Connecting BPM and LSS

Johannesburg, 15 Jul 2009

Companies that fail to successfully integrate Lean Six Sigma and business process management (BPM) initiatives may not realise the full potential of their process improvement efforts.

The ITWeb BPM Summit at Montecasino on 25 and 26 August aims to explore the relationship between these strategies, and how they can offer combined value.

Richard Aldous, head of sales and marketing at Rethink, will analyse the role of Lean Six Sigma in BPM and discuss how they can be used as complementary approaches to ensure greater process efficiency and control.

The two have much to contribute to each other, he says. “This is because the two have a similar goal in mind, allowing companies to better manage and optimise their processes.” He points out, however, that their approach and focus is different.

According to Aldous, the strategies' combined efforts ultimately focus on process improvement. “BPM gives a comprehensive end-to-end process management and improves approach, with Lean addressing waste elimination and Six Sigma addressing the improvement of quality and repeatability of processes,” he clarifies.

“Lean Six Sigma can be applied to specific problem areas within processes to ultimately make them more efficient. This can be done continuously and incrementally, thereby embracing and supporting the BPM philosophy,” he says.

Aldous says it's not difficult to visualise Lean Six Sigma and BPM integration, with the two working in harmony. “Lean Six Sigma methodology and tools can be integrated into a BPM strategy as an approach to analysing, improving and optimising individual elements of the process.”

He points out that using a Lean Six Sigma approach will allow the benefits to be quantified and tracked, thereby ensuring processes are really improved.

Aldous says while BPM and LSS can run successfully as parallel initiatives, companies that successfully connect these two initiatives gain a competitive advantage.