Lean six sigma in service: applications and case studies

Lean six sigma in service, edited by Sandra Furterer, is well-thought-out and instructive and is equally suitable for use as a course text, or as a reference for professionals who use the six sigma innovation and design methodologies. That said, the text is not standalone in the sense that it generally presumes either prior familiarity with a large array of the tools and techniques common to lean/six sigma projects or, if such familiarity is missing, then one or more supplementary resources such as the various method-oriented ‘memory joggers’ available from GOAL/QPC would be helpful, as would a solid background in applied statistics. Dr Furterer served as author or co-author of all case studies so that her knowledge of these is first hand. As made clear by the text title, all applications and case studies presented in the text have a service orientation so that the text is particularly valuable as a resource for navigating the oft less-well-defined waters of the so-called soft side applications. Most of the case studies presented in the text were conducted as student projects in courses taught by Dr Furterer at the University of Central Florida and at East Carolina University, with projects having sponsors/champions and black belt mentors. The two remaining case studies were not conducted as class projects and were associated with city government financial services improvement and with project charter assessment for the information systems division of a Fortune 50 corporation. The initial text chapter discusses various instructional strategies for using the book and is followed by two chapters that discuss lean six sigma approaches and design for six sigma (DFSS). The familiar DMAIC (define – measure – analyse – improve – control) approach to six sigma innovation projects is routinely employed where appropriate, whereas when DFSS is called for, the IDDOV (identify – define – design – optimise – validate) approach is made use of rather than the more commonly used and familiar DMADV (define – measure – analyse – design – verify) approach. This latter choice of IDDOV over DMADV in DFSS applications is reflective of the relatively less mature state of DFSS as opposed to the more well-developed six sigma innovation approaches initially developed at Motorola. Readers desiring to contrast the IDDOV and DMADV approaches to DFSS are referred to, e.g. Gitlow, Levine, and Popovich (2006). Although the differences between IDDOV and DMADV are in principle small, when added to the need for a ‘tools’ supplement to this text, makes the choice of that supplement one that needs to be made somewhat more carefully as most supplements will make use of the DMADV approach or a competing and lesser known one such as the IDOV (invent – innovated – develop – optimise – verify) or CDOV (concept development – design development – optimisation – verification of capability) approaches presented in Creveling, Slutsky, and Antis (2002). The strongest points of the Furterer text are the breadth and organization of service applications of DFSS, along with an impressive array of tools and techniques purposefully