Page 20 - Lean six sigma demystified

How to Use This Book

In order to learn Lean Six Sigma, you don’t need any math skills. Math skills
won’t hurt you, but their lack won’t hinder you. It does help if numbers don’t
scare you or turn you off. Six Sigma is a numbers game.
What you will need is the ability to detect patterns and follow a process. So,
if you can notice that trees budding out is a sign of spring (a pattern) and you
know enough to put your pants on before you put on your shoes or to follow a
recipe (a process), you can learn Lean Six Sigma. It also helps if you like solving
problems, saving money, and making life better for customers and employees.
To learn and use the tools of Lean, you won’t need anything more exotic
than a pad of Post-it notes, a flip chart, a marking pen, and a few coworkers
who want to eliminate the bottlenecks in their work area. Six Sigma, however,
requires more tools. You can’t do Six Sigma without data (i.e., numbers about
what’s wrong) and some software to draw the charts. With the 90-day free trial
of the QI Macros that you can download from www.qimacros.com/demysti-

fied.html, you’ll be able to draw all the charts and diagrams easily in Microsoft
Excel. Don’t have a copy of Excel? Buy an older version on eBay.com. The QI
Macros run in every version from 2000 to 2010.
Too many Six Sigma books spend a lot of time trying to teach you the formulas
for every chart and how to draw them by hand. Let’s face it—you don’t have the
time or inclination to learn all of these formulas or to draw any chart by hand.
You’re not a statistician; you’re a businessperson who needs to make things better,
faster, and cheaper. You don’t have to know electromechanics to turn on a lightbulb.
Why would you need to know everything there is to know about statistics and
charting, when the QI Macros will do all the math and draw the graph for you?
And another confession: Most Six Sigma books spend a lot of time trying to
cover every possible method and tool. I can’t do it. Joseph Juran, the godfather
of quality, spoke of the vital few versus the trivial many. After two decades in
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