Is Six Sigma out of fashion?

This post is inspired by an article posted June 15th, 2022 on https://www.prnewswire.com/ titled “Latest Study from Avery Point Group Concludes: Demand for Lean Professionals Remains Strong, While Six Sigma Talent Demand Continues to Decline”. In short, the mentioned study found “ongoing robust demand for Continuous Improvement skills overall, with Six Sigma talent demand showing …

Could Six Sigma have more harmed than helped?

I started my career in the heyday of Total Quality Management (TQM) in France, beginning of the 1980’s and witnessed over the following years how the TQM trainings and deployments built a quality-aware culture in the companies and spread to everyday’s life. Over time though, other “Japanese Methods” became fashionable and the hype was on …

Theory of Constraints, Lean and aviation MRO

In a previous post, “CCPM helps shorten aircrafts MRO”, I explained the benefits of Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) for reducing the aircraft downtime during their mandatory and scheduled MRO. If CCPM is great and helps a lot meeting the challenge, it will not squeeze out every potential improvement, thus time reduction, on its own. …

5 reasons (at least) to explore Theory of Constraints

Theory of Constraints is a “business philosophy” or “management paradigm” that takes into account the existence of constraints, e.g. limiting factors hindering the organization to achieve more of its Goal.  It focuses on the one that limits the performance of the whole system and strives to achieve more of the organization’s Goal (patient's treatments, throughput, …

Why Big data may supersede Six Sigma

In this post, I assume in near future correlation will be more important than causation* for decision-making, decisions will have to be made according to “incomplete, good enough” information rather than solid analyses, thus big data superseding Six Sigma. *See my post “my takeaways from Big data” on this subject In a world with increasing …

Starting a new year: 2015

The first day of the year 2015 started with a beautiful sunrise, which I saw as a good omen for the 364 days to follow. The first day of a new year is highly symbolic for a new start, resolutions and hope, even so the same new start, resolutions or hope could happen on any …

Theory of Constraints is something great, except for its name

Theory of Constraints (ToC) is among the three philosophies / approaches / methodologies with Lean and Six Sigma leading to tremendous success, but the only one with two frightening words out of the three of its name! When facing tough challenge or stuck in a crisis, the last thing anyone would look for is a …

What is TLS? The Synergy of ToC, Lean and SixSigma

TLS stands for Theory of Constraints, Lean and Six Sigma. TLS is meant to be the combination of 2 or all of these... philosophies, approaches, methodologies, you name them. I discovered Lean (but we didn't call it Lean then) and Theory of Constraints at the same time, when I joined a Yamaha Corp. subsidiary in …

Approach, philosophy or methodology?

We hear and read them often in relation with our preferred body of knowledge*, among which Theory of Constraints, Lean and Six Sigma are the most popular: the terms “approach”, “philosophy” and “methodology”. I wonder if people use them purposely or as synonyms and I prick up my ears each time an expert explains Theory …

7 Quality Control Tools

They are known since heyday of Total Quality Management in the 1970s and they are still used and useful today: the seven quality control tools. These tools have been selected to give shopfloor workers means to control, analyse and improve quality based on facts and objective data. The tools are simple enough to be used …