The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Lean Six Sigma provides basic concepts, processes and tools for both practitioners and leaders. The book’s proposition is to bring the complexities of Lean Six Sigma to anyone and everyone, making it as simple and digestible as possible. It provides detailed roadmaps for Lean Six Sigma execution at both the project and organizational levels.

By seeking to demystify Lean Six Sigma with a casual style, humility and clarity that is rare in business books, it puts readers at ease. Black Belts, Green Belts, deployment leaders, curiosity seekers and others will benefit from the guide and keep it as a reference.

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From The Complete Idiot's Guide to Lean Six Sigma:

How This Book Is Organized

This book is presented in four sections:

Part 1: Understanding Lean Six Sigma - A general overview of the methodology. While not a suspense novel, it's pretty interesting to know the history of Lean and Six Sigma and how they found each other in matrimony. Aside from that, we take the complexities of Lean Six Sigma and spell them out for you. What specifically is waste and inefficiency? Where does it hide in organizations? How can you root it out? Why do I have to perform at a Six Sigma level of no more than 3.4 defects, or errors, per million opportunities? That sounds crazy. Can't I just be good 99 percent of the time instead of 99.9997? No matter who you are or what your role is in an organization, read this part to get your brain set in the right place.

Part 2: Defining and Measuring Performance - The first of two parts covering the Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC) project execution road map. What is your process and what's wrong with it? What exactly needs to improve and by how much? How can you translate that need into a project charter? You get all the details here, and tools you can use. Primarily for the Lean Six Sigma practitioner, and secondarily for the Lean Six Sigma leader, this part gives you the skinny on defining projects and measuring performance (first two phase of DMAIC). If you have a good background in statistics and industrial engineering, or are one heck of a smarty, you can use this part to as a guide in completing the Define and Measure phases. But don't be surprised if you need more resources or training, especially if your process is more technical or complex.    

Part 3: Analyzing, Improving, and Controlling Processes - Covers the latter three phases of the Lean Six Sigma project execution road map (DMAIC). What process factors (methods, people, machines, etc.) are responsible for your poor performance or excess process variation? How do you know what's wrong and what, exactly, you need to change? These seem like simple questions, but they're not. Especially in organizational environments. This part of the book, like the last, is also for the practitioner first and the leader second. It brings you into the deep end of the statistics pool. Maybe you can't touch the bottom, but at least you have the courage to get in there. With the help of Lean Six Sigma analytics, you'll end up with the very best improvement to your process. Then you'll be delighted to do what wise people do: ensure that your new and improved process stays the same, for a long time. 
   
Part 4: Leading Lean Six Sigma - About organizational change, in step-by-step fashion, but not to the extent of a detailed cookbook. No, you can't turn off your mind and lead Lean Six Sigma. But you can take heed and learn about what's worked before. When do you implement Lean Six Sigma, and when do you pursue some other approach? On what business metrics do you focus? Who is responsible for meeting financial targets for the initiative? Try rolling Lean Six Sigma out to six different countries speaking three different languages, and operating at more than 600 locations worldwide. If that proposition doesn't sound interesting to you, skip this part. If it does, then you were born for leadership. So by all means, build your infrastructure for change, drive it, empower it, and enjoy the satisfaction that only widespread change can bring.