Lean Six Sigma (6S) incorporates the Lean principles as part of the analytical
phase of the project. Lean 6S is different from Lean in application. Lean seeks
to reduce waste and unnecessary work. Lean 6S seeks to reduce waste and
unnecessary work, but only if they have a negative effect on critical customer
requirements. The 6S philosophy would also measure the process before the
changes were implemented, and afterwards, to see if applying Lean principles had
a positive effect.
For example, a Lean 6S project lead may find a lot of rework cycles (a
form of "waste" in Lean) while examining a process.
Let's say that we have a process that has many rework cycles, but those
cycles don't have any negative impact on a critical customer requirement. As an
extreme example, writing a novel is a process with a notoriously high number of
rework cycles. However, those rework cycles are necessary to meet critical
customer requirements (or in plain English, a lot of revisions are needed to
make a novel that is a pleasure to read). From a Lean 6S perspective, that
"waste" in the process would be acceptable.
Of course, any reasonably smart person would be able to look at a
wasteful process, reduce the waste to some degree, and try to figure out a way
to determine if the changes made any difference. Lean 6S is not a magically new
thing :-) It's just a standard way of applying these principles and measuring
their effects.
