Lean Six Sigma 2.0 Implementation Plan

An effective lean Six Sigma 2.0 implementation plan aligns process improvement efforts to organizational key performance indicators (KPIs) improvement needs. With this alignment, process enhancement efforts can be made so that the enterprise as a whole benefits.

The question then becomes: how can an organization structurally create this project-to-business-needs association and avoid silo lean Six Sigma projects that have little or no benefit to the enterprise as a whole?

 

lean six sigma 2.0

 

The Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) system addresses this need. With this methodology, organizational KPIs are reported from a process output point of view, where 30,000-foot-level predictive statements can be made, when appropriate.  When process-output predictive statements are not desirable, these metric enhancement needs “pulls” for process improvement efforts.

More details about this lean six sigma 2.0 implementation plan methodology and its need is described in an IEE video and the the published article, (available below) “Beyond Lean Six Sigma: Why Lean and Six Sigma Deployments Fail and what you can do to resolve the issue,” written by Forrest Breyfogle.

Everyone knows that organizations need to improve or they will not survive.  To address this need, many past organizational programs have been created: e.g., Total Quality Management (TQM), Quality Circles, Six Sigma, Lean, etc. methodologies.  However, all of these organizational-betterment approaches, in general, have not survived a true implementation and/or met leadership’s expectations.

In addition to these improvement programs, business management philosophies have been created by gurus such as Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, Phil Crosby, Peter Drucker and Armand Feigenbaum.  However, what is actually done in organizations is quite different than these suggested business management approaches.

Lean Six Sigma 2.0 Implementation Plan Need

Past Lean and Six Sigma deployments have the best intentions of benefiting from the approach.  Leadership may identify areas that need improvement from which some benefits are achieved; however, in time, leadership’s interest in these programs decline. These plans often evolve to practitioners or the process improvement department “hunting for improvement projects to execute.”

With a traditional Six Sigma deployment, tracked financial benefits from the methodology may be reporting 100 million dollars in savings; however, no one can seem to find the money. With a Lean deployment, a reduction-in-waste statement may have been made about all the kaizen events that were executed, but typically no description is made of how these Lean efforts positively impacted the enterprise-as-a-whole performance metrics.  Because of these Six Sigma and lean shortcomings, these methodologies are typically terminated or down-sized in time by organizational leadership.  The real question is not if, but when.

Lean Six Sigma 2.0 Implementation Plan Creation

What is lacking in traditional process improvement programs and business management systems is a structured linkage between the organization’s business management business system and its improvement efforts.  This shortcoming would be overcome with an Operational Excellence (OE) deployment that is consistent with Wikipedia’s definition of OE.

Wikipedia states, “Operational Excellence is an element of organizational leadership and organizational intelligence that focuses on meeting customer expectation, all while stressing the application of a variety of principles, systems, and tools toward the sustainable improvement of key performance metrics.”

In general, traditional process improvement efforts have not been in alignment with the last six words of this Operational Excellence (OE) definition; i.e., sustainable improvement of key performance metrics.

However, for this Operational Excellence definition to be achieved, two events need to occur:

  1. Performance measurements need to be reported from a process point of view; i.e., 30,000-foot-level reporting, which goes beyond the balanced scorecard.
  2. Structural linkage needs to be established between performance metrics and the processes that created them through an IEE value chain.

These steps are structurally addressed in an IEE value chain, which is step 2 of the 9-step IEE system.

lean six sigma 2.0 implementation plan

For more information on creating an effective lean six sigma 2.0 implementation plan, download the ASQ Quality Progress August 2017 article titled Beyond Lean Six Sigma: Why Lean and Six Sigma Deployments Fail and what you can do to resolve the issue″. This article was written by Forrest Breyfogle.

 

Contact Us to set up a time to discuss with Forrest Breyfogle how your organization might gain much from an Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) Business Process Management System and its Lean Six Sigma 2.0 Implementation Plan.