Why Make Lean Six Sigma Complicated?

Originally Published 6.7.2013

Last week, I had the honor of meeting a Lean Six Sigma colleague. He is the Quality Director of a US Pharmaceutical company that recently opened a shared services hub here in the Philippines.

Over dinner, I was told that he earned his Lean Six Sigma certification from a defunct US car manufacturing company. After a while, he started interviewing me for his several Black Belt vacancies. He asked me if having a low score in Gage R&R (Used to measure the variation of the measurement instrument, the person using the instrument, and a combination of the two) could still yield a high repeatability score. He also asked if a sample size of 30 is enough for the sensitivity of the C-chart.

I wonder why some Lean Six Sigma practitioners make Lean Six Sigma SO complicated. Is it a self-serving act to declare that-I-know-something-that-you-don't? or something that proves that Six Sigma practitioners are indispensable? 

Isn't the task of getting everyone on board the Lean Six Sigma boat difficult enough that you don't have the time to show off?

To answer his questions, I politely said that the Six Sigma tools he mentioned are applicable to manufacturing processes. I can compute, analyze, and interpret advanced statistical tools through Minitab (Regression, DOE, Hypothesis Testings, etc.) but I would rather stick to the vital few tools (Pareto Charts, Dot Plots, Histogram, Individual Control Charts) that are easy to understand by both managers and staff.

The daughter of Bill Smith (Father of Lean Six Sigma), Marjorie Hook, now 37 and president of Clarksville Consulting Group in Austin, Texas, said: “Today I think people sometimes try to make Lean Six Sigma seem complicated and overly technical. His approach was, ‘If you want to improve something, involve the people who are doing the job.’ He always wanted to make it simple so people would use it.”

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