Operational Excellence through Lean Six Sigma?

Understanding how one can achieve operational excellence with the tools of lean six sigma.

Every business faces several challenges both inside and outside an organisation. For example, the ability to adapt to changing market conditions, acceleration of new innovations and technologies, threat of new competition in the market, rising customer demands and expectations, expanding markets, and digitalisation are all considered as the significant threats that a business faces. These threats, ironically, are also the driving force for an organisation to achieve Operational Excellence. End-to-End Business Transformation, rapid and flexible solution offerings, and execution of the new business models can all be attained if one reaches the level of OpEx.

According to the business dictionary, operational excellence is defined as, "A philosophy of the workplace where problem-solving, teamwork, and leadership results in the ongoing improvement in an organisation. The process involves focusing on the customers' needs, keeping the employees positive and empowered, and continually improving the current activities in the workplace."

In simple words, Operation Excellence is the execution of the business strategy more consistently and reliably than the competition. This occurs when every employee can see the flow of value to the customer and fix it when the flow is interrupted.

Operational Excellence manifests itself through integrated performance across revenue, cost and risk. It focuses on meeting customer expectations through the continuous improvement of operational processes and management of the organisation.

This continuous improvement can be attained by the Lean Six Sigma methodology to execute excellence and achieve accurate results.

Lean Six Sigma is a business methodology that focuses on process improvement by eliminating problems, removing waste and inefficiency, and improving working conditions to provide a better response to customer needs and satisfaction.

The methodology is a combination of the powerful tools of Lean and Six Sigma, that once combined together provides the most effective and efficient ways to achieve the organisational objectives by applying the right kind of tactics.

Lean is a philosophical way to eliminate unnecessary steps during the creation of a product so that steps that add value could only be taken into consideration. It uses PDCA- Plan Do Check Act Cycle, an iterative four step management theory that talks about how one must plan their desired results, perform it or bring it to action accordingly, measure/ monitor the results and then finally take necessary steps to fill in the gaps between the desired and the end result.

Six Sigma approach focuses on identifying the waste that results from variation within the process. According to experts, once the variations are eliminated the results would be precise and would have no deviation in them. It uses DMAIC- Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control: a data driven improvement cycle that mainly focuses on optimising and stabilising business propagandas and designs.

For the longest time, Lean and Six Sigma has been taught and practiced as two different methods but to get the best of both worlds, the line between the two has been blurred. Lean, when combined with Six Sigma, becomes the most efficient and effective methodology as one can apply the right kind of mindset and tactics to achieve its objectives. Lean and Six Sigma shares the same end goal but take different approaches to identify the root of waste. Lean Six Sigma, thus, is an improvement methodology designed to remove waste, eliminate problems, increase efficiency and improve working conditions to provide the best to a customers’ need.

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Focuses on depth of interpretations drawn from analysis for correct project and Critical to Quality (CTQ) identification, establishment of correct data collection mechanism with validation being focus of discussions.