Lean Six Sigma vs. Six Sigma: Which One Is Better?

Lean Six Sigma and Six Sigma have increasingly become popular in the process management area. Organisations that are looking to make processes efficient are adapting these methodologies. Initially, these methods were developed for process management in the production industries. With time, these have proven to be powerful methodologies for service organisations as well.

Now, the question that arises is which one of the two methodologies is better – Lean Six Sigma or Six Sigma? Keep on reading to find out.

What is Lean Six Sigma?

Lean Six Sigma is a method that improves performance by systematically removing waste and by reducing variation. It is the combination of lean manufacturing and Six Sigma to eliminate eight kinds of waste including:

1. Defects,
2. Over-Production,
3. Waiting,
4. Non-Utilized Talent,
5. Transportation,
6. Inventory,
7. Motion and
8. Extra-Processing

Lean Six Sigma is used to reduce process defects and waste, and to provide a framework for overall organizational culture change. It is a process where anything that fails to offer value to the end customer is deemed as waste and eliminating it is supposed to reduce time and be cost-effective.

This methodology was introduced by Toyota during the 1980s to improve its production process, which had drastically improved it and from a humble beginning, it has become a prominent name in the automobile industry.

Know more about Lean Six Sigma Green belt Courses

Advantages of Lean Six Sigma

Lean has its own share of advantages which can be seen from the following points:

• The main advantage of using Lean lies in its implementation, which can be done easily and swiftly. This is because it is focused on arriving at standard solutions for standard problems.
• Another advantage of Lean management is that it offers instant results. It can help organisations to streamline their process quickly, leading to the easy elimination of wastes.
• It offers a safe environment for the employees and long-term benefits. The safe environment is targeted more towards the production industry, where factories can remove clutter through Lean management; leading to more space. In the long run, Lean management can help businesses to improve their financial performance, more value to customers mean more customers being satisfied and safety improvements will lead to better employee morale.

As you can see from the above points that there are a lot of advantages that will make you think about doing a Lean Management course.

What is Six Sigma?

Six Sigma is a set of tools and techniques used for process improvement. It was introduced by Bill Smith while working at Motorola in 1986.

You must have already seen from above that Lean Management can be used for standard problems and implemented easily. However, when problems are not standard, there is a need for a methodology that uses powerful techniques to solve them. This is where Six Sigma comes into play. Do note that setting up a Six Sigma program is not that easy.

Read>> How Six Sigma Certification Has Become a Key Requirement

Advantages of Six Sigma

• It is useful in analysing and resolving complex problems. There will be a dedicated team using powerful statistical techniques to understand the specific problems.
• The accuracy of quality control through Six Sigma is very high and is customer-driven. Anything that is not acceptable to a customer is considered a defect.
• Six Sigma is a proactive program. Through this methodology, how improvements can be made are determined even before defects or shortcomings are found.
• From the second point, we have seen that Six Sigma is customer-driven. This leads to more happy customers for the organisation and happy customers lead to good reviews. Good reviews lead to new customers as well as a greater number of returning customers which all, in turn, lead to higher revenues.

Six Sigma courses can help your organisation through better process management and in turn boost your career.

Lean Six Sigma vs. Six Sigma- Which one is better?

Both Lean and Six Sigma have their own advantages as we have already seen from above. Which one of them is better will depend on the process management present in your organisation or the industry. If the process problems are standard, then it is useful to do a certification course in Lean Management as it is easy to implement and get quick results. However, if the process requires complex techniques or Six Sigma is already in implementation in the organisation, it would be beneficial to go for a Six Sigma certification course.

You can also do both as it will improve your skills and help you to be flexible. It will also let you get opportunities in different organisations which use any one of the methodologies.

Shiksha Online offers a comprehensive range of certification courses and professional training programs for fresher and professionals. You can take up these courses at your convenience and set your own schedule to complete them. Make the most of these courses to accelerate your learning and enhance your career prospects.