The Bee Hive

This question have been asked by many practitioners from all three schools. Before we deep dive into this discussion, a few introductions into each of the above methods is in order for the benefit of those less familiar with either or all of those.

SCOR

The Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model in 1996 by the Supply Chain Council, an independent, not-for-profit organization of member companies. The SCOR model is now published in its ninth major revision and has gained wide acceptance by over 900 member companies as a leading edge business process reference model. The model itself builds itself around the linkages between process elements, metrics, best practices and features associated with spply chain execution. Over the last several years, SCOR practitioners in a variety of industries have evolved a SCOR deployment methodology which leverages the SCOR model to identify and prioritize supply chain metrics, design material, work, and information flow changes, and scope and quantify critical improvement opportunities in supply chains involving a single company or between multiple trading partners.

Lean

Lean is an evolution of waste elimination and process streamlining techniques that were founded in the Just In Time, Toyota Production System, 5S, concepts and applications from as far back as the early 1950s. One of the mottos of Lean is to do what is needed, when it's needed, in exactly the right quantities, with a minimum amount of resources. The goal of Lean is to maximixe process flow and flexibility in order to achieve breakthrough financial impact on the company. Lean deployment methodology had evolved over the last few decades into a highly capable, well-defined multi step approach that can be applied to administrative processes as effectively as production processes.

Six Sigma

Six Sigma is one of the most powerful business improvement approaches that has evolved over the last decade. Six Sigma is both a business improvement program and a powerful set of statistically based improvement tools. As a business improvement program, Six Sigma emphasizes the development of a very structured and disciplined infrastructure designed to translate strategic and operational opportunities into resourced, well scoped executable projects, to train, coach and mentor highly skilled product and process improvement experts, and to ensure project accountability and tracking of bottom-line  financial results. A problem solving tool called DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) structures the use of these tools to achieve optimal results.

The Move to Convergence

The relationship of SCOR, Lean, and Six Sigma principles have only recently been understood and recognized. Treated separtely, they each  have value; but merging all three into a comprehensive productivity plan could garner benefits ten-fold of what you might gain from any one of them.

But converged, or independent, they all require active executive sponsorship and championing. Companies take action when Senior Leadership realizes action is required. And what leads senior management to take action is: Visioning, Critical Need, and Peer Direction.

Critical need and peer direction are the most common, but not necessarily the most effective. Visioning is how organizational culture is changed, but it needs a proven execution tool to be effective. Today, the convergence of SCOR, Lean and Six Sigma requires vision. Culture, left to the masses, will always seek the familiar path and not change. This paper seeks to understand the power of this convergence so that readers will understand the methodologies and the reason to converge them.

Using SCOR, Lean and Six Sigma Effectively

SCOR's strengths in organizations is focusing results on how the SCORcard, or corporate measurement systems are affected. While not designed to deploy efficient processes, SCOR will help outline the effective projects to help achieve the desired results.

The strength of Lean and Six Sigma is producing results. There are no better methodologies to gain efficiency and construct valuable processes because these disciplines, by their nature, look down into finite areas, cells, or processes to improve. They can't look upwards at organizational goals and select the best projects on which to work. The projects are typically chosen because of burning platforms or executive directive.

The effectiveness of this convergence is achieved by using the inherent strengths of the three disiciplines to balance the deficiency of the others. (see Table 1 below).

Using any of the three will deliver good results. All are considered best practices when implementing continuous improvement processes. However greatness can only be achieved by realizing the strengths of all the methodologies as the inherent weaknesses are then overcome.

Lean and Six Sigma provide SCOR the infrastructure and the execution mechanism to make good SCOR-based supply chain process design a reality. The top-to-bottom organization impact of a Lean and Six Sigma program can be extended to include SCOR so that awareness and application of the model is threaded throughout the entire company. The prgram infrastructure, roles and responsibilities, training and development capability, and execution oriented tools of Lean and Six Sigma are ideal are idela for taking the output of SCOR i.e. the Project Portfolio and ROI analysis, and concerting it into real cost reductions, revenues and competitve advantage.