Six Sigma Professor

Finding Small Business Help to Implement Six Sigma and Lean Strategy

Lean is an approach to developing a more efficient way of doing things, basically using less to do more, which can be a small business help. Six-Sigma is a concept of “lean” production that was developed for small business help in the 1950’s. Since its development it has gained in popularity and helped many companies achieve greater efficiency and to realize the cost-savings from that efficiency. While different trainings and certifications exist for Six Sigma, and lean practices in general, there are also many free resources for developing a lean and/or six-sigma strategy.

Defining Your Goals

The first to being able to implement any sort of strategy is to understand what the goals are. For example, the concept of six-sigma indicates that there is a goal of less than one defect in 3.4 million. This would have to be known for six-sigma to be in place. Further, there would have to mechanisms in place to measure defects in order to know how many defects are in 3.4 million. Six-sigma is a big goal for many companies, but even those who do not manufacture 3.4 million items can still utilize many of the concepts of six-sigma. Lean thinking as a general ideology has gained increasing attention and a simple search on the Internet produces over one million hits.

Resources to Help You Achieve Six Sigma

Aside from the fact that the concept has gained so much media attention, many larger companies publish their own reports on how they achieved six-sigma (such as the National Health System in the UK). These types of reports typically have explanations of six-sigma and/or lean practices and describe in detail how that company applied those concepts and the relative success of that application. There are also many free non-profit or governmental mentoring programs, where a business can be paired with an experienced professional; the Small Business Association (SBA) is just one of the many non-profit organizations that provide free advice and mentoring for small businesses. Although much less specialized, another option is to engage the students of a local MBA program to help in the application of lean strategy. This is free to the business and the students, under supervision, can receive valuable real-world training.

Using Business Coaching

Using small business coaching may be a better fit for some entrepreneurs. A business coach has the benefit of being able to look at your business objectively and being able to advise courses of action and training. Similar to a business consultant but much less formal, a small business coach will actually teach you how to invest your resources wisely and train you how to implement business solutions.

With the advent of technology, many small business coaching services have become integrated into the Internet. Using an established business coaching service, such as Patrick and Ann Fitz-Gibbon’s Helping You Help Yourself (available at: www.helpingyouhelpyourself.com), is that you get the benefit of working with a professional who is currently working in the field and can help you avoid marketing mistakes while providing business coaching and financial advice.

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