Martin Brenig-Jones

Are you ready to adopt the proven methods of Lean Six Sigma to improve business performance and make your teams more productive? Remind yourself of the key principles of this powerful strategy so that your business runs smoothly and efficiently.Lean Six Sigma's key principlesLean Six Sigma is a powerful, proven method of improving business efficiency and effectiveness.

Failure Modes Effects Analysis (FMEA) helps identify and prioritise potential risks for preventive action. In April 2015, Doug Hughes, a mailman from Florida boarded a small personal aircraft called a gyrocopter and flew an hour from Maryland into restricted airspace over Washington, DC, and landed on the West Lawn of the Capitol building.

Sometimes referred to as Kaizen Blitz workshops, rapid improvement events provide the vehicle to tackle and resolve narrowly focused process problems. Some process improvements can be tackled very quickly, but for this to happen, an organisation needs to empower people and provide them with the time and space needed.

Too many Lean Six Sigma projects in too many organisations are less successful than they should be because people don't talk soft. No matter what type of change you're looking to make or how experienced you may be in the topic, if you don't recognise the importance of the soft stuff (like the schedule timeline or your budget), your chances of success will be reduced.

To undertake improvement activity in your existing business processes in a systematic way using Lean Six Sigma, you need to employ the useful framework of DMAIC: Define: Projects start with a problem that needs solving. Make sure everyone involved knows their role, why you're doing the project and what you're trying to achieve with the project.

Throughout a Lean Six Sigma DMAIC improvement project, developing a storyboard summary of the key decisions and outputs helps you review progress and share what you've learnt. A storyboard builds up as you work your way through your project by capturing the key outputs and findings from the DMAIC phases. And it also helps your communication activities.

You can improve process flow in a number of ways using Lean Six Sigma, including by reducing waste. The seven categories of waste are sometimes identified by the acronym Tim Wood: Transportation: Moving materials and output unnecessarily. Inventory: Overproduction resulting in too much work in progress or stock.

Lean Six Sigma is a powerful, proven method of improving business efficiency and effectiveness. In a nutshell, here are the key principles of Lean Six Sigma to bear in mind: Focus on the customer Identify and understand how the work gets done (the value stream) Manage, improve and smooth the process fl