A New "TLA" -- TLS
It’s easy to get tired of new acronyms and buzzwords. Here’s a new
“TLA” (Three Letter Acronym) I hadn’t heard before. This article
talks about combining Lean and Six Sigma — to me, these are too
separate (and complementary) approaches. There is no such thing as
“Lean Six Sigma,” in my view.
Some companies are taking the concept even further,
adding in Eli Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints (TOC)
methodology as another tool, usually front-ending TOC before both
Lean and Six Sigma. This three-way combination is sometimes
referred to as TLS (TOC, Lean, Six
Sigma).
I loved the book
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
and TOC is a great concept to understand. It’s not a management
system, like Lean, but it’s something everyone in operations should
know (and use appropriately). But do we need another new acronym?
That might be lame (and I don’t mean, for once, “L.A.M.E.” — oh
wait, that’s an acronym I coined).
Pot calling kettle black, I’ll admit. We haven’t had a “L.A.M.E.”
sighting here in a while - does anybody have one to report? Click
the “LAME” link below to see more examples of “Lean As Misguidedly
Executed.”
Kevin Meyer, over at Evolving Excellence, did make reference to my
term last week.
shyam commented:
Mark, the debate on whether the 3 initiatives are really enemies or
friends has been going on for sometime, since the time they have
become popular. Although one gets weary about the coining of new
buzzwords like "Lean six sigma" or "TLS", that should not deter us
from understanding them better and looking for proper application
of the same. So in that sense, I tend to agree with what is said in
the article linked in your post. There definetly are areas where
the 3 overlap, but there are also unique strong points for each.
For example, in a Value stream analysis of a manufacturing line, if
you realise that variations and rejects at one work center is
preventing you from achieving 'takt' time, typically you would
launch a 'kaizen' project to rectify it. Now this 'kaizen' could
use six sigma techniques to achieve the goal. Six sigma being more
statistically oriented will yield better measurable improvements as
well as control. On the other hand, if only six sigma is used, it
is typically applied to the value added activity(generally 15-20%
of overall process). This dilutes the effect of the improvement on
the overall outcome. Lean steps in here to increase the % of valuse
added activity in the overall thereby boosting the six sigma
impact. As for TOC and Lean, in my view, the constraint in TOC and
the 'pacemaker' in Lean are basically the same concepts. Lean just
additionally optimizes the 'pacemaker' output to market/customer
requirement through 'takt' time, whereas TOC calls for maximizing
the output from a constraint, till it is no longer one. Both
however denounce 'local optimization' So in my view, if these 3
(T,L & S) are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and are dropped onto a
process, they will more or less fall into place. And I would tend
to agree with the article that T, L, S might be the preferred
sequence of appliaction.
Muthuvelan ST commented:
In my view, TOC is just the reflection of a fundamental concept -
the weakest link (dominant constraint or bottleneck) decides the
strength (throughput) of any chain. I agree that these are
complementary and I believe these are REDUNDANT in some sense. For
example when we are striving for creating "flow", indirectly we are
working on the bottlenecks (constraints as per TOC) and
variabilities(Six-Sigma).Without addressing the constraints and
variabilities in the first place, we can not have "flow" or "takt"
or "heart beat" of any value stream. Lean encompasses (inherent)
concepts of TOC and Six-Sigma and more over brings out the much
needed people and cultural aspects to drive and sustain lean as an
operating system. Do we still really need TOC and Six-Sigma as
standalone topics when Lean can address all of this in a much
better way???
