Measuring the impact of Mikel J. Harry

I recently attended a networking event with “Laura Ermini, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt” on my name badge.  Most people were familiar with the title, if not the methodology behind it.  As I started to explain it in a small group, someone blurted out, “The Toyota method!”  Yes, Toyota Production Systems (TPS) is a piece of the Lean Six Sigma methodology.  It’s not the whole idea, but it’s a start.   I could have mentioned “TQM” as a philosophy which was replaced by LSS, but I opted not to….my captive audience was on the right track with TPS, I wasn’t about to derail their interest by mentioning the oft-abandoned TQM.

A few days later I sat with my mentor, a Master Black Belt, at a library discussing ways to update Yellow Belt training material.  A young girl, I’d say early 20’s, heard us talking and engaged us in conversation.  She was a graduate student, studying business.  The Master Black Belt mentioned LSS methodology, of which she was somewhat familiar.  One of us mentioned the name “Mikel J.Harry” to her, but it rang no bells.  This was no fault of the student, it is just a name and method that no one had ever explained to her.

Lean Six Sigma is as much magic as it is new:  neither.   The TPS/Lean piece came from the invention of the auto loom in the late 19^th century.   Six Sigma, as far as statistics and a 4- or 5-step outlined process, came from post-WWII Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran.   As separate pieces, both have merit and value.  These pieces together, however, are a 1-2 punch.  Two pieces, when partnered together, provide results that seem to be greater than the sum of the two separate parts.   Mikel J. Harry turned the key and opened the door to an incalculable number of business improvements – and I don’t believe anyone will be able to measure the impact he has made.

Mikel J. Harry is more than a metaphorical “doctor” who cured a patient or provided a surgical improvement.  Those people, though important in business and medicine, touch a few projects, or a few companies in their careers.  Even if this person improved 100 projects over the course of a career, it still wouldn’t match the contributions of Harry.  Would one be so bold as to say Harry’s presentation of LSS was like a scientist finding a cure for a disease?  It can’t be denied that Harry’s accomplishments cured many maladies within business processes.  Finding a cure for a disease is revolutionary, but still it is only one single disease.  This would be an appropriate monnicker if Mikel Harry’s intellectual invention touched only one industry, say manufacturing.  But even a scientist finding a cure for a disease isn’t a fitting metaphor for the work of Michael J. Harry. 

I liken Mikel J. Harry’s contribution to business as Joseph Lister’s contribution to medicine.  Joseph Lister, yes, the same root as “Listerine”, introduced surgeons to washing their hands, wearing gloves and sanitizing instruments.  Today, we see those practices as “no-brainers”, but in mid-nineteenth century medicine, that was not the case.    Lister’s sterile hospital did not save simply 1, 2 or even 100 patients, this practice touched an infinite number of patients.  The practice of sanitizing did not help only one kind of patient (say, ones suffering from hemophilia or polio), but rather patients with every disease,  in every corner of the world.  Joseph Lister’s  field research, observations and installations of these “new” practices have become the “norm”. 

Mikel  J. Harry is to business as Joseph Lister was to medicine.   Harry didn’t just contribute to one project or one industry:  his influence continues to reach projects and companies of all sizes, over multiple industries, yielding results of tiny to mammoth financial and industrial repercussions. 

 The student at the library didn’t know the name Mikel J. Harry, and I doubt she would have known Joseph Lister.  Her life is better from Lister’s advancements, and one can hope that someday she is introduced to LSS, so her business education can be equally enriched.  Ironic, isn’t it?  The core of our practice is “measurement”, but yet we will never be able to fully measure the impact of our contemporary pioneer, Mikel J. Harry.

by Laura Ermini, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, October 9, 2010