Six Sigma Wanes While Lean Reigns Supreme for OpEx
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Advice to would-be job seekers in manufacturing operations management: brush up on your Lean manufacturing skills. At least that’s the conclusion of Avery Point Group’s latest jobs survey.
The executive search and recruiting firm has been taking the pulse of the jobs market by analyzing postings from major internet recruitment sites since 2005.
This year’s survey concluded that demand for continuous improvement skills remains strong but demand for Six Sigma is declining while the demand for Lean skills is continuing to rise. Lean outstrips Six Sigma in job postings by 129%, according to the company's press release.
It the biggest differential seen since the firm began its talent demand studies 17 years ago. Then, demand for Six Sigma skills was higher than Lean.
It’s also a significant increase since APG’s last study, undertaken in 2013 where job postings listing Lean exclusively stood at 41%.
Today more than half (62%) of all job listings seek Lean skills exclusively.
The following chart compares the findings from the Avery Point Group survey in 2013 and 2022:
Six Sigma, a set of statistical tools that helps company identify and reduce process variation to improve quality, was all the rage in the 90’s and early 2000s.
Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, embedded the methodology at the heart of his company’s management system and his approach was widely emulated.
“I understand a Six Sigma company as a company whose management understands that variation is evil, that serving customers with what they want, when they want it, is, in fact, the winning game,” Welch is quoted as explaining in an interview.
Fast forward to today when companies are struggling with multiple challenges including high inflation, labor and staffing shortages, and unstable supply chains. Lean focuses on reducing waste and improving flow and therefore may offer immediate benefit to cost-conscious companies.
“The steep challenges of today's inflationary pressures may favor Lean's more immediate and practical focus on waste, flow, and flexibility,” observes Tim Noble, managing principal and partner of APG in the company’s press release about the study.
He adds that "Six Sigma still has a very important place in Continuous Improvement work where it can be best leveraged to solve complex systemic process problems by targeting process variation, process yield, and to gain a better understanding of the input factors that drive a process's overall performance and capability. The overall foundation of Continuous Improvement should be viewed as a collection of complementary tools that integrates both Lean and Six Sigma, which are then applied as appropriate."
Lean is often seen as a descendent of the Toyota Production system. This is an approach that was used by the Japanese carmaker in the 1980s and widely credited with the rise of the automotive giant.
It’s a set of tools that help companies identify unnecessary steps in a process and seeks to eliminate things that do not add value to the customer. Through its focus on Kaizen, Lean promotes a process of continuous, incremental improvements to operations.
The methodology is widely used at manufacturers including Nike, Caterpillar, Kimberly-Clark and Intel among many others. It has also been successfully used outside the manufacturing industry in industries such as oil and gas, healthcare, and financial services.
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