Application of Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Training which has always been welcomed with the smile on the face has in certain cases proved to be disappointing. Without any doubt these strategies have benefitted the organizations in umpteen ways yet the downsides cannot be ignored other. Where on one hand you might see all the benefits in using these methodologies, at the same places there are certain limitations that you might face. It can, thus rightly be termed as a mixed blessing. On the one hand it is a revolutionary strategy which has the tremendous potential of significantly improving the efficiency but on the other hand to some it is a complex process that seems to reap no actual benefits. When you compare the strategies of the programme with the initial years on its beginning, you will see the advancement that it has experienced. It is today, a revolutionary tool that has primarily focused on the identification as well as elimination of the root of errors plus the defects in the manufacturing processes that aim at meeting or else exceeding the customer requirements.
Advantages of Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Strategy
To begin, Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Strategy that is being applied by almost all the organizations today have plenty of benefits to offer to these organizations. To highlight a few, we have compiled a list below. These are as follows:
- It is a progressive process
There is no doubt about the fact that implementing Six Sigma tends to spread a ray of progressive process improvement methodologies to all the organizations at diverse levels of the production as well as the manufacturing process. Once you make it a part of the culture of your business, the individual operations of your firm continue to improve over a period of time. This is so because the system is known to closely monitor your processes and eventually identify and correct the problems right from the roots of their development. Here you get to eliminate the problem from its base.
- Easy to apply
Six Sigma is known to rely basically on the data, this means that you can very conveniently plus comfortably have a look into the actual processes that you follow in the real time. With the progression in the measurement trend, you begin to have a better control over the processes that you follow. This facilitates better understanding as well as documenting plus measuring the current process. In case the things do not go as you had planned it to then you can simply evaluate the things that went wrong.
- You find a place a step ahead
If you have a team composed of the dedicated quality experts then they help you to place your company one step ahead of others in the market. All the credit goes to the multi-tasking abilities that this course work facilitates you with.
- A great learning platform
At last, by documenting the processes as well as the defects, you get an opportunity to set up a learning platform not only for yourself but also for the other workers. You can easily share the lessons given by the experts as well as the other employees in a bid to make an improvement in their individual lines of assembly.
Disadvantages of Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Strategy
Like every rose comes with a thorn, similarly this strategy also comes with its own downside. Here we will mention certain pitfalls of the Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Strategy. These are as follows:
- It is not a cost saving strategy
It is worth noting that this strategy is primarily focused on quality improvement. This implies that it has either nothing to do or very less to do with the cost reduction. Six Sigma therefore might not necessarily land up in cost savings. In certain cases it might lead to increase in the production costs. The major reason remains that the cost savings that are made is primarily by the virtue of the elimination of the returned products, the costly reworks plus the defective products, which is there just to provide a better service not for profits. With the passage of time, the progressive quality improvement will only result in the increase in overhead expenditure as well as the capital costs.
- Results in more resource consumption
Six Sigma as you know is associated with improving the services provided. This eventually results in addition of the stricter tolerances, the improvement in the manufacturing equipment, enhancing the testing systems and timely quality checks. All these at the end of the day results in the consumption of more resources further increasing the manufacturing footprints. Lean Six Sigma is known to use an approach that primarily focuses on the hybridizing of two of these aspects. However, this need a deeper data assessment so as to compare the operations plus their outcomes.
- Lose on the client chain
Having incurred so much of expenditure with the sole objective of providing a greater quality you tend to raise the price of the service or the product you provide. This you do with the purpose of expecting the customers to pay more for the quality. However, there are products the quality of which hardly matter to the client. Therefore instead of paying you a higher price they end up shifting to another brand. In this way you tend to lose the customer chain. This further calls for the assessment of your company’s target market so that you can adopt a required strategy which further implies more investment.
All in all, these are the Pros and Cons of Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Strategy. However, after deliberating on all the merits and the demerits of this strategy it can surely be analyzed that the benefits tend to be greater than the pitfalls. Therefore, you need to be a little cautious as to see at what all places this strategy will work as per the plan and objective.