LEAN SIX SIGMA
Seeking the Elegant Solution
By Anthony Akin: Manager, Lean Six Sigma
Oct 8, 2007 - 10:46:04 AM

Any problem has many answers. The question, in managing a Lean Organization, is not just finding the right answer. In some ways, it isn't even about finding the best answer.

The key, instead, is pushing to find what we might call the elegant solution.

The elegant solution is the one that draws upon the appropriate resources. It is a way to solve any problem with the least amount of wasted materials and misspent effort.

The materials in question also, in addition to being correctly used, must be well chosen. You can't, as the old proverb goes, make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. You can, however, make a darn fine suede one.

There is another element of elegance. The elegant solution should not create a host of unintended consequences. By employing the elegant solution to a problem, one should fix that problem and not, as a result of the original so-called fix, create an entirely new multitude of new problems at some other place in the plant.

Like much in life, unfortunately, describing the quest for the elegant solution may be easier than finding it.

The art is in applying the proper disciplined approach, our old friend D M A I C. 

• Define: Describe and identify project area and execution
• Measure: Select critical characteristics, targets and specifications then validate measurement system
• Analyze: Establish baseline, improvement objectives and study process inputs
• Improve: Determine causes, identify key input settings and formulate implementation plan
• Control: Validate plan, control inputs and monitor outputs and sustain the change

In terms of the elegant solution as a philosophy, blended with Lean thinking as a methodology, the process yields up a means of getting to a real and meaningful improvement that solves a specific and annoying problem. At least for now.

Lean thinking teaches that each solution, despite improving the situation, creates a new status that also has within it, the probability of "new" issues that will require new improvements.

These new issues should not be problems that result from the original fix. Rather, they should be underlying opportunities that have emerged once the larger and more significant question has been answered.

Problems requiring solutions are always going to be part of the manager's work day. With a mentality that seeks to define and implement the "elegant solution" however, the problems that manager has to solve will be new ones, not recurring ones. Thus is progress made.

To learn more about Lean Six Sigma, elegant problem solving and how IBT can work with you to help improve processes, contact me.