Page 88 - Lean six sigma demystified

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Chapter 2 Lean Demy S tifie D 67

Stay the course. It may take 5 years to fully integrate Lean into your business.
Experts estimate that it will take 3 years to get a Lean system fully in place and
2 years to make it self-sustaining.
Develop a scorecard or dashboard of key measures.

• Sales per employee (productivity)
• Products delivered on time (customer service)
• Inventory turns
• Defects per million (quality)

Set big, hairy audacious goals (BHAG).

• 20% increase in sales per employee
• 50% reduction in defects every year

• 100% on-time delivery
• Reduce order-to-ship time to less than a day
• 20 inventory turns per year
• Reduce time-to-market by 75%
• Reduce costs (hours/widget)

What Can You Do with All Those People?
Lean will free up 30% of your staff. The traditional response of downsizing will
only make everyone resistant to Lean and Six Sigma. So let me ask you this: If
you could add 30% more people at no cost, what projects do you have waiting
in the wings or what new lines of business would you pursue that you can’t

now because you don’t have the resources? And remember that Lean compa-
nies grow at three times the rate of their competitors. In a very short time, you will
need all of those employees to handle the growth.

Piloting Lean

To get started with Lean, do the following:

1. Who is your customer (i.e., next process in the flow)? What does the cus-
tomer want? (Use QI Macros Voice of the Customer matrix.)
2. Analyze the current state of your process (non-value-added, movement, etc.)
Use Post-it notes and QI Macros value stream maps to capture the flow.