Smart Manufacturing

CHAPTER 2Lean Six Sigma in the Age of Smart Manufacturing

Anthony Tarantino, PhD

Introduction

The history of Lean and Six Sigma are worth understanding in light of the waves of criticism both have received over the years. The criticism of Lean intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic when so-called “Lean” inventory practices were blamed for shortages of virtually every critical commodity. We argue in this chapter that much of the criticism of Lean and Six Sigma is not warranted. To the contrary, we will demonstrate that they are more valuable than ever with the advent of Smart Technologies. We will also give some background on how the criticism came about. The next chapter is focused on a deeper dive into the many continuous improvement tools that are empowered by Smart Technologies.

Lean is a philosophy that advocates for continuous improvement and the elimination of waste of all kinds. Six Sigma is a data-driven framework for solving complex problems where the customer is known and the solution is unknown. While the terms have been used separately with success for decades, combining them makes sense, because this overcomes weaknesses in both approaches.

Lean lacks Six Sigma's proven framework to run continuous improvement projects and initiatives. Six Sigma suffers from its end-of-project approach that hopes improvements will sustain themselves after the project is completed. By combining both, Six Sigma's process improvements and error reductions can be embedded into Lean's ...