LEAN is a manufacturing method, initiated and applied by Toyota Japan since the 1960s with the name Toyota Production System (TPS). The method is applied to eliminate wastes and irrationalities in the process of manufacturing and providing services, organize the company’s operations in a streamlined manner, and shorten the time to deliver products and services to customers. Today, this method is not only applied in production management but also in general management to help organizations reduce waste, thereby creating outstanding competitive advantage in the market with stable quality, reasonable cost and on-time delivery.
SIX SIGMA is a management method initiated by Motorola since the 1980s. The method primarily focuses on improving the quality of the manufacturing process by relying on statistics to find errors (defects), identify the cause of them and resolve them in order to increase the accuracy of the process so that the errors or defects in products are minimal (or almost zero). While Lean is primarily intended to help minimize wastes, Six Sigma is primarily intended to help minimize errors.
LEAN SIX SIGMA (LSS) is a management model that combines selectively between the two methods (Lean and Six Sigma). This combined method is creating a new trend in selecting and applying the most effective improvement tools to help organizations achieve Five Criteria: cost reduction, competitive price, stable quality, on-time delivery, and increased profits. It can be said that LEAN SIX SIGMA (LSS) is a flexible and comprehensive method to achieve and maintain sustainable success in production and business.
