Lean Six Sigma VS Kaizen Process: What Are the Differences

Industries around the world use the Six Sigma and Kaizen approaches to improve the work process. While they both refer to lean principles of eliminating waste, there are key differences between implementing the methodologies. This is a detailed guide on Lean Six Sigma Vs Kaizen process to highlight significant distinctions and when you may need to use Kaizen or Six Sigma.

The companies in Japan have tremendously earned a reputation for producing high-quality production standards with maximum efficiency. Their journey towards raising production standards can be traced back to the multinational automobile firm Toyota, which started to refine its business practices and corporate mindset in a way that led itself to the concept of Continuous Improvement or Kaizen. Japan achieved the massive success that compelled Motorola to develop a competing Six Sigma lean process philosophy.

Today, if you tap any thriving industry, you will find Lean process Kaizen and Six Sigma deep-rooted in companies worldwide. These two terms are often used interchangeably to indicate improvement in the process by eliminating waste. However, there are differences in the implementation process of these two approaches.

What are the Principles of Kaizen?

You may wonder what is Kaizen in Six Sigma? Firms that decide to adopt the Kaizen model must follow the key principles given below. The Kaizen process map comprises these principles, and they all tie back to the central idea of improving the entire workflow process, even if it seems that everything is functioning well.

Withdraw All Assumptions

Approach the business process with a fresh mindset that does not already have set perspectives on how employees are used to carrying out their tasks. This way, you can develop new ways to improve the old processes.

Solve Problems Proactively

Don’t get overwhelmed due to the magnitude of the problem; rather, look at it as an opportunity to understand and make things better. Moreover, this is a chance to display your abilities to come up with a solution.

Have Accountability

Rather than getting distracted, allocate a lot of time to what went wrong. Accept the accountability and start focusing on revising the process. Coach the team on how to move forward with improved practices.

Make Modest Improvements

It is not necessary to make big improvements, but small, and continuous improvements can go a long way. For example, find ways to make small tasks efficient, leading to more significant outcomes instead of revamping the entire department’s workflow process. Furthermore, focusing on continuous and incremental changes can result in steady growth over time.

Fix mistakes

As soon as you find the error in the process, fix it immediately. Many companies require their employees to have Kaizen certification because it teaches how to adopt a problem-solving approach and improve the process. The priority should be to focus on possible solutions and the second priority is to ensure it doesn’t re-occur in the future.

Empower the Employees

Give all team members a chance to express their opinion about how things function and what should be done to improve. This exercise makes them engaged and involved while they share their concepts and ideas. Let the people expand the pool of possible solutions.

Dive Deep into Issues

Rather than making quick fixes to the problems to meet the deadline, invest some time to dig in to find out the root cause of the issue. This method will not let you repeat the same mistakes.

Data reliance

You can always rely on data to make an effective decision. Hence, invest in collecting, analyzing, and reporting the data.

Keep going

Do not have false thinking that everything is perfect now, rather keep an eye for minor improvements that how you can make it better through Kaizen Process improvements

What Are the Principles of Lean Six Sigma?

Let us now explore the Lean Six Sigma Principles to understand the difference between Lean process Six Sigma and Kaizen. Here first, we need to know that the key principles of Lean Six Sigma is a combination of the Lean approach and the Six Sigma methodology. Indeed both concepts share similar ideologies, which led to the origin of Lean Six Sigma. While Lean focuses on eliminating waste, Six Sigma focuses on raising the quality standard by removing defect causes. Therefore, it brings out the best in the organizational culture changes.

Keep the Focus on the Customer

Every firm’s fundamental purpose is to address customers’ needs and offer them products/services they are willing to pay for. First, you need to explore what your customer wants and then analyze whether the product you offer meets their expectations. Always remember that successful firms deliver added value to the products or services defined by their client’s needs. Even if your product is outstanding, it won’t matter if the client is not receiving any value.

Mapping Value Streams to Understand the Work Process

Value stream mapping shows all the necessary steps in your work process to deliver value to the customer. It helps to become more efficient and effective and overall improves the workflow. It is critical to map and identify the value stream steps to establish a successful work process.

Keep Processes Flowing Smoothly

Mapping the value streams is one aspect but certainly not enough to ensure a smooth process. Various tools and techniques are used to uncover bottlenecks. For instance, once you spot where work gets stuck, you can use a suitable technique to resolve it, such as the 5 Why Analysis, to find what causes the problem and then find its solution. From here, you can identify the issues in the processes, discover the bottlenecks in the workflow and investigate the root cause.

Remove Waste and Focus on Value

Toyota Production System (TPS) pioneered the idea of eliminating waste. Taichi Ohno, considered the father of the Toyota Production System, spent his life building efficient and productive processes. He says that TPS looks at the timeline from when the client places an order until the product is delivered. The emphasis is on decreasing the timeline by eliminating non-value-added wastes. This process can significantly optimize resources, improve operational efficiency and ultimately increase revenue.

Remove Variations to get Rid of Defects

Every successful company focuses on two elements: high customer satisfaction and cost-efficiency. Removing variation makes it possible for firms to become cost-efficient. Let’s discuss an example to understand this process. You own a Pizza cafe where every pizza-making employee puts a different amount of cheese on the dough; this leads to variation. Consequently, every customer would have different quality experiences. There is a high chance that many customers would have a bad experience, but the management can avoid this issue by standardizing the process.

Collaborate with the Team

Improving the process is an integral part of the Lean Six Sigma methodology. However, to efficiently improve the process, it is essential to collaborate with the people directly involved in it daily. Listening to their insightful feedback would immensely help to reduce waste and improve the process.

Improve Activities in a Systematic Way

Employees often resist change in the company, and Lean Six Sigma requires many changes. Therefore, it is essential to create a systematic environment to assist employees in embracing change. With the help of data-based arguments, the company should convince the staff how significant this change is for growth.

Lean Six Sigma Vs Kaizen: Which One is Better?

Now comes the real question, when you compare Lean Six sigma vs Kaizen, which one is more suitable for your company? Let us understand the difference between the two approaches. The philosophy of Kaizen is to make small continuous positive changes in the company to achieve a significant improvement level. It is mostly used in industries like healthcare, where it is also applied at the departmental level. On the other hand, the Lean Six Sigma process focuses on eliminating defects and inefficiencies in the workflow. The process is broken down into components and then uses data to find wasteful activities and eliminate them. The ultimate goal is to adopt a method to become an efficient, consistent producer. Many companies develop a Six Sigma process mapping to understand which complex steps need simplifying. The mapping helps compare the old workflow process time with the new one.

When to Pick Lean Six Sigma and Kaizen

Six Sigma and Kaizen involve principles of action learning. Kaizen allows you to choose your own path to improve small things. It doesn’t require any rigid statistical data to standardize the process. Things are improved gradually on a continuous basis.

Lean Six Sigma is a better approach for companies. This methodology can eradicate waste from the workflow that hinders the final product delivery. Lean Six Sigma also encourages us to bond with the customers to understand their needs and resolve their issues as the top priority. In the quest to understand Lean Six Sigma Vs Kaizen process, a company may adopt any philosophy to improve their business, combining Kaizen 6 sigma or Kaizen project Lean; the end goal is to improve efficiency and increase profitability.

However, Lean Six Sigma is a way to move forward and improve processes on a larger scale. Kaizen focuses on small improvements while Lean Six Sixma ensures the process is improvised at End-to-End, from the beginning to the end. Lean partner offers Lean Six Sigma training and certification for different belt levels, which will help you enhance your problem-solving skills and tremendously improve your business workflow.