What is the Next Stage of Evolution for Lean and Six Sigma?
The current economic scenario of the world is quite volatile, with global recession, rapid environmental degradation, long and complex supply chains, and repeated rebuttals of Moore’s law (read as technological advancements). The lead time for implementation of lean process improvement activities and realization of positive impact as a result of implementation activites is trending steadily downward. I am definitely not referring to firefighting, but to the phase after the fire has been doused. This is the period when an organization is trying to remove the band-aid and put in some permanent long term fixes to prevent future recurrence. Organizations want to get from Current State to Future State rapidly and also ensure that countermeasures (read new problems are created) do not negatively impact all the gains from Lean and Six Sigma projects. Traditionally, in the application of Lean and Six Sigma we have seen both the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) structure and the DMAIC (Define Measure A
