Sunday, January 31, 2010

Lean Six Sigma and indicators

ISO/IEC 15939 favours the concept of an indicator. An indicator can come in many flavours and colours, but its main purpose is to serve as a metrics with interpretation.

Six Sigma has two related concepts: the concept of metrics in DMAIC and the concept of controlling. Using run-charts or Pareto-charts requires further interpretation and this is where the indicators come into play. The indicators can help the users of Six Sigma to judge whether the information require action or not.

So, ISO/IEC 15939 and its concepts of indicators can be a great deal of help to the users of Six Sigma - taking down the costs is just one of the applications.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Lean Six-Sigma

I've recently read a book about Six Sigma. It seems that this approach is very much oriented towards customers and providing customer value. This means that the quality related to the customer value is the main focus of Six Sigma.

Another important observation is that the following parts are similar to the approach of ours:
- the flow diagrams
- the CTQ and the need for control/monitoring
- the use of Run-charts and Pareto Diagrams.

An open issue is how exactly we can make sure that our approach is compliant with Six Sigma. That is the subject for the next paper.