Best Practices in Lean Six Sigma Process Improvement: A Deeper Look

Preface

Like many who are veterans of some sort of crusade, my latter-day role includes trying to make sense out of the confused state of process improvement. The easy way would be just to rely on my experience, and, on that, to offer up opinions on what is going well and what is not. Nobody would be interested. For anyone to want to look over Best Practices, strong research and teased-out facts would have to form the basis. I am talking about direct research: carefully referenced data about best practices in process improvement.

The main sources must be the originators. They include individuals who have developed and articulated the ideas, people such as W. Edwards Deming, Kaoru Ishikawa, and Shigeo Shingo. But much of development of best practices comes from companies, not individuals. Thus, the companies themselves must be primary sources. Direct research relies mostly on these two sources, and not lofty, unsubstantiated claims, theories, opinions, and assumptions.

Direct research runs into obstacles, because some of the manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, and retailers that this book studies have become cautious about revealing much of anything. But for the 1,400 publicly held, global companies in my main research database, public records are available, including audited data required by regulatory agencies. I've found a lot in such records, and the book is peppered with findings there from.

Direct research includes going to present and former company executives and managers, ...