The Lean Six Sigma Guide to Doing More With Less: Cut Costs, Reduce Waste, and Lower Your Overhead

The Lean Six Sigma Guide to Doing More With Less: Cut Costs, Reduce Waste, and Lower Your Overhead

by Mark O. George
The Lean Six Sigma Guide to Doing More With Less: Cut Costs, Reduce Waste, and Lower Your Overhead

The Lean Six Sigma Guide to Doing More With Less: Cut Costs, Reduce Waste, and Lower Your Overhead

by Mark O. George

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Overview

Create New Profits in Any Economy

In this difficult economic climate, it's vital to cut waste that can eat at a company's bottom line and boost efficiency at every organizational level. The traditional business solution in a crisis is to slash away non-critical talent and resources, often doing more harm than good. There is a far better systematic approach to doing more with less.

As a leading expert on Lean Six Sigma and business transformation, with a deep knowledge of its application in countless areas of business, author Mark George can help you use Lean Six Sigma to analyze your operational needs, identify high-impact opportunities, design and rapidly implement solutions, and create a system that will build efficiency and high performance in every area of your business. The Lean Six Sigma Guide to Doing More with Less can help you:

  • Improve operating margins by as much as 20%, ROIC by as much as 10%, and reduce the costs of goods sold by as much as 5% or more
  • Create "cost intelligence" that uncovers root causes allowing cost reductions without jeopardizing customer service levels and quality
  • Use enterprise speed, agility, and flexibility to drive step-change reductions in cost and enable competitive advantage
  • Identify and eliminate the costs of complexity in your business
  • Supercharge your legacy Six Sigma program, improving speed to results, increasing project values, and shortening completion times

With case examples from a wide array of industry, encompassing decades of experience implementing Lean Six Sigma in every economic climate, in companies of every size, The Lean Six Sigma Guide to Doing More with Less will give your business an intelligent edge in lean times.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780470539576
Publisher: Wiley
Publication date: 02/08/2010
Pages: 327
Sales rank: 501,670
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

MARK O. GEORGE is a Senior Executive at Accenture and is the Global Offering Group leader for Operations Consulting in the Process and Innovation Performance service line. Mark has designed and supported dozens of enterprise transformation initiatives for Fortune 500 and 1000 companies that have delivered hundreds of millions in economic profit. Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company with more than 186,000 people serving clients in over 120 countries, the company generated net revenues of $23.39 billion for the fiscal year ended August 31, 2008. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

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Table of Contents

Foreword xi

Preface xv

Acknowledgments xxi

Chapter 1 Why Use Lean Six Sigma to Reduce Cost? 1

Transactional Example: Lean Six Sigma Transforming Our Government 6

The Alloy of High Performance: Why Choose Lean Six Sigma to Reduce Cost? 6

Lean Six Sigma versus Traditional Cost-Cutting Tactics 9

Emerging Stronger Than Ever 14

Spotlight #1 How to Use This Book 17

Overview of Part I: Process Cost Reduction—a Focus on the Tools of Waste Elimination 18

Overview of Part II: Enterprise Cost Reduction—a Focus on Value, Speed, Agility and Competitive Advantage 19

Overview of Part III: Accelerating Deployment Returns—Getting More, Faster, from a Lean Six Sigma Deployment 20

Part I Process Cost Reduction: A Focus on Waste Elimination Introduction to Part 1 23

Chapter 2 Find Cost Reduction Opportunities in Waste 25

The Seven Common Faces of Waste: TIMWOOD 27

Using the Full LSS Toolkit to Drive Cost Reduction 37

Spotlight #2 Special Tips for Nonmanufacturing Processes 39

Key Success Factors in Reducing Costs in Services and Retail 40

Spotlight #3 Design a Successful Lean Six Sigma Project or Pilot 45

Which Methodology is Right for Your Project? 45

Identifying the Players and Their Roles 47

Chapter 3 Use the Voice of the Customer to Identify Cost-Cutting Opportunities 51

Customer Types and Their Needs 52

Collecting Data on Customer Needs 53

Getting Specific about Customer Needs 57

Avoiding Misinterpretations 60

Conclusion 64

Chapter 4 Make Processes Transparent to Expose Waste 65

How to Define the Boundaries through SIPOC Diagrams 67

Using Value Stream Maps to Achieve Transparency 69

Conclusion 82

Chapter 5 Measure Process Efficiency: Finding the Levers of Waste Reduction 83

Process Cycle Efficiency (PCE): The Key Metric of Process Time and Process Cost 84

Little’s Law: Understanding the Levers for Improving Process Speed 88

The WIP Cap Method: How Limiting WIP Can Increase Process Speed and Reduce Costs 90

Using PCE and Little’s Law to Drive Cost Reduction 95

Chapter 6 Improve Your Analysis Skills: How Understanding Variation, Root Causes, and Factor Relationships Can Help You Cut Costs While Improving Quality 97

Analysis Skill #1: Learning to ‘‘Read’’ Variation 98

Analysis Skill #2: Digging Out Root Causes 107

Analysis Skill #3: Establishing relationships between factors 109

Conclusion 114

Chapter 7 Make Rapid Improvements through Kaizens 117

Quick Overview: The Kaizen Approach 119

When Should You Use Kaizens in Cost Reduction Projects 120

Seven Keys to Kaizen Success 124

Conclusion 129

Part II Raising the Stakes: Reducing Costs at an Enterprise Level

Chapter 8 Think Transformation, Not Just Improvement 133

Attain a Proper Understanding of the Extent of the Opportunity 135

Consciously Choose a Path to Capture the Opportunity 138

Plan for a Transformation Journey 144

Leadership Challenges in Leading a Transformation 151

Conclusion 152

Spotlight #4 Transformation at Owens-Illinois 155

Chapter 9 Unlock the Secrets to Speed and Flexibility 159

Alignment and Analytics 160

A Model of Speed and Agility 162

Economic Order Quantity (EOQ)—The First 100 Years 165

Augmenting EOQ with Lean Analytics 167

The Equations in Action 173

Conclusion 176

Chapter 10 Reduce the Cost of Complexity 177

The Hidden Cost of Added Offerings on Processes 179

Assessing Complexity in Your Business: A Holistic View 182

Highlights of the Complexity Analysis Process 183

Complexity Reduction as the Gateway to Transformation 195

Conclusion 196

Chapter 11 Look Outside Your Four Walls to Lower Costs Inside 197

What is an Extended Enterprise? 199

Working on the Supplier End of the Extended Enterprise 204

What to Do When You’re the Supplier: Extending Your Enterprise Downstream 208

Conclusion 211

Part III Speeding Up Deployment Returns: Strategies for Getting More, Faster, from a Lean Six Sigma Deployment

Chapter 12 Create a Pipeline of Cost Improvement Projects: The Secret to Protecting the Heart of Your Business 215

Developing Rigor in Project Identification and Selection 217

From First-Time to All the Time: Shifting from a One-Time Event to an Ongoing System of Pipeline Management 226

Conclusion: Maintaining a Dynamic Pipeline 230

Spotlight #5 Link Projects to Value Drivers 233

Option 1: Value Driver Trees 233

Option 2: Financial Analysis Decision Tree 237

Option 3: Economic Profit 237

Option 4: EP Sensitivity Analyses 239

Value Driver Example 243

Chapter 13 Smooth the Path through Change 247

Change Readiness Assessments 248

Leading versus Managing the Change 250

Upgrading Your Communication Plan 253

Process Ownership and Cost Accountability 259

Conclusion: Restoring Faith, Hope, and Belief 260

Chapter 14 Establishing a Center of Excellence 261

What is a CoE and What Does It Do? 263

Focus #1: Performance Management 265

Focus #2: Replication: Copy and Paste Your Cost Savings 270

How Can a CoE Fit into an Organization? 273

Weaving the CoE into Strategic Planning 277

Conclusion 279

Chapter 15 Gaining New Perspectives on Deployment Cost and Speed Opportunities 281

Looking for Focus and Flexibility in Deployment 282

Focusing Deployments on Business Issues 283

Flexibility in Building Skills 286

Conclusion 297

Chapter 16 Reenergizing a Legacy Program 299

Why Deployments Lose Steam 300

Building a Steam Engine: Performance Management 306

Process Ownership: The Partner of Performance Management 307

How to Reenergize a Deployment 311

Conclusion 318

Index 319

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