2

What Is Holistic Improvement?

“Only the over-all review of the entire business as an economic system can give real knowledge.”

—Drucker

Chapter 1, “A New Improvement Paradigm Is Needed,” reviewed the numerous changes that have occurred in the world since the first edition of this book was published (Snee and Hoerl, 2003). These changes have occurred in all aspects of society, as well as the business world. We concluded in that chapter that a new paradigm for improvement was needed. Lean Six Sigma is no longer adequate for the improvements that organizations need to survive and, better yet, prosper. We call this new paradigm holistic improvement. This chapter sets out to accomplish the following:

Define holistic improvement

Show how holistic ...

Get Leading Holistic Improvement with Lean Six Sigma 2.0, Second edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.