What in the name of God is Lean six sigma anyway?

Leo Fatkar · 23-03-2019 01:22AM #1

I mean I've an idea what it means, but what's all the fuss about? Who the hell tells HR to list this on every job spec? Why is it always a requirement if no one has experience in it? I presume people who have common sense don't need to have experience in it anyway.

Should I do a course in this stuff now or something to pretend I'm passionate about it.

Rikand · 23-03-2019 01:52AM

Never heard of it, so I just googled it. Sure ya learn something new every day

anawfulway · 23-03-2019 02:03AM

To save some tediousness in actually looking this up online: Outdated Japanese/American pseudo business theory dressed up as engineering with plenty of buzzwords to make dullards feel clever and superior. "Lean Practioner" 6 Sigma Blackbelt" etc.

Its espoused by the type of skeezes better suited to marketing but who did engineering degrees cos thats where the money was and swallowed whole by gullible idiots who dont truly understand what the skeezes are saying but like to fit in and feel smart too.

BuboBubo · 23-03-2019 02:11AM

Lean 6 sigma, and "5S"... oh Lord! It was all the rage in big manufacturing companies about a decade ago, the idea was to cut down on unnecessary processing (muda - Japanese for waste) and moving stuff/layouts to increase productivity. There's different levels of training too; green belt, black belt etc - not joking! I did a bit of in-house training in my previous job in Lean Manufacturing.

Waterford IT still run courses on it afaik, it's a good thing to have under your (ahem!) belt

if you're interested in managerial jobs in manufacturing.

Leo Fatkar · 23-03-2019 10:58AM

anawfulway wrote: »

To save some tediousness in actually looking this up online: Outdated Japanese/American pseudo business theory dressed up as engineering with plenty of buzzwords to make dullards feel clever and superior. "Lean Practioner" 6 Sigma Blackbelt" etc.

Its espoused by the type of skeezes better suited to marketing but who did engineering degrees cos thats where the money was and swallowed whole by gullible idiots who dont truly understand what the skeezes are saying but like to fit in and feel smart too.

Good God, you're more cynical that myself.

Mr E · 23-03-2019 11:02AM

I was a green belt in this 20 years ago.

Load of sh*te.

Money making racket for trainers.

Leo Fatkar · 23-03-2019 11:17AM

anawfulway wrote: »

To save some tediousness in actually looking this up online: Outdated Japanese/American pseudo business theory dressed up as engineering with plenty of buzzwords to make dullards feel clever and superior. "Lean Practioner" 6 Sigma Blackbelt" etc.

Its espoused by the type of skeezes better suited to marketing but who did engineering degrees cos thats where the money was and swallowed whole by gullible idiots who dont truly understand what the skeezes are saying but like to fit in and feel smart too.

I'm going to have to become good lying in interviews

anawfulway · 23-03-2019 11:25AM

Leo Fatkar wrote: »

I'm going to have to become good lying in interviews

Isnt that the whole point of interviews anyway. Wrap yourself up in a bunch of happy-go-luck self motivational horse****. Real go getter, goes the extra mile. Basically portray yourself as some kind of corporate slut/ souless robot and the job is yours.

Disclaimer: I'm not good at it. Advice may be misleading.

Wanderer78 · 23-03-2019 11:30AM

What scam is manufacturing running these days, I no longer keep up with it, there was lean, just in time... some people truly get off on this stuff, it's fcuking disturbing

jackboy · 23-03-2019 11:39AM

Leo Fatkar wrote: »

I mean I've an idea what it means, but what's all the fuss about? Who the hell tells HR to list this on every job spec? Why is it always a requirement if no one has experience in it? I presume people who have common sense don't need to have experience in it anyway.

Should I do a course in this stuff now or something to pretend I'm passionate about it.

Every modern manufacturing site is saturated with this now. Some if it is good but it has to be seen through. You might as well do the course.

BobMc · 23-03-2019 11:49AM

My missus is a BlackBelt

dudara · 23-03-2019 07:49PM

The fundamental idea of Six Sigma is fine. It’s just attained some kind of cult status as far as some employers are concerned. Probably because it was highly valued by Jack Welch and GE.

The Bishop Basher · 23-03-2019 07:53PM

I was trained and used the tools and methodology for a few projects to “tick a box”.

Some of it was really effective and I still use it to this day.

Some of it was pure ****e.

ressem · 23-03-2019 08:45PM

Leo Fatkar wrote: »

Why is it always a requirement if no one has experience in it?

There are people with experience with it?

I presume people who have common sense don't need to have experience in it anyway.

The LEAN part is about teaching people how expensive waste and defects can be on an assembly line; the knock-on effects on the business and other employees of even small defect rates.

e.g. oops there were 2 defective units in this 1000 unit batch run. Person on the floor running the line shrugs their shoulders, 2 units x €5, ah well not worth investigating.
That's common sense without training,

but
Customer policy refuses to accept incomplete batches from suppliers. €5000 direct cost. Cannot meet orders demanded on time, customer lost. A whole load of replacement materials with long lead times and minimum order quantities required. €thousands more. Delivery canceled and has to be redone at a later date. trucks, ferries/flights, container rental.
->
replacement or backup materials have to be ordered and stored. There might be lead times of 3 months for materials to arrive. Materials might have short expiry dates, or require valuable heater / fridge space for material stability. The incoming material or backup complicates quality and microbiological re-checks because of the need to stop the the excessive "just-in-case" materials from building up.

The business has to price higher to manage all of this, and closes because it isn't competitively priced.

Some of the 6 sigma practices are training in keeping the work environment in good order. Keeping tools and components to avoid contamination, loss, time wasted in searching. Common sense just involves putting the tools in a toolcase with a "property of" label.

6 Sigma practitioners might do one better. Putting commonly needed tools on a board with a taped outline, so everyone passing can see that that the tool is not where it's supposed to be, and a logbook to id the last holder.

Small things that can reduce the "for want of a nail the country was lost" effect.
The maths and achieving 3.4 defects per million are not really achievable to small to medium enterprises. Other than that, it's worth learning, even if that's 20 quid of udemy videos for the basic ideas.

pleas advice · 23-03-2019 08:53PM

Hence the 'bakers dozen' ...

UsBus · 23-03-2019 08:59PM

If Toyota were jumping off cliffs, some manufacturing companies in Ireland would be at it. I could never fathom why medical device companies here would treat a car manufacturer as the Bible in good manufacturing practice..

Wanderer78 · 23-03-2019 09:05PM

UsBus wrote:

If Toyota were jumping off cliffs, some manufacturing companies in Ireland would be at it. I could never fathom why medical device companies here would treat a car manufacturer as the Bible in good manufacturing practice..

To be fair, Toyota were obviously doing exceptional things in organising the efficency of their operations, so no wonder their ideas carried across the world into other industries, but some people turn this stuff into a 'philosophy' that sells well

Fr Tod Umptious · 23-03-2019 09:09PM

Is it any relation of Kanban ?

ressem · 23-03-2019 09:12PM

UsBus wrote: »

If Toyota were jumping off cliffs, some manufacturing companies in Ireland would be at it. I could never fathom why medical device companies here would treat a car manufacturer as the Bible in good manufacturing practice..

They have to have a process, and the kaizen approach which involves stopping the production line when a defect is found, and improving is seen as suitable.

The cost of defects in medical device products is enormously destructive? Medical device companies have audit after audit from customers and regulators, even paperwork defects can cause full recalls; or block all the company's products from being allowed into the US.

They have to have a process to spot problems as soon as possible, and a practiced, documented & trained reaction to the problem.

_Brian · 23-03-2019 09:13PM

I worked on a large maintenance dept as a supervisor when we were implementing lean six sigma stuff.

Labelled lots of tool chests for dumping and brought them home and have a nice set up on my garage now.

It’s great for companies who like meetings and buzzwords, and lads roaming about with clipboards.

the_pen_turner · 24-03-2019 12:40AM

at its core lean is brilliant and can really be usefull to a company but it has loads of limitations in reality.
it only works on paper if everybody is super efficient (delivers everything on time , just in time etc but supliers here rarely deliver on time)
everybody does every job side of it is good if it actually happens but managment and bosses rarely back it up. they dont clean the toilets or sweep up a mess like lean teachs
only really works in a profit sharing company where the workers get to see the benifit of all the extra work they are doing.
the inventry side of it is great if you have someone with ocd over it that meticalisly orders when its needed

dreamers75 · 24-03-2019 12:44AM

Its technically called "common sense" in most parts of the world.

Basically list all the **** a department does in a day then someone goes over all the things they do and makes you do less of them because they are wasting your time.

Because they dont work there they can ask the really fcuking stupid questions.

Its great.......... but also not great as it highlights how fcuking retarded the management are in departments.

One glorious example was finding out an IT worker needed 3 PCs to upload to an FTP, this guy had Computer Science from UCD and I have to quickly explain what he was doing:

The business scans documents and uploads them to a customers FTP, the scanning person would scan a document to a PDF file located on the C drive of PC1 (pc was not networked) the IT guy would put the PDF on a USB (Pc1 had USB blocked for normal users). Then put the PDF on PC2 and put it in an encrypted sophos folder(only PC2 had this software) then use the USB to move it to PC3 to upload it. People with IT degrees knew of this and during our lean session I was literally pissing my self laughing when this came up.

Jimbob1977 · 24-03-2019 12:56AM

It goes back to Motorola in the 1980s.

For every million widgets on the manufacturing line, you will find that 3.4 are defective. That equates to Six Sigma..... I have no idea why.... I'm not a mathematician.

The idea is that everyone should improve their processes to achieve minimal error and maximum efficiency.

It was a hot topic in the 90s and 00s.... along with JIT and Kaizen. There were black belts, green belts, etc. People banged on and on about it.

I reckon it's a bit dated now. Still, you should probably be aware of it for an interview in a related field.

the_pen_turner · 24-03-2019 12:59AM

i dont see how it could ever be dated. its a basic idea that everyone does their best to improve the company and to do their job as best as they can. its all about making improvements to achieve that.

BuboBubo · 24-03-2019 02:47AM

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

Is it any relation of Kanban ?

Yes!

Its all about reducing storage. There shouldn't be any with lean, because its all about continuous flow. Having stuff sitting on shelves is considered a waste. It's not making money sitting there. No value is being added to the product in storage - it's costing money.

GalwayGrrrrrl · 24-03-2019 07:24PM

There’s a fair amount of interest in applying lean and kaizen to healthcare at the moment- eg in large hospitals.

Tacklebox · 24-03-2019 07:33PM

So instead of using common sense and logic, some genius decided to make a mountain out of a molehill.

I remember someone telling me they were a senior quality assurance engineer...

Sounds really interesting and professional.

But a first year student in secondary school could do it after a few weeks training.

Kinda akin to a tulip picker saying they're now a horticulturist.

I suppose if you complicate simplicity it's easy to manipulate and control people.....

ressem · 26-03-2019 11:45PM

Tacklebox wrote: »

So instead of using common sense and logic, some genius decided to make a mountain out of a molehill.

I remember someone telling me they were a senior quality assurance engineer...

...

But a first year student in secondary school could do it after a few weeks training.

...

Quality engineer. That's a very different job, not really on this thread topic.

Plenty of jobs offered at 60-70K for senior quality engineers, if it were that easy.
Over the course of a year, a bright person can be trained in a lot of the required actions to maintain a working system, visibly sticking to good manufacturing practice / good automated manufacturing practice, and dealing very clearly with corrective actions.
https://www.fda.gov/iceci/inspections/inspectionguides/ucm170612.htm

Setting up a system and holding a company to that standard is tricky,
and being stuck in a room being grilled by 3 FDA auditors for a week looking for deviations from that standard, and satisfactory explanations; failure that can break the company. Not fun at all.

Irishder · 28-03-2019 05:41PM

I have a Masters in Lean, Green belt and am a Certified lean expert.

Reading the posts on this is indicative of how organisations and consultants ram lean tools down employees throats.

What usually happens is someone thinks we better do this lean stuff, hire someone or a consultant in to implement it. There are short term wins everyone high fives each other then when the consultant walks away it all falls to ****.

It needs to be embedded into the way of working. A bit like how safety is perceived now, its just how companies operate. It should be a long slow process that focuses on change management and employee buy in.

It really is a game changer when implemented correctly. If you think of the current crisis in our health system. I am 100% convinced Lean thinking and application would go a long way in solving the mess that is our hospitals...

whiskeyman · 28-03-2019 11:00PM

The concepts are sound and it's pretty useful.

Adoption of it into some organisations is hilarious to watch though. Still lots of money being thrown at it.

Post above me sums it up!
Cheers Irishder.

Nelbert · 19-06-2019 08:17PM

Did an intro to it today (white belt).... it certainly has a lot of potential in the right hands in Irish healthcare.... but like many things it’s actually just a specific focused subset of good management practices.

What in the name of God is Lean six sigma anyway?

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