Use Lean and Six Sigma to Support your Quality Management

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As a business owner, there are many different approaches you can take to reduce waste and strive for excellence in your organization. Today we’re going to discover what Six Sigma, Lean, and Quality Management each have to offer in order to help understand your customer’s expectations and improve quality management in the future.

What is Six Sigma?

The Six Sigma approach to quality management strives to improve customer satisfaction by refining processes within an organization. You may opt to use this alongside Lean, but it’s important to know the difference between these two solutions.

Six Sigma processes are based around minimizing process variation, which will improve consistency within your business. With the help of data analytics tools, process variation and inconsistencies are reduced.

What is Lean?

Lean quality management is based on the people in your organization, which will include both your customers and employees. It focuses on continuous process improvement and helps to offer better feedback for the business, which strives to constantly improve your way of working for everyone involved.

Any form of innovation in the organization aims to reduce waste and stops any activity that won’t add value for the customers. To measure process improvement, Lean quality management strives to reduce the cycle time within the business operations.

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Six Sigma vs Lean

When looking at Lean vs Six SigmaLean is less focused on the business and manufacturing processes and looks more at improving the in-house workflow.

On the other hand, Six Sigma is based on improving process output. When looking at the difference between Lean and Six Sigma, companies may also want to consider Lean Six Sigma vs Six Sigma quality management, which combines elements of the two quality management processes.

When waste is reduced with Lean, more opportunities become available to your organization. Six Sigma can then be used to reduce variation and make the outcomes more predictable.

Both practices encourage all business owners and leaders to make better decisions to help push the company forward in the future. You’ll also want to consider Quality Management Systems, which can be used in conjunction with these two areas for best results.

What is QMS?

A Quality Management System focuses on customer needs thanks to the use of interconnected tools and processes. Quality Management Systems help a business to meet their customer demands as they continuously strive to improve their processes.

While this was previously used solely for production environments, it can be applied to any industry or business to improve your management systems at any time. This approach towards a Quality Management System begins with leadership and then filters down to all departments within the organization.

When you combine the three practices shared above, Lean, Quality Management System, and Six Sigma can help to improve processes and quality in your organization. We encourage you to use a combination of these tools for the best results, regardless of what type of industry you are operating within.

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