Lean manufacturing and Six sigma are the most popular business improvement initiatives today. The word "lean" has the stigma of reducing headcount. Many professionals do not even know what "sigma" means. Unions and the work force in many companies fear the worst when they hear these initiatives are in the pipeline at their companies.
Lean manufacturing is based on eliminating all waste from the system. So, if a job is not necessary, it certainly should be eliminated. This does not mean the person should be eliminated.
Any lean manufacturing system based on reducing headcount and forcing people out of jobs is doomed to fail. First of all, it's not right. Secondly, it doesn't work. People simply will not work themselves out of a job.
Lean manufacturing attempts to eliminate all waste. When it happens correctly, when the waste is enough activity to absorb an entire employee, that person is moved to add value. If all of the value is already absorbed into the system, the person becomes part of the improvement effort until the system creates enough value and growth to absorb them.
For example, a person displaced as a result of lean manufacturing may be placed on a 5S or kaizen team until the company grows enough to place the person in another value spot.
Lean and six sigma initiatives will help a corporation grow. When companies make a commitment not to eliminate positions, people will find a way to enhance and grow the system.
There are many examples of companies properly taking waste out of the system and growing to heights previously untouched. Some of these transformed companies have developed new products and markets, creating a snowball effect. The leaner they get, the more growth possible.
When corporations build fear into the organization, the snowball is rolling up hill. Growth will not happen, and new products and markets are nearly impossible. Creating a sustained growth organization only happens when people are energized and align their minds and hearts with the vision of the company.
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The Solution for this issue is: the New Groundbreaking and Revolutionary Lean Six Sigma Concept Called
TPS-Lean Six Sigma;
Linking Human Capital to Lean Six Sigma
It’s A New Blueprint for Creating High Performance Companies
By Hubert Rampersad & Anwar El-Homsi (Information Age Publishing Inc., North Carolina, November 2007)
www.TPS-LeanSixSigma.com
A new blueprint for addressing the primary concerns of manufacturing and service in a more sustainable and humanized way is urgently needed, whereby personal and organizational performance, and learning mutually reinforce each other and create a stable basis for a high performance company. Traditional business management concepts are insufficiently committed to learning, and rarely take the specific personal ambitions of employees into account. In consequence, there are many superficial improvements, marked by temporary and cosmetic changes, which are coupled with failing projects that lack engaged personnel. This new book emphasizes the introduction of this new blueprint, called TPS-Lean Six Sigma. This model entails the integration of Total Performance Scorecard and Lean Six Sigma. TPS-Lean Six Sigma and the related new tools provide an excellent and innovative framework for creating a high performance culture and a sustainable breakthrough in both the manufacturing and service industries.
TPS-Lean Six Sigma is like a ‘turbo-charged’ Lean Six Sigma program. All of the proven, sound methodologies of traditional Lean Six Sigma are charged with highly motivated team members. The result is a powerful people driven Lean Six Sigma program called TPS-Lean Six Sigma that leads to a High Performance Culture and allows employees to realize their full potential and contribute creatively while the organization benefits from increased profitability, market share, and customer satisfaction. TPS-Lean Six Sigma is the perfect marriage of Lean Six Sigma and the Total Performance Scorecard. With TPS-Lean Six Sigma, your business, your customer, and your employee’s personal goals are all realized in concert with each other. By integrating human capital into the Lean Six Sigma equation, organizations have the opportunity for exponential, quantum levels of improvement and success. Your customers will be happy, shareholders will be happy, management will be happy, employees will be happy, processes will be optimized, waste will be eliminated, and profits will soar. It is quite possible that now, with TPS-Lean Six Sigma, we actually have reached nirvana. By way of this book, Hubert Rampersad & Anwar El-Homsi are launching a revolutionary, holistic concept called TPS-Lean Six Sigma which actively has human capital embedded in Lean Six Sigma in a manner that not only stimulates commitment, integrity, work-life balance, passion, enjoyment at work and employee engagement but also stimulates individual and team learning in order to develop a motivated workforce and sustainable performance improvement and quality enhancement for the organization.
Great post! It just reiterates the most important aspect of any business - the people! Without them there's no business at all in the first place. So why just discard them when technologies change, when they can grow and help the company grow through that change. I've been laid-off and isn't fun, and it by no means reflected my performance at all. Here's another great resource, that I wish my previous employer had implemented, that talks more about lean sigma six www.orielinc.com.
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