Business Process Management And Six Sigma
Six Sigma was devised to incorporate continuous improvement in the industry procedures through its methodological systems of identifying faults and correcting them. In short, it minimizes the number of errors that may occur while a task is being performed. This is achieved by way of daily scrutiny of the process and sharpening the techniques used therein. Initially, Six Sigma was implemented only in the manufacturing stream but eventually moved on to other fields where it has proved its mettle.
However, with advancing technology and increasing complexity of situations faced each day mere Six Sigma implementation is not enough. This is where the Business Process Management gets integrated with Six Sigma to create a better performance-enhancing tool.
BPM
Business Process Management are those set of activities, which are undertaken by a corporation to either better the current processes or alter them to suit new age requirements. This phenomenon supports and modifies the company’s processes and gives them useful management strategies, models the data flow, manages people, resources and systems at any given time.
Reason For The Merger
The coming together of BPM and 6-Sigma was initiated since what one lacked the other could provide, thereby leading to a better approach towards analysis, understanding and improvising business techniques. For instance, 6-Sigma lacks the ability to collect large amounts of data, which is instantly provided for by BPM. Likewise, BPM is deficient in analytical tools to solve a difficult and complex business crisis and needs Six Sigma methodology to intervene.
Usefulness Of The Union
Integrating Six Sigma and BPM has led to expansion of a corporation’s scope of functionality and its service quality. The following points explain the changes occurring due to the collaboration.
It helps in processing long-term performance results of the organization since there is a considerable amount of reduction in the number of errors and useless inventory, which in turn eliminates customer dissatisfaction.
The entire value chains of the institution are illustrated in a better and detailed manner, understood in depth and managed properly.
Both the processes together give near perfect estimations, which aid in altering business policies if required and also bring about necessary changes in management procedures that enhance performance levels.
As Six Sigma fails to effectively control business processes and most of the time relies on the manual methods and control mechanism, which hampers performance initiatives greatly. BPM involvement aids the controlling process and terminates the drawback instantly.
Since 6-Sigma cannot gather the extensive data required for any research and policy implementation, BPM fills in for this lapse by enhancing the projects by accelerating the collection and distribution of critical data.
The product design is improved due to combine application of BPM and Six Sigma. Such companies are at a better advantage of creating a superior product right at the inception time.
Initializing physical, feature wise market growth is possible by focusing on customer expectations and undertaking surveys since BPM is apt at supplying buying patterns and customer attitude records. Punching Six Sigma data into the BPM system is much faster and more precise.
Tony Jacowski
http://www.articlesbase.com/management-articles/business-process-management-and-six-sigma-55424.html
May 16th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
what is the diference between "lean six sigma" vs lean manufacturing vs six sigma?
I am trying to find a professional certification course to improve my business process management skills. When I look at the available courses I found that Lean Six Sigma is a very hot buz word but I can not understand how it is diferrent.from the individual lean and six sigma courses – is this just a marketing gimmick?
May 16th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
probably just a gimmick. from what I remember from my industrial engineering courses six sigma is the "tools" used to achieve lean processes. the courses would probably be one in the same. That being said you may want to talk with the instructor to see what the focus of the course is. One may be theoretical and one may be more practical application.
References :
May 16th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma started life as improvement methodologies with very different focuses. Lean was derived from the Toyota Production System and adapted as people used the underlying concepts into many other industries. It’s primary focus is the elimination of Waste from processes. Six Sigma started life with Motorola, who first coined the phrase and primary focus is the reduction of variation. (Six Sigma is a measure of quality and is equal to 3.4 defects per million opportunities). As time has passed, the two methodologies have begun to overlap as people have come to realise that the primary aim of the philosophies is fundamentally similar – to improve the way we carry out our work and so it became logical not to preclude either of these methodologies and the many useful tools contained within them, but to combine them.
This would allow the skilled improvement practitioner to have a more rounded toolkit at his disposal when faced with any business problem.
However there is a caveat here! Giving someone a set of tools does not make them a skilled practitioner (If you gave a full set of spanners to an accountant, it would not make him a skilled mechanic).
Hence the reason the certification courses focus quite heavily on the application of what has been learned in the form of a documented project.
Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma can be learned separately as this was how it always used to be but as with everything, things evolve and the utilisation of both these methodologies enables the optimum solution to be attained more of the time.
To summarise, why would you use one or the other when you can use both?
References :
http://lean-six-sigma-certification.com/training/