Everybody loses and 6S is branded as non-effective. A 6S project can crash and burn massively because the investigator team is still unable to deploy an effective solution, or management will not release the funds to fix it. It follows the continuous improvement philosophy and is very effective. Then start over again and seek the next contributor. Also it's philosophy is to seek & identify the largest root cause contributor in the pareto of causes, allowing the organization to concentrate it's efforts within available workload. This makes it much more adaptable by shop-floor personnel. That method is rigorous 6S, but packaged in a way that reduces the amount of hard math and uses more simple tests and charts. Another approach in which I was trained (and believe in) is the Shainin 6S method. In my experience, this is not acceptable in a fast-paced manufacturing operation. This was assumed to be a 12-step process that was a planned 4-6 month process before results were released. The most recent training was MINITAB-centric and took the course of action to identify ALL root cause contributors of a problem at one time.
The most recent 6S training opened my eyes as to how it can or should be applied in a manufacturing environment.
How in the world am I supposed to know that I should be analyzing the variances of a data stream rather than the standard deviation ? You're kidding, right? The formal 6S training that I have suffered through assumed one had Master's level credentials in Applied Statistics. It's a rare duck of an engineer that doesn't devote all their energies to surviving & passing an engineering curriculum without successfully avoiding any and all statistics classes.
Most trainings of rigorous 6S is too far advanced mathematically for most folks to handle.
When they're "making hay while the sun is shining," then 6S advocates are considered bothersome pariahs. When companies are "sharpening their tools when it's raining," then 6S is the latest short-sighted MBA-doink quick-fix management fad.
Popularity of 6S comes and goes with the economic cycle.
6S is a fabulously powerful analytical tool to help isolate the main contributor in the pareto chart of problem causes.
Over the years, I've formed some controversial opinions about it: Nowadays it is much more formalized as a "12-step" or "10-step" methodology. When I was first shown this stuff, it was called "World Class Manufacturing" or something like was the 80's and Japanese Mfg methods were taking their toll on sloppy US automotive quality and pathetic management methods. I'm an equally strong advocate and harsh critic. In my (too many) decades of manufacturing engineering work, I've had 6S training, exposure, and applications in a variety of forms.