Hi, this is Mike Negami, Lean Sigma, Black Belt.
The other day, one of my co-workers asked me
“What do you use Lean Sigma for?”
I thought that would be a good theme for this video.
If you have any questions about Lean Sigma,
please write it in the comment section below.
What Lean Sigma is used for, frankly speaking,
is to improve processes, or to create a new process.
I’ve realized one issue in Japanese language.
It has no exact Japanese word corresponding to “process”.
At first I thought it was “Kotei”, but
that tends to limit it to only processes in manufacturing areas.
“Process” in English applies to all the processes in the company, right?
We tend to translate “Process” to “Kotei” and that may give Japanese people a stereotyped idea
that Lean Sigma is only for the manufacturing industry.
It may be one of the reasons why Japanese haven’t used Lean Sigma for non-manufacturing areas.
“Process” can also be said as “day-to-day operations”.
You can use Lean Sigma partially in day-to-day operations,
but Lean Sigma is usually used in projects.
Then you may respond “Project? Since I’m a general employee,
I’ve got nothing to do with that”.
Please do not think like that.
I’m also a certified PMP, a Project Management Professional.
That textbook says that a project is an activity
that has a clear beginning and a clear ending.
According to that , since day-to-day operations are repetitive tasks,
so they don’t have a clear beginning and ending.
Therefore...
If you only work on day-to-day operations,
you have nothing to do with projects.
However, for example, if your boss asked you to do some temporary work,
that work would be a project.
Another example, if you intended to make your task better
and did trial and error in between your regular tasks
and completed the improvement,
it would be said that you succeeded in your process improvement project.
Considering those perspectives, we are doing many projects everyday.
You can apply Lean Sigma to all those projects.
You can especially make significant results on process improvement projects.
I’m going to explain the basic flow of a Lean Sigma project.
First, among your company’s, department’s or your own tasks,
decide which process will be the target process for this improvement project.
In order to clarify the target process better,
diagram the current target process.
The Value Stream Mapping that Toyota has developed is the best.
A Value Stream Map describes only the flow of information and objects
and shows you a process, not in detail, but a wide perspective overall.
Next, who will decide whether the final product of the process is good or bad?
That person will be the customer.
The customer might even be internal stakeholders sometimes.
Then, you will decide the most important measurable factor item
that measures the quality of the process.
This is not the most important to yourself, but to the customer.
We call it CTQ, Critical To Quality.
This is the most important point.
If you set the wrong measurement item, it will be a tragedy.
You will surely fail in your project.
Then, diagram the ideal process that should achieve optimization of the CTQ.
Of course, there is a gap between the current process map and the ideal process map.
While always looking at the CTQ measurement,
transform the current process to the ideal process
and hand the new process over to the day-to-day operations manager.
This is the completion of the Lean Sigma project.
I know this explanation is very rough.
Lean Sigma has a lot of powerful tools for each phase of a project.
I will continue to talk about these topics in more detail in the future.
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Thank you for viewing.