Obituary: Lean, Six Sigma

Today the BPM community was saddened to hear of the loss of it's two favourite sons, Lean & Six Sigma.

Lean, who's ailing father Toyota will no doubt be deeply distressed by the news must surely be shocked by his son's sudden decline after several healthy years at the helm. Six Sigma's father Motorola may have seen the end coming for some time after his son was seen to be unable to keep up with the demands of the modern business world.

Both will be remembered fondly by bankers and software providers, who enjoyed many years of revenue generation and endless training courses in partnership with these captains of industry. Others, however, described them as being monolothic dinosaurs lumbering out of the conveyor belt mentality of the industrial revolution.

Whatever your opinion they did their best and achieved some success in what they set out to do. For a while they were the kings of all they surveyed; but times change and in the lightning fast pace of today's world they simply couldn't keep up. Their time has been and gone.

The kings are dead, long live the king...

Comments

[DataDevil]

What are you trying to say Ninja? Is the belief system in this porcess gone, or has it been overutilised to the point of being a burden?
Are there too many "guru's" who have saturated this field and made it as common and ass useful as a MBA?

I still think Lean has a place in our (well my) heart, and is a constant reminder and benchmark for us to uphold. Without it, we may as well shut down our plant!!!

Please say it aint so!! Or you just picking a fight cause your Ninja instincts tell you so?

[The Process Ninja]

All will be revealed in my next post...!

[Louis Stanford]

Well then, hurry up with the next post... I want to know where this is going... hup! hup! hup!

[Dirk]

I started applying "reliability engineering" in 1990, then there was Six Sigma, then lean Six Sigma. As a knowledge and change manager I am still a believer of the ideas behind it and apply it every day as guide to explore new improvement potential. But above knowledge there is wisdom and that wisdom always tells me not to "push" process execution too far. What I saw the last 2 years where "lean organisations" who lost all flexibility to react in case of changes in "Market Dynamics". The "resources" where optimized for the process execution but where not able to coop with changes. Those decissions to push "lean" where nice for the P&L but not for the sustainability of the organisation. So I would not question "lean" or "six sigma" but the decission to search for the last euro to save until you have an organization of "executors" that not know how to handle change.

[Robert]

Let's take a minute's silence to remember their grandfather TQM and their great-grandfather Quality Control.

They were good and robust in their time, and the strongest parts of their existence remain as powerful tools even today.

Robert

[Bobby Pellegrini]

Please forward your post to pellegri@mindspring.com if you could. Thanks!

[Bobby Pellegrini]

I operate a BPM consult firm in the States. Glad I came upon your blog and your firm. Like to exchange idea and thoughts with you. bobbypellegrini@performanceimprovementcorp.com

[Iain Heron]

Astute observation and accurate analysis combined with ascerbic wit - Ninja is my new favourite blogger :)

[The Process Ninja]

Why, thank-you Iain!

[Arthur]

Not that I'm a fan but this is my fairly dim-witted take on the subject: Lean Manufacturing has been around in various guises since WW2; it's how they built the Liberty boats. The International Labor Organisation built it up a bit in their Work Study approach. It forms the underlying design approach in almost every new factory until alternatives become apparent or too tough to manage. I don't think it's dead, just having a break. Wheels turn full circle and there is no new thing under the sun! But it will rise like the Phoenix...

[Tim]

Pronouncing the death of lean and six sigma is perhaps a tad over ambitious. I get where on earth you’re going with this it is perhaps fair to say that these two methods been over used by overtly narrow thinking practitioners. Recontextualising them inside Systems Thinking paradigms might just breath new life into them ... might. Both methods bring excellent tools to the table – at the risk of mixing metaphors I would caution throe baby out with the bathwater.

[Floris Bongaerts]

Well Iain, in real life. If one would have had a long lasting relationship with a person and one would then still fail to understand the person, that person might then as well be dead.

On behalf of the people that still know and do understand I would like to offer you our condolences and wish you strength and wisdom in your quest to alternative professionalism.

All the best,

Floris

[Frank Griffin]

Craig,

Do you have any comments related to your points in this series of articles and Toyota's recent problems?

Thanks,

Frank

[Term papers]

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[AS]

Once upon a time, it was a crime to talk about disadvantages, scalability, flexibility etc... of Six Sigma and its derivatives. Six Sigma and its derivatives were the new religion of the industry. Six Sigma is dead. It does not help the companies to survive in today's global economy. It helped the companies to cut the workforce in the expense of market existance. Somebody has to clean up the mess and open room for more reliable and logical systems in place of Six something.