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Balancing Push and Pull Approaches to Improvement

Harvard Business Review

These mandated-from-above programs include Lean Six Sigma initiatives with experts (" Belts ") in command, big IT implementations, and reengineering of major end-to-end processes. An executive in the company's finance operations adopted a Six Sigma belt-driven approach to reduce costs in the company's global shared service centers.

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Reflections on the Fabric of the Toyota Production System

Deming Institute

He did not believe the results and instructed the team to repeat the assembly operation. Pipp’s documentation of the striking difference in the assembly process within Toyota, by comparison to Ford, was to be found again in the early 1980s when teams from both Ford and General Motors began to routinely visit Toyota’s operations in Japan. .

System 74
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Uniting the Religions of Process Improvement

Harvard Business Review

When they set out to turn around processes that have become woefully inefficient or ineffective, most companies choose one of four process improvement "religions": Lean , Six Sigma , Business Reengineering or Business Process Management (BPM). Many companies adopted Six Sigma in the late 1990s. Consider this example.

BPM 15
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The 5 Requirements of a Truly Innovative Company

Harvard Business Review

By comparison, think of the long strides many businesses have made in reengineering their supply chains, boosting product quality, and rolling out lean six sigma. In our experience, it can take several months for a company to hammer out its defini­tion of innovation. These efforts have paid huge dividends.