If you are interested in Six Sigma projects or quality management, Lean Six Sigma or Lean Management is for you. What is Lean Management? It was founded by Taiichi Ohno, a Toyota employee. It is also known by the Toyota Production System. Lean Management’s methodology derives from the Toyota Production System. Motorola developed the Six Sigma process. This was not developed by Toyota.
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It is closely linked to Six Sigma problem-solving processes, which is why you’ll often see Lean Six Sigma training. Six Sigma Green Belt Certification programs include Lean principles. A free Lean Six Sigma training is also available.
This is a principle-driven and tool-based philosophy that focuses upon eliminating waste so that all activities/steps can add value from the customer’s perspective. Six Sigma is designed to reduce variability and reduce waste.
Continuous waste elimination is the essence of Lean Thinking. In Japanese, the waste is called “Muda”, which also refers to non-value added activities and waste. There are eight types of waste:
Motion
Waiting
Overproduction
Underutilized Talent
Over-processing
Defects
Inventory
Transport
Lean Management is designed to reduce these wastes. Lean Management is a strategy for operating in a superior manner. The following illustration would show Lean Management.
Lean Management is about reducing cost, defects, lead times, inventory, space, waste, and other costs. This means that we must be relentless in reducing non-value-adding activities. This will allow us to increase productivity, customer satisfaction and profit, customer responsiveness, capacity and quality, cash flow, and on-time delivery. Learn more about Lean Project Management.
The Toolkit
Lean Management Toolkit provides practical tools and lean techniques to help Lean Management and other shop floor specialists deliver Lean Management decisions in their Lean Management driven business operations. This Lean Management Toolkit has been divided into 2 levels.
The first level in Lean Management focuses on exposing the waste. Five tools are required to expose the waste.
5S
MUDA
Make a mistake with proofing
Value Stream Mapping, (VSM).
Visual Management.
The second level of Lean Management focuses on reducing variability in order to control the process. It uses four tools to reduce variability.
VSM
Standardized Work
Introduction to Continuous Flow
Introduction to Pull Production
As the organization matures, the amount of waste will decrease. The second level is about reducing variability and controlling the process, after minimizing waste and reaching a mature organization level.
Five Principles of Lean Management
Five fundamental principles are the basis of Lean Management. We will now go over each principle individually.
The first principle is to Identify Customers and Specify Value or to define value from the perspective of the end customer, by product family. It is important to realize that only a fraction of the time and effort spent in an organization adds value to the end customer. All non-value activities, or waste, can be identified and targeted for elimination by clearly defining the value of a product or service from the customer’s point of view.
The second principle is Identifying the Value Stream and Mapping it. This step involves identifying and mapping the value stream for each product. It also eliminates any steps that don’t create value. The entire sequence of activities that are involved in delivering the product/service together is called the value stream. This is the entire process from beginning to end.