Global Value Chain Management Is Usually Affected

¶ … global value chain management is usually affected by various contemporary issues and their trends such as Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing. Six Sigma is an important element in the global value chain management because it's usually deployed as a quality initiative. During this process, Six Sigma projects are often described as spin-offs from high-level business situations that are geared towards lessening the gap between the existing and target process performance. On the contrary, lean manufacturing is a strategy that is increasingly adopted by many businesses in order to minimize costs and lessen waste in light of the effects of the recent economic recession on the global economy. When implemented effectively, lean manufacturing strategies have proven to be effective in improving production processes, lessening waste, and facilitating the adoption of more sustainable business practices by organizations.

Six Sigma and its Trends:

As a quality improvement mechanism, Six Sigma has attracted an unexpected long period of popularity in the past few years. This is primarily because the concept has created several derivatives and extensions in the course of its development and growth (Goh, 2010, p.300). The concept emerged as a simple statistical procedure from Motorola to lessen faults in manufacturing, which were common characteristic in the 1980s. Therefore, the main objective of Six Sigma was to enhance quality through improving the processes of manufacturing. Since its emergence, the concept has developed to become an important corporate strategy that is used by various organizations to transform their business processes, increase profitability and market share, and create competitive advantage.

In the past few years, Six Sigma has been rated as the highest technique for process improvement as compared to other mechanisms such as ISO 9000 certifications and Total Quality Management. The current status of Six Sigma is associated with the trends that the concept has experienced through various aspects like globalization, privatization, trading blocks, and outsourcing. The two major emerging trends related to Six Sigma are Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) and Lean Six Sigma (LSS). The Design for Six Sigma is an emerging trend in which the Six Sigma projects are not only designed a little but they are also tested a little based on the philosophy of improving the business processes step-by-step. Similarly, the Lean Six Sigma is based on this philosophy and seeks to iterate project phases more often during a single project lifecycle.

Through these trends, Six Sigma has achieved several triumphs including facilitating the use of a common, logical quality assessment and improvement metric. The other advantages of this concept include providing clear assignment of the various roles in performance improvement measures, realistic alignment of statistical techniques, acknowledgement of the time impacts on processes, and integration with modern information technology (Goh, 2010, p.301).

Lean Manufacturing and its Trends:

Lean manufacturing is a philosophy of business management through which companies seek to maximize customer value through lessening waste. In addition to incorporating the creation of high-quality products through the use of the minimum amount of resources possible, the main objective of lean manufacturing is minimizing wastage. In order to achieve this objective, lean management utilizes several tools to provide customers with value such as visual control boards and accountability.

Similar to Six Sigma, lean manufacturing has been an important concept in the modern business practices and processes for many organizations because of emerging trends associated with it. First, the main emerging trend in lean management is the green revolution, which has had significant effects on nearly every facet of the organizational and operational structure of businesses (House, 2012). The green revolution has been driven by the fact that sustainability programs and corporate social responsibility have become a necessity for businesses instead of privilege. As a result, lean manufacturing is fundamentally based on the concept of sustainable development through lessening waste. In this case, waste refers to activities and processes that do not provide extra value to customers. Through green revolution, companies are forced to redesign their systems to restructure the processes and operations of production and supply chain respectively.

The other emerging trend in lean manufacturing is information technology trends, which is associated with globalization. The recent technological advancements and the growth of business-centered innovations have significantly affected the operations and functions of organizations. These advancements have contributed to the development of lean manufacturing software that are geared towards helping manufacturers to evaluate stock levels, determine points of waste, lessen inventory, and aligning product demand to supply (House, 2012).

Quality and efficiency trends are the other trends in lean manufacturing through which the concept borders on the realms of philosophy and strategy. Some of the major quality and efficiency trends include the theory of constraints and Distributed Order Orchestration (DOD). These trends are geared towards identifying constraints in the production process and developing solutions to eliminate them as well as enhancing customer satisfaction respectively. The quality and efficiency trends support lean manufacturing principles of lessening waste to cut costs (House, 2012).

Impact of the Issues and Trends on Global Value Chain Management:

Global value chain management has become a major issue for several businesses through increased globalization and offshore sourcing. As a result, global value chain management has been significantly influenced by lean manufacturing and Six Sigma. One of the major impacts of lean manufacturing and Six Sigma on global value chain management is the emergence of the green revolution or green supply chain management. The trend towards green revolution is affecting almost every industry since it's driven by social responsibility and environmental policies (House, 2012).