Six Sigma can be considered an ideology used in management, focusing on improving the statistics in a business using qualitative markers in the entire process. As such, those who use Lean Six Sigma are business people who use financial analysis, statistics, and project management to get to a point where they improve all their business functionality. Six Sigma is a benchmark that statistically shows business owners that their business is going well. An error occurs when there are deviations with no more than 3.4 occurrences per million events. That means a process is considered efficient if it produces fewer than those 3.4.

A defect is any product outside of the consumer's satisfaction. It is also a training and certification program that teaches the basic principles of Six Sigma. Practitioners can achieve Six Sigma certification belt levels ranging from white to black. It is also a philosophy that promotes that any procedures in any business can be optimized. Six Sigma is so much more than that because their focus differs. They focus on what their customers want; they search for new ways to improve their retention and sustain their business products and services simultaneously. Many vendors, including Motorola, offer Six Sigma courses with special certifications.

Sigma Is a Way of Measuring the Standard Deviation

Any business needs improving, no matter how well things are going. Lean Six Sigma is all about that. It offers that type of management through which they can improve your performance by eliminating all the defects and waste. While doing that, it combines all kinds of methods and tools of Six Sigma that, in the end, will ensure the quality of production all business people are searching for. Any resource use that does not bring the expected result is considered a defect and must be eliminated. Even if Six Sigma defines many business ideas, it can sometimes be confusing.

Fundamental Lean helps organizations define the principles, concepts, and techniques necessary to transform from a traditional enterprise into one centered on processes and customers. The LEAN workshop has applicability in any process: production, and service because it aims to identify the root causes of a problem and find and implement standard, viable solutions that will last over time, which leads over time to an organizational culture that embraces quality and the customer, in all its aspects.

Objectives of Fundamental Lean:

• Understanding the benefits of applying Lean Six Sigma principles, the differences between operational management and the end-to-end activity approach, and focusing on customer requirements.
• To explain the methodology and best practices in process management.
• Understanding LEAN's impact on people, the technologies used, and the existing processes.

Advanced Lean develops the concepts and tools learned in Basic Lean, as well as the complex elements of business, such as the alignment of Lean initiatives with business strategy. That will emphasize and begin to engage the organization in a different way which will allow for dramatic improvements in business performance.

Objectives of Advanced Lean:

• Defining, visualizing, communicating, and improving the final value stream for a process, function, or business
• Developing the skills to coordinate and lead transversal projects based on LEAN
• The use of advanced Lean Six Sigma tools both for improvement through projects and for the daily management of processes
• Ability to influence and train interested parties in the LEAN change process and new ways of thinking.

Lean Six Sigma, Agile, or Waterfall? What to Choose?

Many opinions relate to the choice between Lean Six Sigma and similar programs, especially as RPA implementation efforts intensify and everyone wants successful projects. Lean Six Sigma is about WHAT and WITH WHAT; unlike other programs, it is NOT about HOW, or in more explicit terms. Project management methodologies are applied in various fields, from construction to design, from equipment production to software development, and even, sometimes, in projects where the optimization of some processes is pursued, for example, their projects. It is not about project management, just a methodology within a particular type of project.

LSS can be a methodology applied in a project where Waterfall elements are used in certain situations and in other cases (for example, in the Analysis/Improvement phases) Agile ingredients. Because the LSS methodology requires the statement of a concrete, measurable objective, such an approach would leave little room for False variations. Even in the context of some initial goals, some of the Agile principles are applied; that is, a possible redefinition after the Measurement phase, or even after the Analysis phase, is not only accepted but even recommended exactly according to principle 2 of the Agile Manifesto.

Naturally, given that even the initial version of Waterfall accepted that certain flexibility is necessary. Also, in the less structured phases of the Lean Six Sigma methodology, for example, Analysis and Improvement, an Agile approach to well-defined solution generation areas can be an optimal solution. Agile appeared as a necessity to avoid waste from specific software development projects, which has long been called Lean. The choice of one or another of the Project Management tools is made according to the specific criteria of each device; they are neither imposed nor obstructed by LSS in the case of process optimization projects.

Follow Carefully Each Stage

In the first stage of identification, evaluation of compatibility with automation, detailed description of the "As Is" process, preparation of the "To Be" version, and the preparation of a final report based on which to do, in the next stage, the automation, the obvious recommendation for the methodology is LSS. With what project management methodology? The most natural would be a Waterfall type approach, with possible necessary compromises of the "overlapping" type, in which to add Agile ingredients in the design phase of the "To Be" version.

Also, leaving, in the last resort, the choice of PM tools at the discretion of the organizations, you can focus on adapting some of the Lean Six Sigma tools to use in RPA projects. It is interesting to see, for example, how Process Mapping adapts to the perspective of use in RPA projects, but also how to use, where there is, documentation for Cause & Effect Diagrams or FMEA. In the second stage of the actual implementation of the automation, an interesting situation appears-the programmer has at his disposal obvious requirements, summarized in what is usually called a Process Description Document.

Publication: 11/08/2023 08:13