Lean And Six Sigma: Are They Useful?
- Jan 2
- 4 min read
Dear Import/Export Compliance Manager,
The company I work for loves the workplace improvement initiatives Lean and Six Sigma. As a trade compliance Manager, I want to improve my department but I also don’t want to Waste time on something that may be manufacturing-specific. Do you have any experience with these and, if so, do you think they are useful for trade compliance departments?
Using in Houston
Dear Using,
You are right to be trying to improve how your department operates; keep it up! Lean and Six Sigma are powerful tools to improve processes and each has a long history of success. Though not a full-blown expert on either, the Import/Export Compliance Manager is sufficiently familiar with each as to be able to comment as to their utility in our field.
Lean is all about efficiency, essentially getting an operation done as quickly and cheaply as possible through the elimination of Waste. Don’t let the focus on manufacturing fool you; Lean is mainly common-sense stuff put into a simple framework to think about that can be used in an office environment just as well as a manufacturing floor. The example the Import/Export Compliance Manager likes to bring up in conversation is that you place the printer next to the person who prints the most; the less time they spend walking back-and-forth between their desk and the printer, the more time they can spend on other tasks.
Lean creates specific categories of Waste to try to eliminate; the previous example is an example of Motion. The full list is below.
Overproduction – Too much information provided to people means that they will have to spend more time than necessary to get the information they need.
Inventory – Only provide information when requested. This is more of a manufacturing-specific principle in that it is best to only build when a customer orders a product rather than tie up a company’s monetary resources with finished goods sitting on the shelf.
Correction – Do things right the first time! Time spent correcting errors is time you could have spent doing something productive!
Extra Processing – Did you really need a two hour meeting with ten attendees to make that decision?
Motion – Reduce the amount of distance people have to travel. The further you have to walk to the printer/bathroom/break room/your boss’ office, the less time you have to spend on productive activities.
Transportation – Reduce the amount of distance information has to travel. If a change to a procedure requires four people to sign off on it before the change can be implemented, that may be Waste. Do all shipment invoices really need to be approved by your department or can Shipping be trusted to know when to seek your approval?
Waiting – The Import/Export Compliance Manager absolutely loves this one. If the Sales Manager in China has to get an answer from you via e-mail but has to wait for you to get up in the morning, that’s Waste. If you make import/export compliance information such as HTS Codes and ECCNs available on your internal network for people outside of the Import/Export Compliance Department to access, then congratulations, that’s a Lean concept!
Underutilized People – If your hotshot analyst is spending time filling out forms and making copies, that’s Waste.
Everything about Lean seems to be dedicated to eliminating these eight Wastes. The Import/Export Compliance Manager heartily recommends everyone involved in import/export compliance get familiar with Lean. In particular, Value Streaming and Standard Work are good concepts to be familiar with. Again, don’t be afraid of it due to the emphasis on manufacturing; there are many good materials out there for Lean in an office environment. The book the Import/Export Compliance Manager read on the subject is linked below:
Six Sigma, on the other hand, is a bit of a different beast. Rather than focusing on efficiency, it is more about quality control. In a manufacturing context, this would mean reducing the number of defects in finished goods to as low a level as possible. When you get involved with quality, you start talking about inputs, outputs and measurements. The Import/Export Compliance Manager thinks that it is possible to talk about inputs and outputs with regard to import/export compliance operations but that there is not much value in doing so beyond putting together process flows. Measurements can definitely be a good thing, but more for determining workload rather than quality of work. Therefore, Six Sigma is not such a good use of time for import/export compliance. To any Quality people reading this post, please put down the pitchforks!
The Import/Export Compliance Manager is a strong advocate of continuous improvement and being, as his educator wife would say, a life-long learner. Lean is certainly something to sink your teeth into, whether you own processes or provide input to those who can change them, while Six Sigma is something whose value is not yet apparent, at least to The Import/Export Compliance Manager. Anyone who has either had success with Six Sigma in an import/export compliance environment or knows of other disciplines which can help Import/export compliance Departments operate more efficiently is encouraged to help us all out by leaving a comment.
And no, for any of you smart alecks out there, reading this blog post was not an example of Waste!
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