Quality Beyond Six Sigma
Providing a practical implementation of the issues of Six Sigma, Lean Enterprise and Total Quality, this stimulating guide aligns the 'hard' sigma message with the softer sustainable 'strategic issues'.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Quality Beyond Six Sigma
Chapter 5: Lean Enterprises
Vision without action is a daydream
Action without vision is a nightmare.
Japanese Proverb
Introduction
In this chapter the concept of lean enterprise and its impact on Six Sigma are considered. It is shown that lean enterprise began in car manufacturing in Japan, but that today a lean enterprise is any organization that has largely eliminated any activity that absorbs resource but does not add value to the product or service. The requirements for lean are considered and are married to the concepts of Six Sigma. We conclude by showing how the benefits of Six Sigma and lean can be combined with FIT SIGMA to keep an enterprise lean and fit.
Origin of Lean
As with all facets of the quality movement, the origin of lean enterprise is in manufacturing. Lean enterprise philosophy (and make no mistake, lean is more than a system, it is a philosophy) began with Japanese automobile manufacturing in the 1960s and was popularized by Womack and co-authors in The Machine that Changed The World (1990), which is essentially the story of the Toyota way of manufacturing automobiles. Up until then the manufacturing of automobiles had changed very little since Henry Ford adapted the conveyor belt for manufacturing cars in 1913. Prior to Henry Ford's assembly line, the automobile had been a luxury item handmade by a group of workers in a stationary workplace. Ford's conveyor-belt (the assembly line) approach allowed production to take place on a moving belt with each worker doing...
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