Distilled Lean Six Sigma: 10 New and Consolidated Tools for Continual Improvement

The purpose of Distilled Lean Six Sigma is to familiarize readers with ten new and consolidated lean six sigma tools so they can be more effective continual improvement specialists. These tools have been developed to both reduce the overall effort it takes to use lean six sigma tools and make the scope of lean six sigma tool usage within a lean six sigma program more inclusive. You will learn about:

*Lean Six Sigma 101 – Refresh your memory on what lean and six sigma are and how they relate to each other.
*King Lean Six Sigma (LSS) Wheel – Expand your continual improvement program to be more comprehensive.
*King Role Differentiation (RD) Matrix – Establish and clarify continual improvement project team roles.
*King Discovery Checklist – Discover opportunities for improvement using a combination of several different perspectives.
*King Proposal for Improvement Opportunity (PIO) – Determine feasibility, stakeholder actions, and costs vs. benefits for an improvement idea.
*King Motivation Momentum (MOMO) Checklist – Find and address gaps in team motivation.
*King Management of Changes and Improvements (MOCI) Checklist – Manage projects effectively with change management and continual improvement principles.
*King Flow Matrix – Define process flows efficiently and find issues easily in one matrix.
*King Dive Matrix – Dive into root cause analysis of a problem’s contributing factors to make improvements effective in the long term.
*King Constraint Optimization (COP) Matrix – Track multiple constraints and multiple rounds of improvements in one centralized tool.
*King Business Continuity Plan (BCP) – Control risks by preventing and mitigating business disasters and disruptions with this straightforward procedure.

Each tool is presented with background information, diagrams, explanations, and examples. The explanations were written to make sense for everyone, so that individuals who are not in engineering or other intricate professions would be encouraged to use the tools. The examples of projects at Gertrude’s Garden, Julie’s General Store, and Mary’s Machine Shop were designed to have varying levels of complexity and to be approachable so that ordinary organizations can see the potential for their use even in simple situations and non-manufacturing circumstances.

The ten tools are applicable to any size of organization with one to an infinite number of employees. They can also be used in any type of organization such as personal situations, nonprofit organizations, governments, manufacturing, service-oriented businesses, etc. You can save a lot of time by using these new and consolidated tools instead of trying to do everything separately. The completely structured tools are ready to be used in your organization.

For those of you who are already familiar with lean six sigma and/or already have a lean six sigma program in place, please note that you may be able to expand your existing program by using the 10-element King Lean Six Sigma (LSS) Wheel. Use the tools that you want to use and leave the others behind – what is important to me is that there is something for you to take away from this book. Customize the template fields for your organization if you need to and use the tools for projects outside of continual improvement if you want to.

Thank you for your interest in my book! My mission is to inspire more of the world to adopt a continual improvement mindset and I have designed these tools and written this book to make it easier for people to do so. Please take a moment to visit this little world of lean six sigma and its ten tools. It means quite a lot to me.