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Lean Six-Sigma and Business Transformation for Government
Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is becoming increasingly popular in many government organizations. Hailed in the private sector, LSS offers a methodology to help government agencies improve business operations and comply with many of the requirements outlined in the President's Management Agenda (PMA).
LSS is based on a variety of process improvement methods including Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma. With, BPR, organizations look at their businesses from a process perspective versus a traditional functional stove-pipe perspective, document those processes and eliminate non-value added activities to improve the process.
Lean Manufacturing goes a step further, eliminating tasks that are deemed non-value-added and unnecessary from the customer's perspective. Under Lean Manufacturing, tasks are considered value-added when they directly support the customer, and the customer is willing to pay for them. Although a few tasks, such as contract management, are non-value-added, they are retained because they are necessary for business operations. All other tasks that are deemed non-value-added are eliminated.
The lean methodology is bottom-line focused but does not address quality per se. Motorola, the developer of Six Sigma, was looking to improve quality assurance and to drive defects to zero, but did not explicitly address the elimination of unnecessary tasks. LSS is an approach that combines Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma from an enterprise perspective, taking both suppliers and customers into account. This approach helps to improve processes in a way that considers both the costs of poor quality and issues critical to customer requirements. In addition to manufacturing processes, LSS has been successfully applied in the transactional and service industries.
LSS is a defined approach that synthesizes the use of established tools and methods. Its methods are generally divided into two approaches. One approach is called design for Six Sigma, generally used when designing new systems or processes.
The other approach, used for process improvement, is called the define-measure-analyze-improve-control or DMAIC approach, which represents five phases described below.*
Define. The segment that defines the problem or opportunity for a problem, in a process or procedure that effects the customer's requirement or specifications. Measure. The act of defining and identifying key measurements and collecting data and presenting a conclusion for a quantified evaluation of any given characteristics and/or level of operation based on the observed data collected. Analyze. The action where a processes, procedure, or service details are examined for process improvement opportunities. Improve. The segment that defines where solutions and ideas may be generated and ruled on. Once a problem has been successfully identified, measured, and analyzed for potential solutions, the results can be evaluated to solve the problem. Control. Once improvement opportunities have been implemented, by continuing to measure the process, using SPC, (statistical process control), to trace and confirm the stability of the implemented improvements and the expected results in the process.
Why Should the Government Care About LSS?
LSS is a best practice for process improvement. It applies to all processes-Ñmanufacturing, software, operations, transactions, and service. One senior military officer was recently quoted as saying, "I will tell you that in virtually every one of our major programs we are out of control on cost and schedule." Although LSS is designed for process improvement, because it is based on two perspectives, requirements that are critical to the customer and satisfying those requirements at the lowest possible cost, its principles can help maintain both cost and schedule control.
For more information on implanting Lean Six Sigma in your organization visit us at www.pivotal-insight.com.
*Source: SPC DMAIC Dictionary
http://www.sixsigmaspc.com/dictionary/DMAIC-definemeasureanalyzeimprovecontrol.html
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