Three Areas Where Businesses Are Putting Lean Six Sigma to Work

While the popularity of Lean Six Sigma has continued in recent years in many different industries, there are some areas of business where it’s reached new heights of popularity: sustainability, supply chain and in the healthcare industry.

All three are included in a list recently published by the Process Excellence Network, a global community of process experts and business leaders with more than 168,000 members worldwide. 

While some people felt years ago that Lean Six Sigma had fallen out of fashion, Process Excellence Network wrote that more have come around to the idea that “Lean Six Sigma remains a powerful tool for continuous improvement, especially when combined with other enabling solutions such as agile, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence.” 

The following looks at three areas that have recently turned to Lean Six Sigma to help them find solutions to complex challenges.

Green Lean Six Sigma

Green Six Sigma is a term that didn’t even exist that long ago. Now, it’s everywhere. That’s because as environmental and societal challenges continue to increase, companies now hold themselves more accountable in the areas of ESG - environmental, social and governance practices. 

Lean Six Sigma has emerged as a way to help all these areas, with Green Lean Six Sigma focusing on sustainability.

Research has found that Green Lean Six Sigma can help companies accomplish many goals that promote sustainability, including waste minimization, emission reduction and conservation of resources. These gains are applicable to every type of industry, making the use of Lean Six Sigma to environmental issues a solution for every type of business.

Canadian Manufacturing recently listed using Lean Six Sigma methodologies as part of an overall plan to optimize production processes and reduce waste. They suggested Lean as part of an overall plan to “conduct a thorough process analysis - search for bottlenecks, inefficiencies and resource wastages.”

Strengthening Supply Chains

Supply chain disruptions increased during the height of the global pandemic, as well as in the months that followed. While supply chain disruptions declined in 2022, they still are expected to remain higher in 2023 than they were before 2020.

Many supply chain trends have emerged in recent years, driven by Lean Six Sigma tools and techniques. Those trends include finding methods to better manage increased supply costs, finding new suppliers, and integrating artificial intelligence and advanced technology into supply chain management.

Through Lean Six Sigma tools such as Value Stream Mapping and Flowcharts, businesses can easily find waste and bottlenecks in the supply chain, as well as identify potential solutions to those challenges. Six Sigma’s DMAIC also remains an excellent way to streamline operations and reduce variations that lead to errors.

Lean Six Sigma in Healthcare

Healthcare faces numerous challenges. Even before the pandemic revealed areas of weakness in the healthcare system, the industry found itself beset by all the issues that come with a rapidly growing industry, including staffing shortages, budgetary shortfalls and rising supply costs. 

Healthcare managers do not have the same freedom to cut costs as managers in other industries. That’s because in addition to facing complex financial challenges, healthcare managers also must improve quality of care and patient outcomes.

Some healthcare leaders have turned to process improvement to help face these challenges. The use of Lean Six Sigma in healthcare includes many successful initiatives, from training hospital employees as Yellow Belts to creating a patient-focused scheduling center. These changes optimize the workflows at healthcare facilities and lead to better patient experiences and health outcomes. 

Six Sigma has been shown to improve healthcare in a variety of ways, including reducing errors by clinicians, improving lab turnaround times, reducing appointment wait times, and accelerating reimbursement of insurance claims.

There are many examples of successful implementation of Lean and Six Sigma in healthcare. 

• Piedmont Healthcare in Georgia trained employees in Lean Six Sigma to improve how the company’s 11 hospitals scheduled patient visits, a move that resulted in higher patient satisfaction and $1.8 million in savings.

• Mount Carmel Health System launched Six Sigma projects focused on operational issues and business management that helped save the organization $3.1 million while also improving employee and physician satisfaction rates.

• At Boston Medical Center, a focus on diagnostic imaging resulted in improvements that brought cost savings and revenue increases of more than $2.2 million.

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