Book Review: Lean Six Sigma for Service

Michael L. George provides an insightful look at how to incorporate Six Sigma into a company’s service operation.  This allows for both faster and more efficient work.  The book elucideates what have historically been quite sticky Six Sigma concepts by using real-world case studies such as one which focuses on Lockheed Martin and another concentrating on Bank One.  The real appeal of this book, however, is the fact that the book is written with little of the jargon and pretense that catagorize much of the literature on Six Sigma.  Furthermore, it brings to the table not only the benefits of the Six Sigma process but also incorporates some of the best of the Lean methodology which increases the speed at which processes are completed. Combined this allows for more consistent, faster, and more measurable quality in virtually any business‘ service sector.  The only major complaint regarding this book is that it gives you very few tangible tasks which you can implement.  On a general level, this somewhat theoretical book gives you a great idea as to how Six Sigma can be applied to the service sector, however it leaves to feeling like it would take more reading to actually go through with the process yourself. MediaGab reports:

However, I would have appreciated some down and dirty, nuts and bolts how-to. After all, the book jacket promises to teach you how to shave dollars from the bottom line.