Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Creating the Best of Both Worlds in IN with Lean and Six Sigma

By Craig Calvin

The IT industry has not been untouched by the variations and defects. Though many times IT technology is the solution to help reduce variations and defects, IT sector companies are themselves facing situation that necessitate them to apply improvement methodologies like Six Sigma. Six Sigma is very popular with IT companies, because it provides them with a good solution to increase their capabilities and services.

The IT industry, like the manufacturing industry, is faced with a few challenges. The biggest problem is the length of the project. Projects take too long to complete beyond set deadlines. Not just the data oriented tools, but the lack of knowledge base in the industry is an area of concern. On some occasions, companies have not been able to utilize the DMAIC methodology properly for software development projects. Once the projects are completed, the teams disperse - and Six Sigma remains limited to that project itself.

The solution to this scenario is the integration of Lean tools and methods with Six Sigma. They can complement very each other very well, and bring about improvement in areas that are faced with the high rate of variation and waste. Variations are the results of defects, which Six Sigma helps to tackle. It is difficult to identify the total wastes, and this is where Lean can be very useful.

A good way to improve is to use Lean tools and methods to identify what is creating the drawbacks. This is referred to as "leaning out" the processes, which in turn, makes it simpler to use the Six Sigma tools and concepts. Figuring out the causes of variation can be done using the Six Sigma tools. The end result is very good.

Companies are in a position to lower costs by discerning the cost of bad quality and by moving towards cost reduction. There is not a single solution for all. With both Six Sigma and Lean, proper sortation of problems and improvement will be successfully achieved. - 15359

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