A Lean Six Sigma Perspective

By Samantha Kaplan, Director of Quality and Continuous Improvement, Corporate College

What is the role of Lean Six Sigma during the COVID-19 pandemic? 

The desire to improve results is a common factor among all business sectors.  So, how can we, in today’s unknown COVID-19 climate, work to increase sales, reduce expenses and continue to satisfy customers and patients? 

Now is the time to rethink our processes and utilize Lean Six Sigma principles to be innovative and reinvent our future.

During this time of crisis, Lean Six Sigma principles can offer a stable approach to organizing businesses, finding new ways to work, and rethinking our operations and our products. We need to engage everyone today to do things better and faster, increasing our chances for a faster recovery.

The automotive sector was able to quickly respond to new customer needs and switch production from cars to ventilator parts and masks, morphing into a new supply chain. Now is the time for business systems to embrace that spirit of change, collaborate virtually and embrace the framework to harness our capabilities and the needs of our customers.

We will need to continually challenge the traditional model of how we approach and organize business.  Lean Six Sigma is about culture change, leadership and embracing people, and is a way to be innovative and create while solving problems. 

Make your culture visible – solve your problems as they occur. Develop the problem-solving skills to be nimble and react quickly by utilizing Lean Six Sigma principles.

The challenges

• Scaling new technologies and processes faster, mobilizing creativity, contributing and being sustainable.
• Travel, working remotely, education, health care and shopping.

Questions worth asking

• Do you have a single supplier or a strong supply chain?
• How do you sustain your organization’s culture while being remote?
• How can we rethink our business and products/services to serve existing and new customers?