Lean-versus-Six Sigma Duel

These questions come in many variations with long answers and never ending discussions. By reframing such question, the answer will be much more valuable: questions drive results (cfr Change your questions, Change your life by Marilee Adams).

To illustrate the point, let us take a very similar question: “IQ or EQ: which one is more important?” The answer is not straightforward:

1. It depends on context: it makes a big difference whether you are playing chess or whether a relative received terrible news.
2. Most situations require at least a bit of both. Often it would be hard (and irrelevant) to define the most important: as policy maker or member of a management team, for example, you could only make excellent decisions if you combine both.
3. Many situations require different traits than just IQ and/or EQ. Even a team with high IQ and high EQ might fail. One reason might be a lack of diversity in the team resulting in blind spots (cfr Rebel Ideas by Matthew Syed)

Back to our initial question.

Context is important. When I worked at Terumo in an area high in manual labour flow was definitely important and many of the tools implemented came from “Lean” thinking. Not that Six Sigma was not useful at all: we had an issue with gluing for which we applied Design of Experiments to figure out the best parameters. When I worked at Etex in a highly automated environment, at some point, flow was a disaster. Applying lean was only treating symptoms: the problem was variability in the fully automated processing, which let to quality issues that were intercepted. That created a huge flow of rework and scrap. Only by focusing on the root cause using Six Sigma techniques could we reduce variability and improve flow. Lean could never achieve a similar effect.

Both examples also illustrate the 2nd point: you need both. One might have a higher priority or higher emphasis, but without a basic understanding of both, it would be hard to deliver results.

By focusing the question on Lean or Six Sigma, we miss out on another very important point: other “concepts” exist, such as Business Process Management (BPM), Agile, Innovation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Shared Purpose & Group Dynamics.

When you think about some very successful, iconic organisations (Google, Facebook, Tesla, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, …), neither Lean nor Six Sigma comes to your mind as the driving strategy behind their successes.

Rather than choosing between 2 frameworks (Lean or Six Sigma), I recommend you first figure out what your biggest barrier is for being successful. The question then becomes: “Among the different existing best practices, which will we choose now to move forward on our journey?”

Don’t forget Maslow’s phrase: “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. Ask your question to someone who owns a toolbox, not just a hammer.

I hope you nail it!