History of Continuous Improvement

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About this lesson

Lean Six Sigma is a proven business process improvement methodology that builds on the best practices and experiences of earlier approaches. It combines best practices around customer focus, empowered teams, process definition, and data analysis.

Quick reference

History of Continuous Improvement

Lean Six Sigma is a proven business process improvement methodology that builds on the best practices and experiences of earlier approaches. It combines best practices around customer focus, empowered teams, process definition, and data analysis.

When to use

Lean Six Sigma is a process improvement methodology. It can be used to improve any existing business process. The roots of Lean Six Sigma draw from customer focus, teamwork, process definition and data analysis. Therefore, it is particularly powerful when teams are addressing customer’s problems due to the performance of business processes in which data can be collected and analyzed.

Instructions

This module is not instructional in nature, but rather is contextual. Understanding the context of where Lean Six Sigma came from will help to understand how it is best applied. In addition, if you are planning on sitting for an International Association of Six Sigma Certification (IASSC) exam, you will be tested on the history of Lean Six Sigma – along with the methodology and tools.

Process improvement approaches have been around for many years. However, the business-wide process improvement movement took off in the second half of the 20th century. It was initially led by quality improvement gurus such as Shewhart, Deming, Juran, Ishikawa, Taguchi, Crosby, and Shingo. They all had their followers and their points of emphasis, but soon business-wide methodologies were introduced. These included Total Quality Management (TQM), Kaizen, and PDCA. All provided good foundational elements, but each had some limitations and blind spots. In addition, many organizations were creating process improvement methodologies. Some of the better known were the Kepner Tregoe approach and the Ford Eight Discipline process. These provided good structure but were somewhat weak on analytical tools. Governments also got involved by sponsoring national quality awards like Japan’s Deming Prize and the USA’s Malcolm Baldrige Award. Also by the end of the 20th century, comprehensive international standards for quality management had been created, the most notable with ISO9000. By this time, Lean and Six Sigma were getting a lot of publicity and spawning spin-off methodologies, such as Design for Six Sigma and what we are discussing, Lean Six Sigma.

Since Lean Six Sigma is a combination of both of those programs, let’s look a little deeper into the history of those. The concept of Sigma goes back to the early 1800’s when Gauss formulated the normal distribution, or bell-shaped curve, and kicked off the study of statistics. Professor Shewhart extended that to the concept of statistical process control in manufacturing and both taught the principles and applied them to USA industries during World War II. Statistical process control was well accepted by the 1980’s when Bob Smith of Motorola, expanded it into a problem-solving methodology and codified the system. It was adopted throughout Motorola and the first “Blackbelt” was certified in 1991. The success at Motorola got the attention of Larry Bossidy at Allied Signal and Jack Welch at General Electric and they adopted the program. From there it gained widespread publicity and acceptance. It is now an industry with university programs, standards, consultants, and certification.

The development of Lean has some similarities with Six Sigma. The idea of manufacturing process codification and management was pioneered in the early 1800’s by Eli Whitney who created products with interchangeable parts allowing an assembly line to be created. By the end of the 1800’s Fredrick Winslow Taylor and Frank Gilbreath were promoting process optimization with time and motion studies. These gained widespread acceptance after being adopted by Henry Ford. Following World War II, the Toyota company in Japan worked with these principles and added management tools and analysis over the years, eventually creating the Total Production Control methodology. In the 1990s this methodology was widely publicized by Womack, Jones and Roos and it soon was adopted by manufacturing companies around the world.

Both Lean and Six Sigma were striving to optimize manufacturing processes, so the blending of the approaches soon occurred. The Lean Six Sigma approach embodies the best practices that were developed by the various improvement approaches.

Process People Customer Data 

Standard process for problem solving

 Teams do the analysis Customer input defines the problem Data is used to solve the problem

Actions are performed in a set sequence

 Teams are normally cross-functional Internal and external customers Data collected and analyzed for accuracy and relevance
Trust the process to lead to a result

Teams plan and implement the solution

 Success is based upon customer impact Data demonstrates the solution is effective

Hints & tips

Some improvement approaches have fallen into traps and pitfalls, leaving the teams adrift or frustrated and the business fails to realize the promised benefit. Lean Six Sigma has tried to avoid these, but a company’s implementation of the approach can still create these problems.

  • If the approach becomes too rigid, it becomes bureaucratic and slows down.
  • If the emphasis is only on principles, teams won’t have the tools to be able to implement the principles.
  • If the emphasis becomes too heavy on tools, teams won’t understand the principles and when to use the tools. Soon they try using all the tools all the time – which is unnecessary.
  • Data must be collected and analyzed to get through several of the Lean Six Sigma phases. By combining Lean and Six Sigma, there should be multiple sources of data and the teams should use all that apply to their problem.
  • Teams need to ensure their solutions align with strategy and the customer focus. Tollgate Reviews will normally ensure this occurs.
  • The approach is project based, so project management is needed on large complex projects or they spiral out of control.
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  • 00:05 Hi, I'm Ray Sheen, let's start our program on Lean Six Sigma with a review
  • 00:09 of the roots of this methodology.
  • 00:14 If you plan on sitting for a Lean Six Sigma Belt exam,
  • 00:17 you can expect several questions concerning the history of Lean Six Sigma.
  • 00:21 During the 20th century, a revolution in industrial quality took place,
  • 00:25 initially it was led by gurus such as Shewhart.
  • 00:28 In the early part of the century followed by others in both
  • 00:31 the United States and Japan.
  • 00:33 Some of the best known were Deming, Juran, Ishikawa, Taguchi, Crosby, and Shingo.
  • 00:39 Each provided a valuable contribution and
  • 00:42 each emphasized a different aspect of process improvement.
  • 00:46 By the 1980s, we'd moved from having people in the quality department following
  • 00:50 Gurus to creating businesswide process improvement methodologies.
  • 00:54 The first of these to gain wide acceptance was Total Quality Management,
  • 00:59 TQM gave us a top-down framework, but little bottom-up activity.
  • 01:03 So continuous improvement programs like Kaizen and PDCA, came to the forefront,
  • 01:08 these emphasized teamwork and action but relied on analysis.
  • 01:13 At the same time, many companies were starting to use a discipline problem
  • 01:17 solving methodology, many of these had been created internally or by consultants.
  • 01:22 One of the best known programs delivered by consultants was Kepner Tregoe.
  • 01:26 And one of the best known internal programs was Ford's Eight Discipline or
  • 01:31 8D process.
  • 01:32 Governments started getting involved sponsoring national quality awards
  • 01:36 like the Deming Prize in Japan and Malcolm Baldrige award in the United States.
  • 01:42 But there was still lots of confusion as to what constituted best practices.
  • 01:46 So the International Standard Organization jumped in
  • 01:49 with ISO 9000 which was widely adopted in the late 1990s.
  • 01:55 Also in the '90s, the Lean Manufacturing approach gained recognition,
  • 01:58 I'll talk more about that in a minute.
  • 02:00 And Six Sigma was introduced by Motorola. Variations of these came into existence
  • 02:06 in the beginning of the 21st century including design for
  • 02:09 Six Sigma and Lean Sigma.
  • 02:11 Well since this is a program on Lean Six Sigma,
  • 02:16 I want to explore the roots of both of those in a little more detail.
  • 02:20 Six Sigma can trace it's roots all the way back to the early 1800s and Charles Gauss.
  • 02:26 Who established many of the fundamental statistical analysis principles, including
  • 02:30 the normal distribution or as it's commonly called, the bell shaped curve.
  • 02:34 Move forward 100 years and professor Shewhart of Princeton created the concept
  • 02:39 to statistical process control.
  • 02:41 And applied it to the several branches of the US government.
  • 02:44 In the mid 1980s, Bob Smith at Motorola expanded on that concept and
  • 02:48 developed the Six Sigma program.
  • 02:51 Which Bob Galvin, the Motorola CEO spread throughout the company,
  • 02:55 Motorola certified the first black belt in 1991.
  • 02:59 The program was so successful that it was adopted into Allied Signal and
  • 03:03 then General Electric, where it received worldwide notice and acclaim.
  • 03:08 By 2000, Six Sigma was an industry with university programs,
  • 03:12 consultants, training programs, and certifying bodies.
  • 03:16 So let's now look at the roots of Lean. Process improvement of
  • 03:19 manufacture processes took a giant step forward in the early 1800s.
  • 03:24 When Eli Whitney developed designs with interchangeable parts,
  • 03:28 well that improved the material side of manufacturing processing.
  • 03:32 And then Frederick Winslow Taylor and
  • 03:34 Frank Gilbreath focused on the improvement of labor activities.
  • 03:38 That brings us to Henry Ford and the production line in manufacturing,
  • 03:43 a process focused approach.
  • 03:44 Following World War II, Toyota implemented a total production system that optimized
  • 03:50 manufacturing flow and eventually evolved into Lean manufacturing.
  • 03:55 In the early 1990s, Womack, Jones, and Roos documented the Toyota approach and
  • 04:00 disseminated the Lean concept throughout the world.
  • 04:03 Lean seems to have run its course as a management approach.
  • 04:06 When it was married with Six Sigma at the beginning of 21st century,
  • 04:11 and is now an integral part of Lean Six Sigma.
  • 04:14 As we look at all the improvement approaches from the gurus through to
  • 04:18 Lean Six Sigma, there are four common themes that come out.
  • 04:22 Some approaches emphasize one over the other, Lean Six Sigma emphasizes all four.
  • 04:27 These are process focussed, empowered teams, customer focus and data analysis.
  • 04:33 Process focus means that the team follows a structured process
  • 04:36 through a sequence of steps.
  • 04:39 They can trust the process to guide them to an improvement.
  • 04:43 People focus means that an empowered cross-functional team of subject
  • 04:47 matter experts do the process improvement activities, not just outside consultants.
  • 04:52 Customer focus means that the improvement is on a process output that is
  • 04:56 important to the customers, either an internal or external customer.
  • 05:00 And project success is measured by the amount of impact on the customer.
  • 05:05 Finally, the data analysis focus means that the improvement activities rely
  • 05:09 on data to determine the problem and the solution, not just gut feel.
  • 05:14 In particular, statistical data is used and of course,
  • 05:17 Lean Six Sigma embraces all of these.
  • 05:20 Let me wrap up this module with a few comments about some of the difficulties
  • 05:24 with the earlier process improvement programs.
  • 05:27 And how Lean Six Sigma is attempting to overcome these.
  • 05:30 The programs with a rigid methodology became mired in bureaucracy.
  • 05:35 And projects often stalled as teams struggled
  • 05:37 to complete activities that did not apply to their project.
  • 05:40 Lean Six Sigma has a structure, but within that structure the team can choose
  • 05:45 the tools or techniques that best fit the circumstances.
  • 05:48 Principle based methodologies were often short on tools so
  • 05:51 people didn't know how to implement them.
  • 05:54 And tool-based methodologies would get stuck when teams
  • 05:56 tried to use a tool that didn't fit the problem.
  • 05:59 Lean Six Sigma provides principles for guidance and a toolbox of tools
  • 06:03 that the teams can choose from based upon their circumstances.
  • 06:07 Some of the data driven methodologies did not provide enough guidance
  • 06:11 on how to collect and validate their data.
  • 06:13 Lean Six Sigma uses both quality and process data so
  • 06:17 there are many data sources.
  • 06:19 Some methodologies have left the teams to make all their own decisions
  • 06:22 for improvement.
  • 06:23 And the teams would come up with solutions that were not aligned with organizational
  • 06:26 strategy.
  • 06:27 The Lean Six Sigma tollgate structure ensures that teams can't get
  • 06:31 too far out of alignment, yet doesn't overcontrol their daily activities.
  • 06:36 Finally, some methodologies ignored the project management aspect, so
  • 06:40 projects became very late, overrun, and out of control.
  • 06:44 Lean Six Sigma does include project management deliverables
  • 06:47 in the methodology.
  • 06:50 So that's some history and background on Lean Six Sigma, now let's dig in and
  • 06:54 find out how it really works.

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