Case Study of Logistics: Lean Six Sigma Logistics —— Perfect Combination of Quality and Speed

With the intensification of market competition, quality and speed have become indispensable conditions for enterprises to win. Traditional lean management is a method to eliminate waste and improve speed and productivity. The method of focusing on process speed and efficiency mainly focuses on improving the process speed of enterprises. It measures the speed of operation to meet the needs of customers.

A method to eliminate defects and reduce process fluctuation mainly focuses on the control of enterprise process quality, which measures the reliability of operation to meet customer requirements. Therefore, only lean or six sigma can not make an enterprise achieve its goal in quality and speed, so lean six sigma came into being.

1. Lean Six Sigma

Although there are many similarities between Six Sigma method and lean production method, for example, they both need the support of senior management, belong to improvement methods, can be applied to all fields, emphasize cost reduction and efficiency improvement, adopt team improvement, have significant financial effects, and pay attention to customer value and demand. However, we still need to combine these two quality management methods to obtain more effective ways and behaviors.

Lean Six Sigma is a method to realize shareholder value by improving customer satisfaction, reducing costs, improving quality, speeding up processes and improving capital investment. If any one of these management methods is implemented in an enterprise, it will soon be found that another management method is needed to cooperate with each other, so the integration of lean and six sigma can play an effective role. Because lean six sigma can directly reduce the cost more effectively, and the effect is far better than any previous improvement method. The key is to give consideration to both quality and speed. Because:

▲ Lean cannot use statistical methods to manage processes.

▲ Six Sigma alone cannot significantly improve the processing speed or reduce the capital investment.

If a company wants to greatly reduce the cost, improve the quality and speed up the response, it must simultaneously pick up two weapons, Lean and Six Sigma, and eliminate the problems affecting key quality factors and the delay caused by time traps.

The content of Lean Six Sigma is very extensive and can be summarized into four elements:

● Provide customers with higher quality service in a shorter time, that is, please customers with speed and quality. Includes the following contents

Four meanings: first, a company with a good market can look at the problem from the customer's point of view and meet the customer's needs in time, and the customer is the factor that determines the quality; Second, reduce anything that does not meet the needs of customers; Third, maintain the consistency and stability of products, services and processes; Fourth, the way to provide the lowest price and make a profit is to improve quality and speed.

● Improve the process, eliminate defects and reduce fluctuations. Including the following five meanings: first, most quality problems exist in the process, not in people; Secondly, the improved methods include documentation of working procedures, checking the transfer between working steps, constantly imparting the knowledge and methods they need to employees, reducing the fluctuation of quality and speed and improving speed. Third, fluctuation is the main source of defects, and fluctuation determines the level of horse fitness; Fourth, the improvement process is to improve the level of horse fitness; Fifth, to be a person who considers problems and consequences with the concept of process, that is, a process thinker.

● The team cooperates sincerely to obtain output. Including the following two meanings: first, the skills of cooperation are: listening, brainstorming, discussing, sorting out ideas and making decisions; 2. Efficient cooperation includes setting goals, defining responsibilities, handling conflicts, attaching importance to decision-making, ensuring efficient meetings, cultivating continuous learning and cooperating with other teams.

All decisions are based on facts and data. Including the following two meanings: first, the obstacles to using data are: lack of ready-made data, lack of training in collecting and analyzing data, and people use data only to punish or reward employees rather than improve processes; Second, the data includes the result data (customer satisfaction, financial revenue and expenditure, etc.). ) and process data (speed, delivery time, quality, defects, etc.). ).

2. Lean Six Sigma Logistics

The application of lean thinking and Six Sigma method to logistics field leads to lean Six Sigma logistics, which has the opportunity to reduce the cost of logistics network and improve the performance and quality of logistics network. Lean Six Sigma can provide the following functions for the logistics network:

● Adding raw materials to the production equipment is a strategy when the production equipment has just run out of specific parts;

● In fact, it is a distribution function, which only produces the ordered products, and its supplementary inventory is only used to replace the sold goods;

● It can help you balance demand and resources and help you reduce inventory at all stages of the supply chain.

As long as companies adopt lean manufacturing, there is no doubt that they must implement a raw material pulling system to support the manufacturing process. When designing the logistics network, we should focus on the following six aspects. Only by effectively paying attention to the key parts of the whole supply chain can lean manufacturers achieve their goals, that is, to minimize the inventory level, balance the flow of raw materials, enhance flexibility, and ultimately reduce costs and improve profits.

▲ Transport design and delivery frequency. For most enterprises and all manufacturers, transportation costs are very important. People used to think that inbound transportation was an inevitable disaster, and it was just a transaction cost. But now, lean manufacturers realize that the lean incoming transportation network is actually of strategic significance and is the key to support the inflow of raw materials into lean factories. Therefore, we must focus on the following warehousing transportation areas to reduce the safety stock and cycle time: speed up the delivery frequency of each supplier, reduce the transfer between factories, reduce the waiting time of trailers and raw materials in the factory trailer yard, eliminate duplicate and ineffective sales channels, reduce and prevent transportation losses, implement equal and continuous factory delivery, and reduce transportation equipment (because of the improvement of asset utilization).