Humildad y Liderazgo

The Ultimate Improvement Cycle
Maximizing Profits through the Integration of Lean, Six Sigma, and the Theory of Constraints

by Bob Sproull CRC Press © 2009 250 pages

Focus
Leadership & Management Strategy Sales & Marketing Finance Human Resources IT, Production & Logistics Career Development Small Business Economics & Politics Industries Intercultural Management Concepts & TrendsTake-Aways
• The “Ultimate Improvement Cycle” combines the best features of three popular methods of improving business processes: Lean, Six Sigma and the Theory of Constraints (TOC). • By combining the best of these three approaches, the ultimate improvement cycle minimizes their individual weaknesses. • Six Sigma inspires controls that will minimize – though not eliminate – output variation. • TOCcenters on identifying and handling your constraints or most constrained process. • Lean is a “whole-systems approach” for “eliminating non-value added activities” from your processes. • Make all internal operations as efficient as possible to dilute the attention you must pay to constraints. • Maximize the way work flows through your most constrained process, even though that could make a newconstraint appear. • Your most limiting constraint may be external to your production process. • Adapt to the limitations your constraint imposes. Just ignoring it could be costly. • Encourage all employees to share a vision of ongoing operational improvement. You can build on your improvements only if everyone shares the same goals.

Rating (10 is best)
Overall 7 Applicability 7 Innovation 7 Style6

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Relevance
What You Will Learn In this Abstract, you will learn: 1) How to use the strengths of Lean, Six Sigma and the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to create the “Ultimate Improvement Cycle” (UIC), 2) Why optimizing each part of your production process can undermine your overall performance and 3) How to mitigate key production constraints. Recommendation Many business professionals havepracticed Lean, Six Sigma and the Theory of Constraints. Many others have a working knowledge of the benefits, claims and limitations of these three widely acclaimed methods of improving business processes. Bob Sproull combines the strengths of these three methods into a blended set of process upgrades he calls the “Ultimate Improvement Cycle.” If you are familiar with manufacturing operations andthese various schools of thought on process improvement, the book’s language, charts and graphs will be accessible and useful. It may rely too much on insider jargon and data for those who are new to the field, although many of the concepts apply to nonmanufacturing firms as well. getAbstract recommends this book to professionals with an operational orientation because they will best appreciateSproull’s refreshing approach to combining the three most common process-improvement methods.

Abstract
A Blended Approach to Process Improvement Lean Manufacturing will help you identify waste and eliminate all nonvalue-adding activities from your business processes, but it won’t help you provide high-quality products and services. Six Sigma will help you improve quality, but it won’t help you...