As Abraham Maszlow said: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
Many of our consultants have green belt or black belt training and are not afraid to use the right tool for the right job.
While implementing improvements in a business, we find that Six Sigma is a perfect complement to the Lean tools. In about 20% of the cases, it is indeed a better tool.
The Lean Kaizen approach relies on the Toyota tools and on the knowledge and experience of the team members. Its goal is to achieve dramatic results in just one week. But not every issue can be tackled this way. Six Sigma, although slower, capitalizes on careful data gathering and analysis. Using Six Sigma tools like Design of Experiments, we have reduced material costs in foam and chemical operations by millions of dollars, increased throughput in a paper mill and reduced scrap and rework beyond what we had achieved with a series of two or three Kaizens.