Six Sigma Vs. Lean Manufacturing
Six Sigma and lean manufacturing are business management strategies that attempt to increase quality and reduce the costs of production. Six Sigma focuses on removing all causes for defects in the manufacturing process, and lean manufacturing looks to remove all activities that do not add value to the final product.
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History
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Six Sigma was first created and implemented by Motorola quality manager Bill Smith. According to Motorola University, the company's product development and research initiative, the company's first Six Sigma effort, launched January 15, 1987, focused on achieving fewer than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. Smith was influenced by other quality improvement methodologies such as Total Quality Management, Zero Defects and Quality Control. Through Motorola's success and strong belief in Six Sigma, the concept's popularity has increased and is used in many industries. Six Sigma is a registered trademark of Motorola.
Lean manufacturing is a refined version of the many earlier efficiency attempts in production assembly lines; the official concept of lean manufacturing was derived from the Toyota Production System. Although lean manufacturing is a basic production efficiency philosophy, the specific terminology and popularity grew as Toyota progressed from being a small, local car manufacturer to one of the world's largest automakers.
Objective
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According to Jiju Antony, author of "Pros and Cons of Six Sigma": "The fundamental objective of the Six Sigma methodology is the implementation of a measurement-based strategy that focuses on process improvement and variation reduction." Six Sigma looks to improve the quality of business process outputs through identifying and removing all causes of errors and defects. Defects are any outputs that would dissatisfy the customer; removing and solving these causes for defects reduces the variability in manufacturing and saves the company money.
Lean manufacturing seeks to eliminate the use of any resource that does not create value for the end consumer. The production strategy of lean manufacturing is focused on creating the most value with the least amount of work. Value is considered any action, activity or process added to the final product that the consumer is willing to pay extra for. Lean manufacturing also requires employees to check for defects after every stage of production so unnecessary additional inputs are not wasted on already defected products.
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Facts
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The term sigma is used in mathematics to measure deviation from perfection. One sigma away from the perfection, often referred to as the mean, leads to a 69 percent defective rate. The goal of Six Sigma is to have a defective rate of .00034 percent; this means that during a manufacturing process, there needs to be fewer than 3.4 defects for every million attempts.
Benefits
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Both of these managerial philosophies have the intended benefits of saving money through eliminating waste and defects. Motorola has reported saving more than $17 billion since 2006 through the use of Six Sigma. After Toyota's successful cost-cutting efforts with lean manufacturing, companies such as Southwest Airlines and Wal-Mart also adopted the philosophy.
Considerations
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The philosophies of Six Sigma and lean manufacturing are sometimes combined by companies to form a methodology referred to as Lean Six Sigma.
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