Lean Six Sigma Black Belt

Lean or Six Sigma, which is best?

Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma started life as improvement methodologies with very different focuses. Lean was derived from the Toyota Production System and adapted as people used the underlying concepts into many other industries. It’s primary focus is the elimination of Waste from processes. Six Sigma started life with Motorola, who first coined the phrase and primary focus is the reduction of variation. (Six Sigma is a measure of quality and is equal to 3.4 defects per million opportunities). As time has passed, the two methodologies have begun to overlap as people have come to realise that the primary aim of the philosophies is fundamentally similar – to improve the way we carry out our work and so it became logical not to preclude either of these methodologies and the many useful tools contained within them, but to combine them.
This would allow the skilled improvement practitioner to have a more rounded toolkit at his disposal when faced with any business problem.

However there is a caveat here! Giving someone a set of tools does not make them a skilled practitioner (If you gave a full set of spanners to an accountant, it would not make him a skilled mechanic).

Hence the reason the certification courses focus quite heavily on the application of what has been learned in the form of a documented project.

Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma can be learned separately as this was how it always used to be but as with everything, things evolve and the utilisation of both these methodologies enables the optimum solution to be attained more of the time.

To summarise, why would you use one or the other when you can use both?