ABSTRACT
Operational excellence is a key component of strategy execution, and programs designed to foster operational excellence play a both critical and dubious role in helping companies meet strategic objectives and fulfill missions. It is very common for an Lean Six Sigma (LSS) practitioner to be “parachuted into” a process with design specifications that do not include data generation for process-improvement purposes. The majority of LSS projects are “certification projects,” in that the project leader is simultaneously learning new skills, applying them to a problem that no one previously has solved, and managing a project team. In some organizations, simply using the word Lean is a nonstarter. One manufacturing plant decided to implement Lean thinking just a year or so after a major layoff and restructuring—they deliberately avoided the word “Lean” and called their deployment continuous flow manufacturing. A larger retailer prepared print catalogs and tabloids several times per year, to be mailed to thousands of customers across the country.
