Page 24 - Lean six sigma demystified

Chapter 1 What iS Lean Six Sigm a ? 3

There’s a handful of methods and tools that will solve over 90% of the
common business problems. Isn’t it time to make it easy for these primitive
business tribes to embrace these tools?
What do I think are the essential tools? The ones I use most of the time are

• XmR control chart to show performance over time
• Pareto chart to identify improvement opportunities
• Histogram to analyze deviation from target
• Ishikawa (fish bone) diagram to show cause and effects
• Value stream map to identify delays between process steps

Go to www.qimacros.com/demystified.html to download the QI Macros
Lean Six Sigma SPC software for Excel that makes drawing these charts
effortless.
The QI Macros provide easy, affordable access to tools (download your
90-day trial from www.qimacros.com/demystified.html). Everything else
is overkill for these primitive corporate tribes. Get them comfortable and
feeling safe in the use of these tools and then we can begin to add in the
others.
To create successful businesses and an unstoppable economy, we need
to make it easy for every business to adopt the methods and tools of Lean
Six Sigma, not just the ones with deep pockets and lots of time on their
hands.
Virtually all companies grow from wobbly start-ups into cash cows using
trial and error and common sense. Current methods of conducting the business
developed in an ad hoc fashion, reacting to problems without much fore-

thought. The bad news about this ad hoc, trial-and-error method of adaptation
is that most companies stop improving when they reach 1%, 2%, or 3% error
levels in marketing, sales, ordering, and billing.
At least once a week I hear from some poor employee who’s been told to
investigate Lean Six Sigma. They lament that it’s their job to find and fix prob-
lems in the business. The business is already successful. Earnings are already up
for the year. Why would they need Six Sigma to do what they already think
they’re doing well?
I call this the foolishness of the five senses. Just because your five senses let you
detect problems and patterns at one level, you think that they’ll work at even
more subtle levels of detection. They won’t. As patterns and problems become
less frequent and more subtle, they become less and less detectable.