Despite its evolution into a business improvement methodology that’s used in many different industries, Six Sigma “still has a role to play” in manufacturing, says Stuart Smith, chief executive of the Warwickshire-based Bourton Group, which runs a Six Sigma consultancy. “It lends itself to a manufacturing environment where there are complex processes,” he says. “Where you have simple processes, the lean tools and techniques are very applicable.”
Both these approaches need to be applied to the right kinds of problem, Smith says. “If you think about a carpenter, you use the right tool for the right job – you don’t use a hammer where a chisel would do.” Bourton’s Six Sigma division offers a hybrid of lean and Six Sigma, and Smith says it makes sense to think of both as a continuous spectrum. “It’s a continuum. At the very lean end of the spectrum, it’s about waste reduction and time compression, and at the Six Sigma end it’s about variation and defect reduction.
“If it’s a simple problem of continuous improvement – that doesn’t require a project approach – a lot of the simple tools and techniques within lean are applicable: you don’t have to use the whole toolset.”
Lean and Six Sigma are “massively overlapping” and should be embedded in an organisation from the bottom up, if they are to be used, says Smith. It’s also crucial that they are sustainable and deliver tangible benefits, much as in the example of Tube Lines. “You’re trying to make a sustainable change which means changing people’s behaviour and attitudes. And that’s the most important thing in terms of making change sustainable.”
It’s also crucial that a Six Sigma programme has the buy-in of senior management, argues Smith, “or it’s destined to fail, like any other change management programme.”
Six Sigma is so flexible, he thinks, because “everything is a process”. He says: “That’s the beauty of Six Sigma and lean; you can forget about what the process is – it could be putting a man on the moon, making a cup of coffee, or a widget – but we know that that process has inputs, a set of activities, and outputs which a customer, either internal or external, receives.
“That thinking can be applied to so many different areas.” |
