Lean Six Sigma combines the quality improvements that come from using Six Sigma with the speed improvements that come from using Lean manufacturing principles . Six Sigma is a disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects in any process -- from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service. Lean manufacturing focuses on improving the speed of a process and the elimination of waste primarily by eliminating non-value added steps. Lean Flow and Six Sigma are strongly compatible. Combining these two powerful process improvement methods are combining the contents of two toolboxes that can help your organization improve quality and efficiency.

Lean Six Sigma and Lean Flow initiatives go by many names, including Lean Enterprise, Lean Manufacturing, Lean Sigma, and Lean Service. These concepts are a natural complement to Six Sigma and can be applied to every type of business and process. Both Lean and Six Sigma have points of commonality in their strategies and methods. Both are built around the idea that businesses are composed of processes that serve customer needs. They share the goal to identify and eliminate sources of waste and activities that do not add value, in order to create flow with maximum productivity, capacity, and throughput. Both place great emphasis on training to bring members of an organization to a high level of understanding and expertise on the tools and processes of the methodology. Also, both lean and Six Sigma require and encourage the engagement of management and key mentors within the organization to assure that the prioritized projects are executed as part of a way of doing business.

Lean methods and data are used to reduce costs, shorten cycle times, expand capacity, and improve productivity. Lean concepts and the Lean Flow system quickly identify improvement opportunities through the use of value stream mapping. Lean emphasizes all-encompassing principles together with targeted recommendations to achieve improvements. However, Lean principles are oftentimes inadequate to solve some of the more complicated problems that require advanced analysis.

Because Six Sigma requires in-depth statistical metrics to analyze quality at all levels of the supply chain, eliminating defects it can improve all Lean methods. Six Sigma