AI Is Fast—But Is Your Process Faster? (A Lean Six Sigma SIPOC Lesson)

Feb 22

In January 2026, I was facilitating a Lean Six Sigma course when a learner raised his hand and said, essentially, “Watch this.” He opened an AI tool, typed a prompt, and in a matter of seconds it produced a clean, confident-looking SIPOC—plus a few other quality tools his team could use.

The class reaction was exactly what you’d expect: surprise, curiosity, and that immediate sense of wow, this just saved hours. And in one sense, it did. The tool collapsed the time from “blank page” to “first draft” into a blink.

The moment that revealed the hidden inefficiency

Right after that demo, another teammate in class took note and decided to build a SIPOC too. Same process, same AI tool, same general goal.

But their SIPOC came out different.

Not wildly different—just different enough to raise eyebrows. Different boundaries. Different suppliers. Different outputs. A slightly different definition of the process. The difference wasn’t because one person “did it wrong.” It was because they used different prompts.

And then the fun started.

A debate broke out: Which SIPOC is “best”? Which one is “more accurate”? Which one would leadership accept? Which one would the customer agree with?

It was a great classroom moment—because it surfaced a truth that’s easy to miss when we focus only on AI’s speed.

AI can reduce cycle time—and increase lead time

AI is incredibly efficient at producing an artifact. But Lean Six Sigma isn’t about producing artifacts. It’s about improving the performance of the system.

Here’s the hidden inefficiency we uncovered in real time:

· AI makes it easy for multiple people to generate multiple versions of “the truth” quickly.

· Those versions can be directionally correct but misaligned in scope, assumptions, and definitions.

· The team then spends time debating the outputs instead of aligning on the inputs.

So yes—AI can save you time creating a SIPOC.

But it can also add time after the SIPOC is created, because now the work shifts to:

· reconciling differences

· arguing over boundaries

· defending assumptions

· re-litigating definitions

· deciding whose prompt is “right”

That’s not always bad. Sometimes debate is healthy. But if you’re not careful, you’ve simply moved the work downstream and renamed it.

The bigger realization: stakeholders can now generate “quality tools” too

The discussion got even better when we zoomed out.

We realized that stakeholders, customers, and basically anyone with access to AI can now generate polished-looking SIPOCs, CTQs, fishbones, and FMEAs.

That changes the dynamic.

Historically, a SIPOC was often built in a team meeting as a shared alignment exercise. The value wasn’t just the final diagram—it was the conversation:

· agreeing on start and end points

· clarifying who the real customer is

· defining what “good” looks like

· surfacing hidden suppliers and constraints

Now, AI can produce the diagram without the conversation.

And that’s where the hidden inefficiency shows up: the team meeting doesn’t disappear—it can turn into an extra step of debating AI outputs instead of building shared understanding.

The Lean Six Sigma lens: local optimization vs system optimization

From a Lean perspective, AI can create local efficiency (fast drafting) while introducing system inefficiency (more alignment and validation work).

In other words:

· The document gets created faster.

· The project may not move faster.

Because the constraint often isn’t “how quickly can we draw a SIPOC?”

The constraint is “how quickly can we align stakeholders on what the process actually is?”

AI doesn’t remove that constraint. In some cases, it exposes it.

How to keep AI from becoming a new form of waste

The goal isn’t to avoid AI. The goal is to use it without creating new waste—especially rework, overprocessing, and waiting.

Here are a few practical guardrails I recommend (and now teach):

· Standardize the prompt as a team. Treat it like a work instruction. If five people prompt five different ways, you’ll get five different SIPOCs.

· Define SIPOC boundaries first (without AI). Agree on start/end points and the “process name” before generating anything.

· Use AI for draft speed, not decision authority. AI can propose; the team must dispose.

· Add a quick validation step. Ask: “What assumptions did the AI make?” “What did it omit?” “What would the customer disagree with?”

· Make the meeting about alignment, not comparison. If you bring AI outputs into a meeting, use them as options to converge—not as contenders to compete.

The takeaway

AI is an efficiency multiplier for creating deliverables. But Lean Six Sigma reminds us to measure efficiency at the process level, not the artifact level.

If AI creates five SIPOCs in seconds and your team spends an hour debating which one is “best,” you didn’t eliminate work—you shifted it.

The win isn’t “AI made a SIPOC.”

The win is: AI helped the team align faster on a shared understanding of the process—without adding a new step of debate that slows the project down.