With the emphasis completely on quality today, almost all
organizations – big and small – are struggling to achieve and sustain quality
systems. There has been a display of a variety of quality initiatives that have
promised phenomenal results in reducing costs and increasing profits. Managers
and team leaders have been flooded with different ideas over the years, with
every system promising greater rewards. Out of these, many have failed, while
many have succeeded like Six Sigma, Lean, and Kaizen. However, since the past
many years, these three terms have lost their individual identity, and have
been used interchangeably without people knowing the true meaning of these
words. When people have their hands on one of these tools, they think they
don't need the other because they all are one and the same thing. What they
fail to realize is that every concept or tool has its own individuality and
capacity to solve problems. This blog will help you learn about all these three
terms separately so that you can differentiate between them and understand each
one of them better.
What is Six Sigma?
Six Sigma is a set of tools and strategies that can limit
defects and variations. It is a problem-solving methodology that is driven by
data and focuses on customer satisfaction. It depends upon two basic
methodologies – DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) and DMADV
(Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, Verify). Moreover, advanced statistical
techniques like Pareto charts and root cause analysis are used to reach quantified
value targets. Achieving a Six Sigmacertification in India from professionals like TQMI can help you grasp the
skills of improving quality of business processes by limiting defects and
variations, thus improving customer satisfaction.
What is Kaizen?
Kaizen is a Japanese term for ‘Change for the better’ which
is also referred to as continuous improvement. This clearly shows that Kaizen
is a journey and not a destination. Moreover, it is a mindset, and not a tool.
It uses personal creativity and initiative to identify problems, and develop
and implement ideas to solve them. Its philosophy believes that everything can
be improved and everything can perform better and more efficiently. Another
prominent feature of Kaizen is its belief that big results come from multiple
small changes accumulated over time. However, Kaizen does not equal small
changes; it equals everyone’s involvement in making improvements. To get into
the details, Kaizen helps to identify the 3 MUs, which are Muda (wastes), Mura
(variations), and Muri (strain).
What is Lean?
Lean is the methodology that is applied for waste
minimization within an organization without sacrificing on productivity. It is
a set of problem-solving tools that can reduce or eliminate the processes that
don't add value. In this way, only valuable processes are adopted and wasteful
steps are removed. Valuable processes are those that assist in improving
quality and productivity. They also include those that may or may not add value
for the customer, but are crucial for the continuity of a process. And,
wasteful steps are those that include defects, over production, excess
inventory, extra processing, unnecessary transportation, unnecessary motion,
non-utilized talent, and waiting time. This means that Lean ultimately results
in high quality, and thus customer satisfaction.
To sum it up, Kaizen is a continuous improvement process
that standardizes processes and increases efficiency by involving everyone to
eliminate waste. Lean is a process of eliminating wastes to improve process
speed and quality. And, Six Sigma is a process to improve quality of the final
product by eliminating the variations that lead to defects by measuring the
deviation of the process from perfection. Although these processes may seem
similar, they have a significant difference from one another. Now, to decide
whether one is better than the other would be unwise. You can use all of these
methods in their own ways within different processes and working of your
organization so that you can save time and money, and boost quality and
customer satisfaction.
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