Lean Six Sigma For Dummies

Chapter 1

Defining Lean Six Sigma

In This Chapter

Turning up trumps for the Toyota Production System

Finding out the fundamentals of ‘Lean’ and ‘Six Sigma’

Applying Lean Six Sigma in your organisation

Throughout this book we cover the tools and techniques available to help you achieve real improvement in your organisation. In this chapter we aim to move you down a path of different thinking that gets your improvement taste buds tingling. We look at the main concepts behind Lean thinking and Six Sigma and introduce some of the terminology to help you on your way.

Introducing Lean Thinking

Lean thinking focuses on enhancing value for the customer by improving and smoothing the process flow (see Chapter 11) and eliminating waste (covered in Chapter 9). Since Henry Ford’s first production line, Lean thinking has evolved through a number of sources, and over many years, but much of the development has been led by Toyota through the Toyota Production System (TPS). Toyota built on Ford’s production ideas, moving from high volume, low variety, to high variety, low volume.

Although Lean thinking is usually seen as being a manufacturing concept and application, many of the tools and techniques ...