Top Highlights

• To make dramatic improvement in cost, quality, and responsiveness, a company must eliminate customer critical-to-quality issues and delays due to time traps using both Lean and Six Sigma tools. Otherwise, it will make the slow progress of the majority of companies that was described in the Preface.
• So how does Lean Six Sigma deliver on its value proposition? The essential elements of the Lean Six Sigma process provide the framework (see Part Two for details): 1. Increasing shareholder value requires higher ROIC and growth, both of which roll up into one number: net present value (NPV). 2. Value streams for improvement should be selected based...
• The gaps between what customers desire and what you can currently deliver are the areas where significant value can be created for both supplier and customer. Thus Six Sigma is focused on addressing these gaps, increasing operating profit, and becoming part of the DNA of the company and its operations.
• Total Quality Management (TQM), the principal quality initiative that immediately preceded Six Sigma, often positioned the need to solve quality problems as a moral imperative. With most TQM programs, there was no clear way of prioritizing which quality projects should receive the highest priority; an almost religious fervor caused projects to be c...
• Some companies think Lean and Six Sigma is just a bag of tools and have attempted to implement Six Sigma by sending off people to black belt training and failing to make any of the substantive cultural changes described above. These programs end as just another "program of the month" failure. If you don't have the other elements discussed above—man...