The increasing buzz around Lean makes me worry that it is headed for FOTM status (that is flavor of the month or maybe year)? It looks eerily like the situation around Six Sigma about 5 years ago. The increasing buzz about Lean seems to lack much understanding of how it might be used specifically in a business. I also hear frequent statements about the pitfalls of Six Sigma. While I may agree with many of these, the superficial buzz accompanied by criticism of the last fad makes me worry. A few recent data points include,
- In a recent discussion, a CEO visibly flinched when I mentioned that Six Sigma had become counterproductive in some companies. This really surprised me.
- I also heard from a operations recruiter that their recruiting practice is now 2/3 Lean – it was 2/3 Six Sigma only a few years ago.
- A Fortune 100 company looking for an operations improvement executive stated that only Lean experience was sought, no Six Sigma people would be considered (seems like a dogmatic backlash to the previously dogmatic Six Sigma approaches).
My fear is that the same absolute dogmatism that has been Six Sigma’s demise could easily befall the Lean world. I still see way too many absolute statements, often about the evils of systems. There are also far too many consultants focusing on classroom training versus field practice of these approaches. And finally, there is no commonly held definition of Lean. See my previous post on this topic.
For the Lean practitioners in the audience, I believe that there is an opportunity to make bigger impacts outside of the manufacturing floor. Unfortunately, many have had difficulty expanding their capabilities into other parts of the company that lack the traditional visual queues of manufacturing. It is these folks who you will hear criticizing everything else.
In my opinion, there have been valuable contributions made by many in the practice of operations improvement. These include Lean, re-engineering, Six Sigma, TQM, and many others. None of these is a panacea and caution is required when someone tells you otherwise.
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