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Lean & Six Sigma:
What's the Difference?

Martin Hayden's profile picture
Lead Instructor, LearnSixSigma.co.uk
Published: 21st Mar 2025
  1 minute read

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Martin: [Lean and Six Sigma are] closely related, they are continuous Improvement strategies, they're quite commonly used these days.

Martin: Lean comes from a background of automotive, originated in Toyota probably in the 1960s or 1970s and it comes from a background of high volume manufacturing and continuous flow processing so it tends to bear those hallmarks and those characteristics.

It's good for things that need delivery need speed need process need flow um it's not limited to manufacturing. It's quite commonly used in business process these days but it's a strategy and a tool set that fits that kind of approach.

Martin: […] Six Sigma comes from a different manufacturing background entirely that comes from semiconductor manufacturing, from Motorola specifically and the thing about semiconductor manufacturing is it's high volume but typically low yield and very high tech, with lots of complex processing, lots of opportunities for for defects reducing yield and quality.

[…] The Six Sigma Focus tended to be much more on measurement and data and quality rather than speed.

Martin: […] You could sort of say simplistically Lean is the need for speed, Six Sigma is the need for quality but it's not that simple.

You can use them for all sorts of purposes to improve any process in manufacturing and in business process they are one of many continuous Improvement strategies but they're probably two of the most commonly used and we tend to bundle them together these days and provide a training session in both Lean and Six Sigma so that you can mix and match the tool sets and use whatever is appropriate for the need that you have.

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