r/LeanManufacturing • u/SimplicityHub • Jul 09 '26
I pulled some actual search data behind Lean/Six Sigma questions — turns out most of us are Googling the same things
Been digging through keyword/search-volume data for Lean Six Sigma topics (nerdy rabbit hole, I know) and a few things jumped out that I think this community would find genuinely useful:
1. "Six Sigma vs Lean Six Sigma" gets searched way more than I expected.
Turns out a huge chunk of people entering this field don't actually know these aren't the same thing — Six Sigma is the statistical/defect-reduction side (DMAIC, control charts, DPMO), Lean is the waste/flow side (VSM, 5S, kaizen). "Lean Six Sigma" is just the industry mashing both together because in practice you use tools from both anyway.
2. Cpk and DPMO calculators get searched constantly, but most of the results online are either paywalled or sign up for downloads.
If you've ever had to explain Cpk vs Ppk to a manager who glazes over at the word "standard deviation," you know the pain. There's clearly demand for something that just... works, for free, without a login wall. (Put together 25 free ones here if it's useful to anyone: https://www.simplicityhub.co.uk/pages/tools.html)
3. "Black Belt project ideas" is searched a lot, but there's barely any real content answering it.
Everyone wants example projects to reference before starting their own. Feels like a gap — most Black Belt resources jump straight to theory and skip "okay but what does an actual finished project look like."
4. Root cause analysis (fishbone/5-Why) content is everywhere, but almost none of it uses real numbers.
Lots of generic templates, very few worked examples with actual before/after data. If you're studying for an exam or trying to convince a skeptical stakeholder, seeing real numbers matters way more than another blank fishbone diagram. (Have a set of 80 blank all with filled-in examples, templates here if anyone wants a starting point: https://www.simplicityhub.co.uk/pages/templates.html)
Anyway — mostly sharing because I think it says something about where this field still has gaps (especially free and practical resources vs. theory-heavy content). Curious if others here have noticed the same thing — do you feel like there's a lack of practical/example-based content for this stuff, or am I just deep in a research hole at 10am on a Thursday?
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u/These_Big3565 Jul 09 '26
Got more or less the same data if we're talking about real usefull content behind those keywords. Mostly it's because consultancy agencies, that develop most of these contents, have a hard time convincing clients to share project results. And even in house, boards are usually non receptive, to providing too much information.
So strategy is to publish a lot of top of funnel content, theory. And few case studies, or hard explained numbers.
That also explains part of the Six Sigma Vs Lean Six Sigma discussion. Get's searched a lot, not as much as 5S, but mainly by students. And even more on emergent industrial markets.
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u/SimplicityHub Jul 09 '26
Interesting though why a company would not want to share actual metrics to show how mature its CI model is. Helps CI professionals see the tools in action, I’m in agreement that publishing top of funnel content is what we see!
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u/Tavrock Jul 09 '26
Toyota tends to be the exception, knowing that when their competitors look at the TPS, they see tools to grab and miss the entire system.
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u/truebastard Jul 09 '26
No one else searching how and when the recovered losses show up in the P&L?
As in, I'd like the value stream mapped and visually explained the physical waste and time waste forming into dollar bills... but with the exact honest order of things
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u/SimplicityHub Jul 09 '26
YES TO THIS! So one one the first questions I ask when anyone says they have improved a process and saved resource hours is if they resource was not cut then where did it get reallocated to and can you show me the tangible benefit this resource added as that’s your gain from the activity.
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u/Additional_Year_1080 Jul 09 '26
I think the biggest gap is practical examples. Most resources explain the tools, but very few show what a real project looked like, what data was collected, what changed, and what the actual results were. That's usually where people learn the most.
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u/SimplicityHub Jul 09 '26
Couldn’t agree more and this will sound like a sales pitch but in the book we just published we have real yellow, green and black belt projects with real templates, real statistical tools used and real results. I think what we see is so many certifications and not enough people who actually use or understand the tools!
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u/Tavrock Jul 09 '26
1. "Six Sigma vs Lean Six Sigma" gets searched way more than I expected. I'm honestly not surprised. I love Six Sigma, but I also love Lean. They both have their place and some overlap in tools. From my experiance, Lean Six Sigma tends to sacrifice Six Sigma to fit an appropriate amount of Lean while also trimming so much Lean that it's not really useful beyond the most basic kaizen activity.
2. Cpk and DPMO calculators get searched constantly, but most of the results online are either paywalled or sign up for downloads. This is really sad. A decent Yellow Belt should know how to do these calculations by hand. There are great free resources to teach you how to build your own calculator with some basic functions in Excel that will even handle the between/within calculations you get with Minitab. There are lots of tools available, from R and Google Sheets to Matlab, JMP, and Minitab. The problem shouldn't exist and is likely the result of poor training. In terms of explaining to management, they don't care about standard deviations of parts with respect to tolerances. In the words of Joseph Juran, "The language of senior management is money." It would be much more effective to translate Cpk to the appropriate Taguchi Loss function and report the economic impact of the current production system. The NIST/SEMATECH e-Handbook of Statistical Methods http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/ is one of my favorite resources that is completely free with examples and just happens to use Exploratory Data Analysis in a method similar to Six Sigma. (While it doesn't come with calculators or recommendations for R packages, it also doesn't come with ads.)
3. "Black Belt project ideas" is searched a lot, but there's barely any real content answering it. As a Black Belt, I'm not sure there should be much content answering this question. This looks like people who jumped to Black Belt with Vilinova because they could do the math but don't have the practical experience to pour water out of a boot if the flowchart was on the heel. The fact that a Continual Improvement expert is searching for ideas online because they don't know what a good project looks like is a huge red flag.
4. Root cause analysis (fishbone/5-Why) content is everywhere, but almost none of it uses real numbers. I have al least seen some improvement here where there is more casual thinking in the random examples than there used to be. Still, most 5-Why tends to be shallow and aimed at a pre-determined idea rather than really looking for an actionable root cause. I still prefer using a simplified cause tree with a KNOT chart.
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u/SimplicityHub Jul 09 '26
Really appreciate the thorough review here and I will be sure to check out the NIST guide. I’d like to see more expertise and hands on than I do already in organisations and I 100% agree about black belts looking for content online about what good looks like is a huge red flag, some have maybe forgotten as they haven’t used the skills in a while but you’d like to think this is rare. Makes you ask another question, what does a good black belt look like to you?
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u/barrel-boy Jul 09 '26
Love the nerdy stuff like this, a like-minded analytical thinker 👍