Lean, Lean Six Sigma, total quality management (TQM), and other techniques have helped companies improve processes through the execution of projects. However, much of these efforts have resulted in siloed process improvements that don’t benefit the enterprise as a whole. Lean Six Sigma and other process improvement programs have striven to improve their project selection process; however, often the gains from those projects have been minimal. It seems that what needs to be done to resolve this issue is for process improvement efforts to become more integrated within the overall business system (e.g., scorecard creation/management and strategy development/execution.) This article describes is a system for accomplishing this orchestration, where lean and Six Sigma tools enhance the overall business system so that the organization moves toward achieving the three Rs of business: everyone doing the right things, the right way, at the right time.

In lean Six Sigma and lean kaizen event programs, improvement projects are often selected from a list of potential opportunities that were determined from a brainstorming session. This effort might provide some initial gains when starting a deployment; however, it typically stalls out and the process improvement teams are laid off when times get tough. The reason for this downsizing is that often process improvement efforts are not expended in areas where the overall enterprise benefits the most; e.g., focusing on sales and marketing when excess production capacity is available. This article walks through some of the frequent short-comings of Theory of Constraints and how it can best be applied to the enterprise.