Saturday, January 11, 2014

Again, Lean is Not Just Speed

Common mistake here:
Two years ago, Akron Children’s Hospital adopted a business-improvement methodology called Lean Six Sigma, a blend of the lean-production concept derived from Toyota’s production system and the Six Sigma strategy developed by Motorola in 1986. Lean production focuses on speed, and Six Sigma focuses on quality.
"Lean production focuses on speed." This is factually incorrect. In the the Lean/TPS approach, speed AND quality go hand in hand. Lean, arguably, starts with quality and "speed" is a result of that.