Respond to the following discussion:
I believe that using both, lean and Six Sigma is vital for the company success. Lean focuses on how fast a product/service can be done in a period of time. The faster the process is completed, the more cycles the company completes. The company’s goal when using lean is to eliminate waste during these cycles. Some of this waste includes: waiting time (to start a new activity or to wait for info), inventory (products that have shelf time) or by re-working on a project by trying to correct errors.
To achieve their goals the company then eliminates steps that they think aren’t important in this process. However, by doing this they don’t take quality into account. If the quality of the product/service is not perfect then the customer is not going to be 100% happy. So no matter how fast or how many steps they eliminate, the end result is not going to be successful.
This is the reason why working in tandem with sigma is better. Some of the six sigma’s goals are to actually reduce variables on each step of the process while still focusing in quality. They try to prevent errors from the beginning.
A company should work in tandem with both processes, this way their work will be more efficient and effective.
