Toyota Asks "What is Six Sigma?"

Six Sigma Stigma

This article requires subscription to read online (or purchase it on news stands). The author visited Toyota in Japan and asked a somewhat uninformed question:

Eager to show we knew a thing or two about quality ourselves, we soft-balled our hosts with the obvious question: “When did Toyota start using Six Sigma, anyway?”

Long silence. After some awkward consultation in Japanese, the engineers asked us, “What is Six Sigma?”

Oops, a priceless moment there. TPS <> Six Sigma, of course. There are some conceptual similarities, but Toyota does not subscribe to Six Sigma. The article goes on to discuss how some companies that outwardly promote Six Sigma usage actually lag their non Six Sigma competitors in quality (including Xerox, Sprint PCS, and Ford).

Six Sigma, along with lean, has the potential to be nothing more than executive hot air and window dressing. The real challenge is in the details of actually making it happen.

About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology, focused on improving quality and patient safety, improving access, reducing costs, and fully engaging healthcare professionals. He is also the Chief Improvement Officer for KaiNexus.