Six Sigma being overtaken by LEAN

Over the past couple of decades, the TQM, Six Sigma, and now LEAN (among others) methodologies have swept through corporations in wave after wave. Used sensibly, they help corporations reduce costs while improving quality, resulting in higher profits and/or more competitiveness in their markets. Unfortunately, they're sometimes used instead of training & empowering qualified managers. Running corporations is WORK, and no panacea is going to make it easy.

IndustryWeek : Six Sigma's Growing Pains:
"During the late 1990s, Six Sigma -- a quality improvement process based on producing fewer than 3.4 defects per million -- was credited for astounding results in improving quality and reducing costs.
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In a recent study, executive recruiting firm The Avery Point Group found that calls for managers with lean knowledge exceeded that for Six Sigma talent by almost 11%, reflecting what Tim Noble, the company's managing principal, called 'an indication that they see lean as a better and more practical hedge against today's tough economic challenges.'

Some observers say the seeds of Six Sigma's perceived shortcomings come not from problems with the methodology itself, but how it is applied and the high expectations it has engendered in the manufacturing world.

'To an extent, Six Sigma is kind of a religion,' notes George Haley, a business professor at the University of New Haven and director of the Center for International Industry Competitiveness. 'When it focuses on the manufacturing process, it is very good. If you want to improve efficiency, cut down on failure rate and errors, that is Six Sigma's strength.'

But Six Sigma is often applied too late, Haley observes, so that products are designed in a way that invites problems on the production floor. Product design engineers have "360-degree access" to a product in the R&D lab, but workers on the line who have to attach components and perform other tasks don't have that same access and sometimes can't see what is going on. The problem may be exacerbated by robotics, he notes.

Haley also criticizes the application of Six Sigma to services such as health care. For example, a nurse may be given a specific amount of time to perform a patient service. But Haley notes that patients differ and that nurses may need to perform a different service than initially expected. "If the nurse doesn't have time to figure out what they need, patients can get a lot of wrong treatment," he warns. "Six Sigma should stay out of hospitals and stay out of any business where you have human-to-human interaction. Humans just aren't programmable; they aren't machines.""