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Lean Six Sigma : Combining Six Sigma Quality with Lean Production Speed | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael L. George
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $19.44
You Save: $20.51 (51%)
New (51) Used (22) from $14.25
Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 132624
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 300
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 0071385215
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.562
UPC: 639785381082
EAN: 9780071385213
ASIN: 0071385215
Publication Date: April 25, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The Breakthrough Program for Increasing Quality, Shortening Cycle Times, and Creating Shareholder Value In Every Area of Your Organization Time and quality are the two most important metrics in improving any company's production and profit performance. Lean Six Sigma explains how to impact your company's performance in each, by combining the strength of today's two most important initiatives--Lean Production and Six Sigma--into one integrated program. The first book to provide a step-by-step roadmap for profiting from the best elements of Lean and Six Sigma, this breakthrough volume will show you how to:
* Achieve major cost and lead time reductions this year
* Compress order-to-delivery cycle times
* Battle process variation and waste throughout your organization Separately, Lean Production and Six Sigma have changed the face of the manufacturing business. Together, they become an unprecedented tool for improving product and process quality, production efficiency, and across-the-board profitability. Lean Six Sigma introduces you to today's most dynamic program for streamlining the performance of both your production department and your back office, and providing you with the cost reduction and quality improvements you need to stay one step ahead of your competitors. "Lean Six Sigma shows how Lean and Six Sigma methods complement and reinforce each other. If also provides a detailed roadmap of implementation so you can start seeing significant returns in less than a year."--From the Preface Businesses fundamentally exist to provide returns to their stakeholders. Lean Six Sigma outlines a program for combining the synergies of these two initiatives to provide your organization with greater speed, less process variation, and more bottom-line impact than ever before. A hands-on guidebook for integrating the production efficiencies of the Lean Enterprise with the cost and quality tools of Six Sigma, this breakthrough book features detailed insights on:
* The Lean Six Sigma Value Proposition--How combining Lean and Six Sigma provides unmatched potential for improving shareholder value
* The Lean Six Sigma Implementation Process--How to prepare your organization for a seamless incorporation of Lean Six Sigma tools and techniques
* Leveraging Lean Six Sigma--Strategies for extending Lean Six Sigma's reach within and beyond your corporate walls "Variation is evil."--Jack Welch Six Sigma was the zero-variation quality lynchpin around which Jack Welch transformed GE into one of the world's most efficient--and valuable--corporations. Lean Production helped Toyota cut waste, slash costs, and substantially improve resource utilization and cycle times. Yet, as both would admit, there was still room for improvement. Lean Six Sigma takes you to the next level of improvement, one that for the first time unites product and process excellence with the goal of enhancing shareholder value creation. Providing insights into the application of Lean Six Sigma to both the manufacturing processes and the less-data-rich service and transactional processes, it promises to revolutionize the performance efficiencies in virtually every area of your organization--as it positively and dramatically impacts your shareholder value.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 25 more reviews...
 Excellent! November 29, 2008
Loyd E. Eskildson (Phoenix, AZ.)
There are innumerable ways to ineffectually "implement" (fail at) process improvement. George's book tells how to succeed.
Reducing lead times has just as much potential for improving performance as improving quality. Most of the methods and tools of Six sigma do not focus on time; similarly, those of Lean Production do not focus on quality. The purpose of the book is to show how to simultaneously improve cost, quality, speed, and invested capital. This is not accomplished by working faster, but by reducing idle time between value-added steps.
George recommends solving first the external quality problems that affect the customers, then determine which steps add the longest wait times.
Most material in a process spends 95% of its time waiting. Reducing this by 80% also allows overhead and quality cost decreases of 20%, in addition to faster delivery and lower inventory.
Ensuring that projects selected are of the highest priority to the organization and its customers is essential to obtaining management commitment.
Project sponsors (who are or report to the P&L manager) own the process that is to be improved by a specific project; they are the specific authority to implement improvements and long-term accountability to ensure the improvements stick.
Having a structured approach to process improvement is essential lest the group go on ad infinitum without results. Motorola used five phases: 1)Define the goals and value of a project. 2)Measure via data collection and process mapping. 3)Analyze using Pareto analysis to create priorities. 4)Improve. 5)Control, via feedback, mistake-proofing. A gate review conducted with the deployment champion (person in charge of Lean Six Sigma) and project sponsor occurs at each phase.
Use the sigma level as a process metric, not as a goal - goals are established by customers.
A "Lean process" is one in which the value-added time is greater than 25% of total process time.
Cross-training others as backups is a way to reduce waiting times when lines build. Reducing setup times allows smaller batch sizes and less WIP and process time; alternatively, provide more work stations, each set for a different output.
Value-Added Work: A task that adds a form or feature, allows lower price and/or defects, faster delivery. A task required by law, reduces financial risk, supports financial reporting requirements.
Non Value-Added Work: Counting, transporting, inspecting, rework, expediting, multiple signatures or approvals.
Getting Started: Obtain CEO engagement after identifying a compelling need for change, and training him on Lean 6 Sigma background. Develop financial and performance goals for 1-2 years, and gain P&L manager commitment. Track project through DMAIC to final results. Do not focus on the program's cost, rather its returns.
Those believing book value is of considerable importance in valuing a firm/stock would benefit from Berkshire Hathaway's experience auctioning spinning equipment. Replacement cost was estimated at $30-50 million; the sale grossed $163,122.
Improving setup time - perform in advance all work that can be done while operating, eliminate the need for adjustments.
Long lead times automatically create a high level of variation in lead time, and increase quality problems. Reduced lead times reduces the need for and reliance on forecasting.
Do not link Lean Six Sigma implementation with suppliers to price concessions by them - rather, obtain reductions through competition to reduce the number of suppliers. Also, do not try to implement with all suppliers at once - focus.
Reduce complexity by reducing the number of products and/or number of different components. (Latter can create over-building, but also generates increased volume discounts and fewer errors, and faster design.)
 Great anticipation brings great disappoitment January 14, 2008
J. Buraczynski (Troutdale, OR USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Yes, you cannot judge a book by it's cover, but this book did not deliver on my expectations. If you are a senior manager, this book is for you as the vast majority of the book covers how you need to structure your organization, but not much real discussion of Lean or Six Sigma. This book provides a brief discussion of six sigma tools and almost no discussion of substance on Lean tools. It is a bad sell to tell a reader that a Black Belt should save $1,000,000 per year. After several lengthy discussions on how to set up structures, the author goes on to state that this may not apply for you.
Good high level book. Not great for much else.
A well beyond decent introduction October 31, 2007
Ronny Van Der Spa (Norway)
Although the beginning of this book feels a little too "preachy" with a lot of arguments of why Lean Six Sigma is the best tool for ensuring maximum quality at highest speed with best profit, it actually is really good.
The author follows a red line throughout the book giving the reader no hard time following the concept of Lean Six Sigma. Compared to other books/guides of the same kind this is easily one of the better ones.
Written for a specific audience .. June 7, 2007
James V. Sylvester (Austin, TX)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
"Lean Six Sigma: Combining Six Sigma Quality with Lean Speed" is not a how-to book written for actual front-line practitioners of the techniques. Instead, George's effort is expressly directed to the possibly skeptical CEO who may be considering implementing a Lean/6 Sigma effort and who needs to know a bit more detail. As he says on page 70:
"One of the goals of this executive overview is to provide adequate depth . . . such that a rational CEO could judge whether this initiative is worthy of further study."
Given that purpose, the book often lapses into a sales pitch. "Hey, this is what the SMART kids are doing; you should follow along." George throws out a lot of bait about how a smart CEO can gain increase ROIC and an edge on his or her less-informed competition by implementing the methods he describes. (Of course, he and his partners will be readily available as consultants to assist in any such effort.)
At points, the tone is downright snide to those who might not instantly choose the enlightenment of "Lean Six Sigma." For example, on page 89, there is this observation:
"If, for whatever reason, your CEO does not have an intense interest in improving competitiveness and financial performance through operational improvement, then Lean Six Sigma is not appropriate for your firm at this time."
A similar messianic revelation appears on page 78:
"Lean Six Sigma is part of a large work-in-progress that continues to increase the wealth and opportunities of society despite the resistance to ignorance and intellect in many parts of the world."
While I am certain that there are significant advantages to be gained by a thorough and professional application of the tools and disciplines afforded by a simultaneous combination of Lean and Six Sigma, I have reservations about the breathless hyperbole in which George delivers his message.
Past the hyperbole, past the rah-rah, past the sales pitch, there is a good deal of value in this overview. But that's what it is: an overview. The material here is enough to orient a possible practitioner to look deeper into the processes, but this volume would be but the start of the investigation required.
 LSS - The book does not marry them right. May 31, 2007
Alejandro Cotter (Costa Rica)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have read great books about Lean, classics like The Machine that Changed the World, The Toyota Way, Lean Thinking, etc., but this book fails to reach Lean's basics. The author approaches the subject without letting the reader grasp the Lean approach.
The Six Sigma side of the book idolizes black belts and focuses strictly on ROIC (return of invested capital), which may be short sighted on long term effects.
Lean Six Sigma is a powerful approach and can produce amazing results, but the book does not marry them right.
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