Lean and Six Sigma are just two of many complementary approaches used internationally by business to improve results. Despite the number of years they have been in use, many companies still are not applying any of these business process improvement approaches within their organizations–or worse, they apply them wastefully by not providing proper leadership.

People, processes, and a leadership perspective are the keys to correct implementation; and one might wonder how this keeps getting missed.

3 Steps to practical business process improvement:

Six Sigma, essentially began in large organizations following Motorola’s lead from the 80′s with their “Total Quality Management” approach, the result has often been statistical gridlock as the analytics became the end game and not true, timely, useful improvements. It gets its name from the statistical goal of having a zero defect environment.

Executives rightly ask six sigma practitioners if they will have their analysis done before the current product life cycle is over. For TQM projects involving often replicated engineering and manufacturing steps, a strict six sigma approach is often the best course of action. However, when a company is working with product life cycles shorter than a year in length, six sigma can be a waste of effort and money.

Quality that is meaningful to customers and that saves costs are of paramount importance, and sometimes that means setting incremental change goals much more modest than those often demanded by quality control departments. (Note: I’m not saying quality is not important, but if you have a 3% defect rate, try achieving a 1% defect rate before taking on a six sigma standard 0.00033% defect rate goal. (That works out to 3.4 defects per million units, and does not come cheaply or quickly.)

As a movement, Lean is often seen as a less technical approach to business process improvement. With the reduced focus on statistical analysis, many view Lean as the more practical solution that focuses on quality, speed, and cost reduction. Reading “The Toyota Way“, an excellent book by Jeffrey Liker, will provide a primer in this field of study and is actually inspirational for many who want to understand how the shop floor can effect the broader business and help it succeed. However, Lean often gets sidetracked by taking on inconsequential processes and cost centers.

Lean takes its name from principally removing waste in time, materials, manufacturing, and inventory. There are many tool sets and schools of thought within Lean, but a key element is making certain that resources are aligned with customer value offerings. Talk about this is easy, execution is the challenge that is often overlooked.

3 Ways to Get the Value from your Business Improvement Initiatives:

1) Leadership Gemba: Top executives have much, varied work to do. However, ignoring the time tested suggestion of MBWA (management by walking around) is something that most managers, let alone senior executives, can afford to skip if they want to enact business process improvement. But when it comes to business improvement processes, this is often delegated. The suggestion here is do not delegate this element. You can bring in help or grow help internally, but spend some time on it daily.

Within process improvement circles a useful term often thrown around Gemba (also sometimes spelled Genba with a “n”). This is a Japanese word literally meaning the real work. In the context of business improvement the real work has been identified usually as being on the shop floor. Within the “Lean” movement gemba functions more as a verb than as a noun. It is the act of walking around with purpose. creating improvements.

2) Tool Selection: When you identify areas to improve, work to select the correct tools. For instance, if you have an issue with too much product variation, then six sigma tools are a good place to start. If you are dealing with human mistakes, poor work flows, or a need to increase speed, then lean tools are more promising.

Once the right tools are selected using them and listening to them honestly is critical. Without measurement reporting on the improvements, the business inertia that had supported the prior practices can easily reassert itself. This is why so many growing companies struggle to improve. The everyday overwhelms the better day as the daily push to ship overwhelms true value improvements. Its not uncommon for this to happen in all industries, and the work of cementing gains made into place is some of the most challenging business process work one can take on.

3) Focus: If you are in it for consistent improvements, focus and a gemba habit will serve you well. Some tips for doing this well are:

• Schedule time daily to walk around in your business.

• List out the most important elements of your business as they relate to your customers and put focus on them weekly during your business process improvement walks. (If you just go to manufacturing and distribution, you will miss a lot in marketing, IT, and sales that could be suffering–or causing negative inertia blocking improvement in the rest of the business on behalf of the status quo.)

• Set goals for improvements that tie to value enhancements for your customers and target customers. Also, remember to remove processes that add no value and can be eliminated.