How AI Fits into Lean Six Sigma

It’s already being applied, and its usage promises to rapidly expand.

by

and

Ken Snyder

by

and

Ken Snyder

November 09, 2023

Illustration by Carlo Cadenas

Summary.

AI already is being used in some areas of process improvement, and the usage of this technology — including generative AI — promises to grow. That’s because it can perform tasks faster and much less expensively than humans alone. But it will never fully replace people — and that poses management challenges.

Most manufacturing and service operations repeat in one way or another, which provides the opportunity to experiment, learn, and continuously improve their underlying processes. Until recently, the methods for making these processes better and better were performed by human experts. That is rapidly changing thanks to artificial intelligence tools, including generative AI, that can perform tasks faster and much less expensively than humans alone.

Matthias Holweg is the American Standard Companies Professor of Operations Management at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and a visiting professor at the Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University.
Thomas H. Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, a visiting scholar at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and a senior adviser to Deloitte’s AI practice. He is a coauthor of All-in on AI: How Smart Companies Win Big with Artificial Intelligence (Harvard Business Review Press, 2023).
Ken Snyder is the executive director of the Shingo Institute and a senior lecturer at the Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University.

How AI Fits into Lean Six Sigma

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