A Lean Sigma Book Says You Need Six Sigma to Address Defects

A book on Lean Six Sigma for healthcare talks about the eight types of waste. So far, so good.

Until the author talks about the "waste of defects" and claims that Lean addresses everything BUT defects and that you need Six Sigma to address defects.

That's hogwash.

From the book.

He talks about right sizing machines and reducing changeovers... those are core Lean concepts.

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.

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