Page 93 - Lean six sigma demystified

72 Lean Six Sigma DemystifieD

immediately. It’s surprising how quickly things get done when one stops delib-
erating over them.
Faster decision making means that you’ll make greater progress more quickly.
How will you change your decision-making strategy right now?

Lean Pharmaceuticals

Merck used Lean to shave 0 months off the normal 4 to 5 years required to
bring a drug to market. The bottom line benefits of a 9-month lead could be
$1.5 billion! To do so, Merck had to involve physicians, patients and payors
earlier in the process. The number of new products in their pipeline tripled
since they began in 2002.
What was one of the biggest delays? Data entry of the trial data. It didn’t
start until the trials were over (big batch). Merck switched to just-in-time data
entry (smaller batches) saving 5 months.

Lean Software

The August 15, 2005, issue of Information Week magazine had a short article
about agile programming, which is the latest in a long line of attempts to accel-
erate the software development life cycle. First came RAD (Rapid Application
Development), spiral, and then XP (eXtreme Programming). All of these have
been attempts to apply the principles of Lean (manufacturing) to software. The
good news is “Software developers are converging on a Lean methodology for
software.” The bad news is “Why did it take them so long?”
When I first got into computer programming, we used the waterfall method

of development. It involved several big steps: requirements, design, code, and test.
It could take years to get a product ready for demonstration; it seemed more like
a glacier than a waterfall. I once saw the father of the Waterfall method speak at
a conference. Dr. Winston Royce said that he had a much more iterative method
in his mind, but the waterfall metaphor stuck and trapped software developers
until someone coined the term spiral to restore the iterative concept.

Agile Programming

This is the latest iteration on an iterative development methodology. It involves
breaking projects into small, manageable modules and using highly iterative
development.