Lean *is* About Quality, Folks

Time for a low-carb Lean Six Sigma?:

Stuff like this irritates me to no end:

“Lean Manufacturing has us analyzing process flow and
delay times at each activity within a process. And while Lean
Manufacturing principles help speed things up, they don’t really focus on quality
control. Think of it as ‘improving process
speed.’”

It’s a huge pet peeve of mine when people create the dichotomy that
“Lean is about speed and Six Sigma is about quality.” Hogwash.

Lean and the Toyota Production System are primarily quality-focused
systems. Lean and TPS are focused on the waste of defects and
rework and the methodology gives approaches for preventing errors
and improving quality (poka yoke).

The “Toyota House” diagram’s two pillars are Just-In-Time (flow and
speed) and Jidoka (quality at the source). The two ideas are
connected — improving flow (in itself) ends up improving quality
and improving quality improves flow.

If you hear someone say “Lean isn’t about quality,” it’s tempting
to tune them out as they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Have some people implemented something they called “lean” in an
environment that didn’t care about quailty? Sure — but that’s not
an indictment of the Toyota Production System.

The author I linked to DOES make some good points on a related
topic about how you can’t just rely on measurements. Deming made
this point, that sometimes the important things CANNOT be measured
(as opposed to the common
misquoting of Deming supposedly saying “You can’t manage what
you can’t measure.” It’s a good point that I don’t often see
made… but I almost quit reading when I read the false statement
that unfairly characterized Lean.