A Quick Introduction to Lean Six Sigma

Lean Six Sigma is used by some of the biggest companies in the world on a daily basis. Across banking, computing, real estate, and a whole host of other industrial sectors, Lean Six Sigma has been deployed by some of the most successful businesses in the world.

But, well, what is Lean Six Sigma?

An excellent question with an equally excellent answer! Join us as we delve into the Lean Six Sigma principles and the Lean Six Sigma tools that are supercharging so many businesses all over the world!

What Is Lean Six Sigma?

Lean Six Sigma is a style of operation for businesses and companies that removes waste and variation from the work process. It combines the formats and methodologies of ‘Lean’ and ‘Six Sigma’ (yep, the name isn’t very imaginative) to create an all-new, superpower method that’s designed to send performance into the stratosphere.

Lean Six Sigma annihilates waste by focusing on 8 different waste types. This encompasses a huge range of potential pitfalls for business: excess waiting, talent going unused, transportation hitches, inventory problems, motion, extra-processing, overabundant production, and defects. By zeroing in on these key areas of waste, the goal of Lean Six Sigma is to drastically curtail waste at every phase of a workflow.

Lean Six Sigma is such an involved and all-encompassing style of work that there are Lean Six Sigma certification ‘belts’, much like martial arts. They start out at white, then yellow, then onto greenbelt training, and go all the way up to ‘master black belt’.

As you can tell, Lean Six Sigma is pretty serious business, and for good reason. Let’s find out what those reasons are.

What Benefits Does Lean Six Sigma Have?

The benefits of incorporating the Lean Six Sigma method into your business are almost too numerous to count, but let’s try anyway.

The primary benefit of the method is, of course, a more efficient business in general. Cutting out waste in everything from materials to employee movements leads to huge gains in efficiency, for obvious reasons. But there are a few other benefits we should note.

For example, cutting out all that waste both lowers production costs and drive up revenue. Increased quality and worker morale naturally results in better products and services, while scything through waste means extraneous production costs are obliterated.

Finally, Lean Six Sigma is a crucible that produces capable and cooperative teams. The method has a tendency of turning workforces from isolated, individual workers into cooperative team players. That’s great for your business and your workers!

Efficiency In All Things

And there it is, our quick guide to the nature and benefits of the Lean Six Sigma method. It doesn’t matter how big your business is or what it does, incorporating the Lean Six Sigma principles can have truly astounding effects on your morale, productivity, and efficiency.

So try it out!

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