it passes all the quality tests and gives the customers the end product exactly as they desired it to be. The various kinds of waste or non added value work that Lean on the other hand tries to remove fall into various categories like defects, wastage of human talent, overproduction, time delays (or waiting time), motion and transportation related defects or delays, flaws that creep up into the inventory and also the overproduction problem where the company produces more than is needed (sometimes compromising on quality).

If we look closely at the epitome of either of the business strategies, we can see clearly that even though experts may have thought otherwise, they can indeed complement each other without much ado. This is simply because of the fact that when instead of concentrating on one of the key methods of speed or quality, if you can work by taking them both together, you would be able to achieve much better and fantastic results. There is no doubt about the fact that quality and speed are the two most important aspects in the manufacturing industry (the industry which was initially the prime focus for both) and instead of working to improve them individually, it would be a much better option to take both of them into the stride.

Lean Six Sigma, in the simplest of terms is an improvement methodology that aims at maximizing the product value by achieving the best possible result in the fields that matter the most: quality, cost, customer satisfaction, speed and returns on the capital. The fusion of the two techniques is required because they prove to be complimentary for each other, helping the former on exactly the thing that it lacks. There is no doubt that they would be able to become more productive as a combined force as compared to the industry using them as independent strategies to work for their betterment and improvement in the coming years.