Classic Quality Folks & Lean Six Sigma Black Belts UNITE!

Does your organization have both a “lean” or “CI (continual improvement)” department AND separate groups who manage the classic quality functions (such as inspection, calibration, internal audits), and other classic functions such as environmental and health & safety that manage compliance with certifications?  If so, I always recommend that organizations reconsider this decision carefully.

Lean practitioners are much more effective when they not only understand but embrace and include the management systems in their improvement strategies.  A company that has a well-established quality management system (and other management systems) can leverage the stability of that foundation to build on its progress and improve its performance.  Any performance improvement strategy should be process-based.  The processes should be known and their current performance identified.  For any ISO-based system (quality, environmental, health & safety, etc), this would already be in place.  The “lean team” should loop into that and be sure to stay connected as they make changes and improve best practices.  Remember, if there’s already a management system, there are likely already metrics, there are likely already documented standards (even if the “lean team” wants to improve them).  It is very important not to overlay lean and Six Sigma on top of other management systems or worse yet, run them in parallel.  This creates confusion and waste and can really derail the organization’s understanding of operating within a controlled, process-based system.  Further, having CI as an add-on or “other” department can diminish the importance of both the established management system and any newly implemented “lean practices”.  The users can view these initiatives as jelly-of-the-month and either ignore or even actively resist them.

Lean practitioners should start by learning about whatever systems are already in place.  In fact, it may be the best place for a “lean team” to start.  Using lean tools to improve a cumbersome, overdocumented, outdated, inaccessible management system can reap immediate benefits with very little investment.  Further, it can leverage a group of people who already exist within a system and help them to maintain the existing systems with lean practices in mind.

Classic quality/environmental/health & safety folks should also pursue training in lean practices and Six Sigma.  It’s amazing to me how many companies overlook the classic management systems folks in favor of sending more technical or operations focused individuals to Black Belt training.  This is particularly problematic in my opinion, because it demonstrates a real lack of understanding of the full complement of what a management system enhanced with lean and Six Sigma should do for a company’s performance.  These are not to be mutually exclusive efforts, rather they should both be fully utilized together in order to optimize processes and their performance. 

How can lean and Six Sigma be used to optimize a management system?  Here are some ideas: 

• Facilitate a kaizen event on your documentation. Form teams to look at the actual process for document control and then sort through your documentation, removing anything that is out of date, nonessential, duplicated or NOT USED FOR TRAINING PURPOSES.  If something is documented, and no one ever reads it, eliminate it.  It is waste. 
  • If something is documented for “compliance purposes”, look at it again and decide whether it is in the best form to be consumed as information – a training aid – to ensure the practice is followed. If not, reformat it so that it can be used.
• Engage a team to look at all performance metrics reported within your organization.  Are there duplicates?  Are there metrics which are not actionable?  Are there metrics that are susceptible to legitimacy concerns (those who can improve it don’t believe the metric)?  Are there metrics you wish you had, but don’t currently know how to get the information?  Use lean methodologies to eliminate waste and use statistical methods to collect, analyze and take action on performance.
• Add Best Practices / Standard Work / (Training/Competence) to your current internal audit program. Where the CI team has made process improvements, defined standard work, implemented 5S, incorporate those audits as part of your existing audit program.  This is a first step in evolving your traditional ISO-compliant internal audit program into something more process-based.  As your system matures, the internal audit program should be a holistic assessment of the business and all its operating systems.
• Make the most of a problem.  Take a problem you're currently working on and revisit the management system around that specific problem.  Is the process properly defined?  Is the input to the process clear? Is the output clear?  How is the process measured?  What are the results?  How do team members learn the process?  Do they perform the process to the defined method correctly and consistently?  Use a hybrid approach for root cause analysis keeping the management system(s) around it in mind for improvement opportunities. 
• Integrate the requirements for Improvement from any ISO management system standard (ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001, etc) into the current CI process(es).  You may even find that your CI group does not yet have an established process or metrics of its own but is also project based.  Take the opportunity to integrate this important activity into your overall management system.  And if there are multiple systems, look at how you can integrate them into a more cohesive system overall.  Lead your organization to be able to tell a more complete story of your improvement efforts overall - how they interact with each - how the organization is doing overall - how projects sequence and/or depend on each other, etc.

For help implementing any of these ideas, contact us and let's get started today!