We see a number of methodologies and or tools for business p

We see a number of methodologies and /or tools for business process improvements. For example, Six Sigma involves a complex and comprehensive methods. Discuss the challenges and opportunities in implementing these process improvements on a large scale in an existing company. Is it always beneficial to implement?

Solution

Total Quality System is a philosophy that involves everyone associated with the Business Process in a continual effort to improve quality and achieve customer satisfaction. Hence with Total Quality Management in place, the Project team for any Business process, works together to guarantee Quality services to all its stakeholders. For this, it may use various tools such as Six Sigma which is a statistical program undertaken by the Business process team, for the process improvement which is the best approach for promoting continual improvement. Six Sigma has six standards that is set to reduce defects to 3.4 per million, thereby helping in identifying and mitigating any variances in the system. It is a customer-centric approach to cater the requirements of the end-users. The process starts with defining a problem pertaining to the ongoing process, measuring the same against the current performances, analyze such measurements to undertake the root-cause analysis, improving the variances with various innovative approaches and control the same by monitoring the performances.

Lean-Six Sigma could be useful in any industry that experiences significant non-value added time in their processes and it large enough to support the resources required to fully implement it. For smaller entities using some of the processes of Lean-Six Sigma might be useful but the allocation of resources would need to be monitored to prevent the project from detracting from production.

Be it in small or in large entities, dealing with non-value added time in processes or the optimization of resource allocation have now become feasible due to the versatility of the Lean Six sigma. Especially, in the manufacturing and service processes, with reduction in inventory maintained and with considerable decrease in the order-to-delivery time by the Companies, by far, the concept of Lean has been successfully undertaken by many Organizations in order to be efficient in serving the customers in a highly competitive market. For example, Toyota had developed the concept of Lean Manufacturing way back about seven decades ago and it was because of the efforts taken by Toyota that the US automobile manufacturers also started adapting to Lean in more committed way.

However, the challenges surrounding the same are that the Manufacturing companies need to also give more attention to the analytical aspects of the factory designing and lay-out of the machinery that is presented with statistical data to understand if it makes sense to undertake such activities under the Lean manufacturing concept. For example, if inventory levels are high but converted effective through efficient factory design and manufacturing concept, on the face of it, it shall appear that the Lean method is being effectively followed but if the required demand is not anticipated, then it may only result into adding of the Finished products of inventory in the warehouse without converting the same into sales although apparently the Lean concept is observed.

Therefore, in order to substantiate the Lean concept in manufacturing and service processes, the concept of Continuous Improvement Process could also be adapted which is a larger form of improvement that include Lean six sigma for such processes. It could hence be applied in the manufacturing and service industries mainly as of Six Sigma in the following ways:

However, it is to be also noted that in order to avoid pitfall in the lean six sigma process and make it beneficial for implementation, the leadership skills need to be reinstated at all the management levels as if forms the foundation of this Process. Further the deployment results should be in line with that of the overall organizational strategies. There should be an appropriate infrastructure in place to boost the performance of the lean six sigma process. There should more focus and concentration upon various types of goals of the Organization such as the marketing goals, financial goals etc., by getting the basics right upon the data so researched. Further, there should be an alignment of the strategic goals to the business goals and that of the individual goals as well to ensure the maximum participation of the employees.