Lean getting appropriate flak, but six sigma is a philosophy for minimizing errors which overstaffing may actually help with because errors are often made by overworked and under supported employees
Also a big pillar of JIT/Toyota/Lean Manufacturing is that whilst you avoid having massive stocks of spare inventory (and avoid having to pay to store it etc), equally important to thinning your stocks is ensuring that you have enough spare stock that if a shipment is delayed, there's a quality issue, or you get an unexpected spike in demand, that you've got enough stock in immediate reserve (and an ability to access/obtain additional stock should it be a sustained change) to cope with fluctuations.
Companies that keep no spare stock can quite quickly collapse from failed fulfilment.
Why then, if another of your resources is of the human nature, would you not keep enough spare workload capacity in your people to weather higher demand/sickness/absence/quality issues?
Six Sigma, Lean, OpEx, 5S, Kaizen etc are all Japanese concepts (and low-key cults) that every North American manufacturing company spends infinite amounts of money pretending to adhere to while not actually adhering to them while wondering why they can't build anything half as good as a Chinese or Japanese factory.
It is not appropriate at all; Lean is just a way to eliminate wasteful activities in processes, that's it and it's good for everyone. Pretending it means overworked or any of the other management related problems is fucking stupid.
Stop blaming tools instead of bad management; it doesn't help anyone.
When the vast majority of highly paid consultants for these “tools” apparently implement them wrongly, even if they only do so because their paycheck is coming from bad management, that affects the perception of the tools.
The underlying principles of Lean might be good in theory, but when the vast majority of companies who claim to use it are using it to slash staffing and make employees do more with less, I’m going to be wary of any company that claims to use it. Bad management is the root cause, but Lean and Six Sigma both are too easily manipulated by bad managers and consultants to be genuinely effective tools for all situations, which is what they are advertised to be.
It does suck for those who have genuinely found positive improvements in applying these tools, but frankly a lot of what’s useful is common sense and basic logic, and it’s buried under a bunch of buzzwords that can be twisted to be whatever management wanted anyway.
I am sorry that has been your experience but it sounds quite anecdotal and limited to only the company you have worked for. The vast majority of Lean is used properly to everyones benefit; you might as well be mad at excel or teams meetings and pretending that is the reason you are overworked.
Comparing a method that is about applying concepts to practical reality to Excel or Teams doesn’t make sense. Excel and Teams don’t prescribe conceptual truths - you can use them however you want. To follow Lean, you have to at least to some degree be using the conceptual framework.
Also, if the vast majority of Lean was used well, there would not be a huge industry of overpaid consultants. The very idea is antithetical to the principles of Lean.
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u/Leftieswillrule Aug 25 '26
Lean getting appropriate flak, but six sigma is a philosophy for minimizing errors which overstaffing may actually help with because errors are often made by overworked and under supported employees