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Introduction to Leadership for Lean Six Sigma
Alessandro Laureani and Jiju Antony
This first chapter contains two parts: first, a brief history of Lean and Six Sigma showing the fundamental differences between the two most powerful operational excellence (OpEx) methodologies and why the integrated approach is superior to using Lean or Six Sigma alone in problem-solving contexts; in the second part, we introduce leadership as a critical success factor (CSF) for deploying and sustaining Lean Six Sigma in organizations and cover the more common leadership styles used in the literature (e.g. Servant Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Transactional, Visionary, etc.âŚ). For each leadership style, a brief description, together with strengths and weaknesses in the context of Lean Six Sigma, is outlined, together with practical examples of success and failure.
1.1 Introduction to Lean Six Sigma
The term âLean Six Sigmaâ first appeared in 2000 as a way to describe the integration of Lean and Six Sigma philosophies (Sheridan, 2000). Lean Six Sigma is a methodology that maximizes shareholder value by achieving the fastest rate of improvement in customer satisfaction, cost, quality, process speed and invested capital (George, 2002).
Lean and Six Sigma have followed independent paths since the 1980s, when the terms were first hard-coded and defined:
- Lean is a process improvement methodology used to deliver products and services better, faster and at a lower cost. Womack and Jones (1996) defined it as âa way to specify value, line up value-creating actions in the best sequence, conduct those activities without interruption whenever someone requests them, and perform them more and more effectively. In short, lean thinking is lean because it provides a way to do more and more with less and less â less human effort, less human equipment, less time, and less space â while coming closer and closer to providing customers with exactly what they wantâ.
- Six Sigma is a data-driven process improvement methodology used to achieve stable and predictable process results, reducing process variation and defects. Snee (1999) defined it as âa business strategy that seeks to identify and eliminate causes of errors or defects or failures in business processes by focusing on outputs that are critical to customersâ.
While Lean addresses efficiency, doing things right the first time, Six Sigma addresses effectiveness, doing the right things for customers. The term âLean Six Sigmaâ was first introduced in the literature in 2000 (Timans, Antony, Ahaus, & Solingen, 2012) and since then has received increased interest and grown in popularity, both in small and medium-sized manufacturing businesses (Kumar, Antony, Singh, Tiwari, & Perry, 2006) and in large organizations, such as Motorola, General Electric and Honeywell (Laureani & Antony, 2012; Timans et al., 2012). Sreedharan and Raju (2016) found 45 different definitions of Lean Six Sigma in the literature, spread across many industrial sectors and countries, with most organizations referring to Lean Six Sigma as a synergy of Lean and Six Sigma techniques.
Snee (2010) defined Lean Six Sigma as âa business strategy and methodology that increases process performance resulting in enhanced customer satisfaction and improved Bottomline resultsâ, arguing that it was not productive to debate whether Lean or Six Sigma was more applicable to solve specific issues, while focussing instead on how to combine them best to address the problem at hand.
Lean Six Sigma uses tools from both toolboxes in order to get the best of the two methodologies, increasing speed while also increasing accuracy; accordingly, literature findings from both Lean and Six Sigma are applicable to Lean Six Sigma, as the Lean Six Sigma toolbox is essentially the sum of the Lean and Six Sigma respective toolboxes. Case studies in the literature have identified a number of benefits for organizations in implementing Lean Six Sigma (Chen & Lyu, 2009; Vinodh, Kumar, & Vimal, 2012), with Albliwi, Antony, and Lim (2015) listing the following:
- Increased profits and financial savings
- Increased customer satisfaction
- Reduced cost
- Reduced cycle time
- Reduced inventory
- Improved quality
- Increased production capacity
Timans et al. (2012) suggested the following CSFs for Lean Six Sigma:
- Linking to customer
- Vision and plan statement
- Communication
- Management involvement and participation
- Personal Lean Six Sigma experience of Top Management
- Development of the project leader's soft skills and supply chain focus
The concept of Lean Six Sigma as an integrated strategy is still being developed in the literature, and many of the documented benefits and CSFs mirror the ones from Lean literature and Six Sigma literature, respectively. Since its early inception in 2000, a number of academics have developed integrated approaches (Pepper & Spedding, 2010; Snee & Hoerl, 2007; Thomas, Rowlands, Byard, & Rowland-Jones, 2008), while others have focused on a framework for successful integration of Lean and Six Sigma (Alsmadi & Khan, 2010; Bendell, 2006; Hardeman & Goethals, 2011; Salah, Rahim, & Carretero, 2010), to reap the benefits from both and apply the learning from each methodology.
Overall, there is a noticeable increase in the popularity of Lean Six Sigma in the industrial world, particularly in larger organizations in Western countries (e.g. the USA, th...
