How Design Thinking Brings Out The Best In Lean Six Sigma

Six Sigma has become one of the go-to methods for businesses to increase their quality and efficiency. It has revolutionized the way industry carries out its production processes, and it also has yielded a stable and satisfying quality output for the consumers. Design thinking is also increasingly gaining recognition in the business world. People are now combining the concepts and implementing Lean design thinking. Let’s explore the process of lean, six sigma and design thinking to get an insightful understanding. 

Understanding The Process of Lean and Six Sigma

Since the creation of Six Sigma, other methodologies alike also rose and soon after were adopted by the industry, such as Lean. As we know, Six Sigma is a methodology that focuses on reducing waste (mistakes, inefficiency) and improving the existing production process of a product or service. Six Sigma follows the DMAIC process, which stands for: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. On the other hand, Lean is a philosophy that focuses on preserving value with less work. The aim is to assemble enhanced efficiencies resulting in improved operation flow and ultimately boosted speed across a process. Lean philosophies accomplish this by involving a series of “tools” that aid in the identification and stable elimination of waste. 

After looking at them together, it appears to be quite obvious how similar the two methods are in their goal and approach. This is why it is not a big surprise that as the industry is growing, it has adopted both methods simultaneously to morph into a methodology dubbed Lean Six Sigma.

Lean Design Thinking; A Way to Lead Forward

It has been several decades since Lean Six Sigma has been helping to improve the production process of industries across the world. Since we live in a capitalist society, the demand for new products and services to assist people’s lives has levelled up to different territories. The world has started to implement six sigma in service industries to optimize their business process. However, the world wants new, exciting products that can make their day-to-day life convenient and upgrade their status in society. 

This is why, back in the 1990s, a few pioneers such as Tim Brown and Roger Martin coined the term Design Thinking. This term has now become a buzzword in the business world. In reality, the Design Thinking process is both; a way of thought and a collection of hands-on methods that follows a series of steps, including; Empathize, Define, Ideas, Prototype, and Test process. 

One approach is to incorporate key Design Thinking tools to enhance the tools and methods followed in Lean-to allow more creativity. Some might say this is a must-do for all Lean Six Sigma Practitioners, and training in Design Thinking methods is an essential requirement to bring in new tools to drive customer understanding and creative solutions. However, this approach is limited in its potential impact, merely expanding the Lean Six Sigma approach to be more open to divergent ideas.

Another way to improve the creativity in the Lean-to is to introduce more diversity into the Lean-to team by bringing in members from different areas of expertise and industry experience. For example, the design team may consist of people with different background knowledge about the product, different experiences, different problem-solving skills, etc. The main reason for including these differences is to help the team find creative and innovative solutions as it will trigger new ideas, and sometimes unexpected ones, that are not yet part of their mental models.

Understanding the Concept of Design Thinking

The concept of design thinking emphasizes observing the situation to identify the problem. This process develops a sense of empathy to understand the people’s pain involved in it. Then ideate multiple ideas and decide on which solution shall assist in eradicating the problem and achieving a competitive edge that influences the bottom line and drives business growth. Businesses are beginning to realize the need for the design thinking process to create value and eliminate the problems arising in the business.

The Dynamic Duo; Design Thinking & Process Improvement

As the market evolves, design thinking has become pivotal in creating products that meet the market’s demand. With the existing yet ever changing business processes created by adopting the Lean Six Sigma methodology, design thinking can transform the way businesses are run. 

Lean Six Sigma design thinking can elevate the quality of a product or service and increase profits for the businesses, but what businesses shall do if they counter a problem in process design? 

In Lean, you are encouraged to observe the problem and interact with customers directly to experience the situation, similar to the Empathize mode of Design Thinking, though not as immersing. The PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) and Design of Experiment (DOE) methods encouraged in Lean Six Sigma are similar to the Prototype, and Test modes followed in Design Thinking. Lean is more closely aligned with the scientific method of experimentation and reductionism than design thinking while also drawing on Lean’s emphasis on empirical evidence over intuition or “best guess”. The lean approach emphasises learning from mistakes in production and product development processes, in contrast with design thinking that seeks to learn from successful experiences in other fields like architecture or fashion, for example, as well as by conducting field research through prototyping or user interviews or focus groups rather than running a formal test on the actual product.

Power Pack Tool; Design Thinking, Lean and Six Sigma 

Methods for brainstorming and thinking outside the box are widely used in Lean Six Sigma to get deeper into Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and improve ideas and solutions. The focus tends to narrow to the problem at hand and later eliminate many innovative ideas that initially seem futuristic. 

Design Thinking does encourage being new; design Thinking is an umbrella term referring to a range of methods from design to ideation to creative thinking, and it includes the following: Inventive; exploring novel ways to solve problems; creating novel ideas or concepts. Ideation; generating ideas from a wide variety of sources, including both internal (elements of existing processes or workflows) and external (other industry practices or best practices); developing products or services to meet needs or market demands. This is how you use Design Thinking for RCA and find ideas to improve the process flow and create more efficient and effective processes.

With the market being harder to please, Lean six sigma enhances efficiency by reducing waste (time and resource), and if any issue arises, Design Thinking takes charge and systematically fixes the problem. The dynamic relationship between these concepts will always be exciting, leading to a healthy working environment because the workers would have healthy ownership over their work.

It might be an odd idea to think about, but there is such thing as being too efficient. Lean Six Sigma’s main objective is to eliminate waste. That means there are steps within the process that is simplified or eliminated. This process might lead to a problem because sometimes the steps might not be the most efficient, but they serve an added value that can not be accounted for by Lean Six Sigma. The design thinking process serves as a problem solver so that when a business wants to optimize its operational process, it will do so without any surprising issues. 

The Road Ahead

Inculcating the Design Thinking methods in the business value creation steps, irrespective of manufacturing industry or service industry will bring out the best in Lean Six Sigma. This trend is gaining momentum, and we will continue to see innovative strategies to develop a strong combination of design thinking and Lean Six Sigma to optimize and transform business processes.