Your relationships with your customers are critical to the success of your business. Because without them, you won’t have a business. As such, when unforeseeable factors, or even factors that you can prevent, damage your customer relationships, eliminate the problem immediately. If you don’t, you’re likely to experience further problems that snowball until they become out of control. Muda (waste) is one such problem that can accumulate over time, bogging down your production, and holding you back. Lean Six Sigma can help you here. Lean methods can help you eliminate none-value-adding processes that needlessly consume resources. By eliminating waste as soon as you find it, you can reduce costs in the long-term. Your operating expenses can quickly become inflated if left unmanaged, which is why Lean Six Sigma is the solution for you. Today we look at how you can use LSS to eliminate needless operating expense.
Lean Six Sigma Wastes
There are many types of waste to look out for, that could be holding you back, and hindering your process speed. This, in turn, will prevent you from delivering the best quality products, which can lead to loss of revenue. Waste tends to vary from business to business, but the same types always seem to appear. E.g. waste from human waste, overproduction, movement, none-value-adding process stages, and so on. If you don’t eliminate your useless factors immediately, then your company will struggle to grow. However, don’t target just one issue, as this is often not enough to make a lasting improvement. Focus on multiple areas, improving each gradually, as opposed to one area completely. Remember, improving everything by 1% is far more effective than improving one area by 100%.
Value Stream Mapping
One of the most effective tools in Lean Six Sigma is value stream mapping. You can use VSM to identify any useless factors that may be lurking out of view. Once you identify the issue, you can use root cause analysis to find the underlying cause of the issue. This allows you to then correct the problem and devise potential improvements.
Value stream mapping is particularly useful as you can achieve a greater understanding of where errors come from and why. Once you know what the problem is, you can examine the causes and effects of the issue. Again, this will help identify and eliminate the root cause so you can streamline your operations. That way, you’ll cut your overall costs down to the essentials, saving money, and increasing your profits. Don’t underestimate value stream mapping. It can help you solve problems and come up with preventative measures to stop the same issues arising in the future.
Once you know what the problem is, you can examine the causes and effects of the issue. Again, this will help identify and eliminate the root cause so you can streamline your operations. That way, you’ll cut your overall costs down to the essentials, saving money, and increasing your profits. Don’t underestimate value stream mapping. It can help you solve problems and come up with preventative measures to stop the same issues arising in the future.
The Most Visible Waste: Human Waste
Human waste is one of the most visible types of Lean waste. It is responsible for many companies failing to realize their goals, as well as for low employee performance. Lean Six Sigma businesses require strong teamwork to function. If one piece of the machine slacks, it will affect everything else. Your organization must be tight to succeed. Techniques like balanced scorecards can help you identify the employees that consistently underperform. You can then either administer further training to resolve the issue, and prevent further losses, or let them go to cut costs. They may even simply not be suited to their area of work. You wouldn’t have a rocket scientist mopping floors, so, instead, find something else more suited to their abilities.
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