Lean Six Sigma

White Paper:

Lean Six Sigma

What is Six Sigma, What is Lean, and

How Can Lean and Six Sigma be Combined to

Lead Your Organization to Operational

Excellence and Continuous Improvement?

Hans Froehling, DBA, CMBB

Senior Consultant

Chi Solutions, Inc.

©2008 Chi Solutions Inc.

Version 2

Introduction

Lean Six Sigma is on the brink of becoming one of modern business’s longest lasting

improvement and change management initiatives. Recently, Motorola celebrated its

twentieth year of Six Sigma deployment. It has been estimated that Six Sigma has saved

companies an estimated $427 billion and that Six Sigma deployments contribute to 2% in

sales per year. A further indication of the success of Six Sigma is that 53% of all Fortune

500 companies and 82% of Fortune 100 companies are currently using it (Michael 2007).

While any figures about the impact of a program such as Six Sigma are open to dispute,

the fact is that, over the course of its existence, Six Sigma has shown an extremely high

level of growing acceptance in many business circles. Currently, there are no signs that

Six Sigma will cease to be important for process improvement in the near future. This is

not to say that with all its strengths Six Sigma does not have various critiques and

shortfalls. However, it is clear that Six Sigma has outlived many rival management

philosophies and theories, including Management Reengineering, Service Quality,

Customer-Centered Project Management, and others. One of the key reasons why Six

Sigma has fared so well over the course of its history is that it has simultaneously

embraced a set of core principles and elements that have persisted since its very inception

at Motorola in the late 1980s and shown a high level of flexibility in adapting to and

integrating alternative management philosophies, methodologies, and ideas.

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of Lean Six Sigma that identifies both its

sustained core principles and the...