The Army Business Transformation Knowledge Center defines Lean Six Sigma as a methodology for business improvement that will improve customer satisfaction, quality, cost, process speed, and invested capital while maximizing shareholder value (2008). Lean Six Sigma has been used at organizations such as GE Capital, Ford Motor, and Motorola. These organizations are just three of the many companies that use Lean Six Sigma. Lean Six Sigma is a smarter way of doing business. It takes the processes that a company uses and breaks them down to make them more efficient, reduce cycle times, and improve that way transactions are done in order to increase market share.
Lean Six Sigma is a combination of the Lean program and Six Sigma. Six Sigma is a program that recognizes opportunities, eliminates defects as defined by customers, requires data driven decisions, uses a comprehensive set of quality tools, provides cultural infrastructure, recognized that quality is hindered by variation, and promises positive results if implemented correctly (Army Business Transformation Knowledge Center, 2008). The Lean program focuses on maximizing processes, provides tools, centers on value added activities, and provides a means for quantifying and eliminating cost (Army Business Transformation Knowledge Center, 2008). The two systems work together to and create a much more cohesive program than they do by themselves.
The Lean Six Sigma program has five steps: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control. The first step is to define or decide what needs to be accomplished. The measuring stage takes the problem and locates source of the problem. The analyze stage of the program is that stage used to identify ways of streamlining the process. The fourth stage, Impr ...