Six Sigma Adoption and Cultural Issues

The most easily expectable reaction from employees for Six Sigma implementation will be the one of "Well, here they are at it again" or "How good is it over other existing methods?" Knee jerk reactions, such as these are nothing new in an industrial world. Cold responses such as these can dampen the zeal of Black Belts initially, if not completely unnerve them. Why should the culture be so different and how to adopt Six Sigma in these circumstances are some of the big questions that confront the project team.

Cultural Issues - Six Sigma Adoption and Acceptance

Most of the times it is the skepticism that manifests as different issues opposed to the adoption of Six Sigma. Surprisingly enough, skepticism is not just limited to employees alone. Let us say a saving of $250,000 per project seems unreal when you really look at it. Further, it becomes even harder to believe when advertised a higher cumulative amount over long periods of time and several projects. Accrued savings could run into a couple of billions of dollars in a decade's time.

On the other hand, management isn't always open to accepting the migration to Six Sigma from another regimen. Questions may arise, such as "Does it apply to us? It might have produced results elsewhere but this is a unique situation." The question remains same even if the product or process is same as that of competitors. This roadblock predominantly exists because of the wrong conviction that they are somehow different from peers and that it won't work for them.

Take another one for example. "Six Sigma takes fulltime Black Belts which we can hardly afford at the present moment, at the cost of our day-to-day activities. It also requires several others to dedicate some of their time to the project."

Strategizing Six Sigma Implementation

First of all, it is essential that management has an open mind. Six Sigma is applicable across the board, regardless of the size and line of business of the companies. Also realizing the need for it, much later when the market and the top and bottom lines have eroded, will be of little help.

1. The Proof Of Pudding Is In Eating It: Success stories of Six Sigma will have no impact as much as the actual success you could show now. The milestones for impressive results are financial uptrends, better employee satisfaction, and finally the satisfied customer. Measured by the 'conventionally perceptible barometer', the more visibly acceptable changes satisfy the skeptics.

2. Reviewing The Work Culture At The Beginning: There is no better way than assessing the cultural ways of a company and employees' work culture while you are still putting together the project and the team. The support from top down, infrastructure and the context of time will help shape things up for deployment of Six Sigma.

3. Familiarity And Positive Developments Bring About Positive Changes: As things get familiar to people, they tend to see reason and accept spending resources. This basically stems from their realization of returns from the deployment.

Maintaining an environment conducive throughout the deployment is crucial for its success. The transformation it brings in can be far more rewarding than financial benefits alone.

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution's Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts

Beginning a Six Sigma Initiative

You cannot have a project-specific vision when beginning a Six Sigma initiative. It is essential that you develop a perspective with a comprehensive and an all-encompassing viewpoint that reaches out of the scope of the project on hand.

Begin the Project Selection with the Right Initiative

Select the project for Six Sigma implementation after weighing priorities. This does not mean that you should dive at the most pressing problem first without looking at constraints. Here is a brief guideline for project selection as initiation of Six Sigma.

1. Not all projects incur or help save same amounts of money. This infers that apart from monetary considerations, you should look at weighted aspects such as simplifying draconian procedures, improvement of employee satisfaction and the potential to produce an outstanding and exemplary result that instigates further improvement projects.

2. Decision about Belts and their placement makes way for some of the tough steps while initiating a Six Sigma project. Analyze the long term cost benefits of recruiting Black Belts keeping in view the present day affordability. Grooming belts in-house is another proven option.

3. Subdividing the project deployment into 2 or 3 phases like the strategic phase, tactical phase and operational phase which systematically uses and follows statistical tools for analyses which help take the imperatives beyond the line employee level.

Scrutinize The Project Deployment Strategy In The Backdrop of Top and Bottom Line Improvements

Before you get going with the implementation, it becomes the imperative next step for the leadership to contrast the projected outcome of the project against the goals of management. The goals can be thought of as reflections of the Voice of Customers. Perhaps a pointed checklist may be very handy in critically questioning each strategic step of all involved phases.

Unless the draft strategy is scrutinized, you never know whether deployment can yield results or the whole exercise becomes a futile pipe dream. Brainstorming is another formidable tool that evolves a collective opinion on which foundation lies the legitimacy for the journey ahead. At no point in time can the project leaders and the Black Belts can afford to forget the huge sums of money at stake.

Monitoring and Factoring In the Midway Course Correction

There are unforeseen deviations that remain undetected and flowing parallel. Scheduled midway auditing by the internal or external Six Sigma auditing team must throw light on any deviation. The auditing team could be drawn from the implementation team of Black Belts with the Master Black Belt or the Champion to head it.

What you must keep in mind is that unchecked deviations could drive the deployment efforts in new undesirable directions uprooting the vision of management.

More Initiatives

Each organization must find its own way of coming out of a problem. Nothing depends entirely on the deployment team. Here are a few suggestions in this direction.

1. Establish the channels of communication for the Belts. 2. Establish a core group to implement the findings of the deployment team. 3. Keep training a constant activity. 4. Implement the survey outcomes of internal customers.

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution's Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts

Motorola Six Sigma Improvement, is About Training

Among the main issues on the minds of today's business execs is to achieve better results from the business. To obtain these coveted business results and improvements in the performance of the company, a focus needs to be placed on the Motorola Six Sigma training in corporations and businesses of all sizes.

This is contrary to what traditional methods have dictated. Though indeed, training is a desirable element within a business, with cost cutting at such a priority, training is usually one of the first things to go, in order to make room for other more "important" priorities.

With Motorola Six Sigma, on the other hand, the focus is on achieving success by improving the process of the performance of the business. Essentially, by bettering the process, the bottom line improves accordingly. This is done by using a project-by project technique for betterment where the projects are each individually linked to the priorities of the specific business.

This augmentation in the quality of the process relies heavily on the Motorola Six Sigma training, which is specifically designed to provide managers, Black Belts, and Champions with the skills and knowledge that they required for implementing the Motorola Six Sigma approach to each project.

Indeed, the Motorola Six Sigma training can be rather expensive - as training itself is a rather costly element, hence its quick removal from traditional business budgets - however, it has the ability to rapidly pay for itself. In fact, often, it takes only a single project to more than pay for the training of a company's Black Belt.

The time involved in training for Motorola Six Sigma is usually between two and three days for managers, two to five days for Champions, four weeks for Black Belts, and two weeks for Green Belts. Over time, the amount of training will need to grow beyond the initial amount of time.

The result of this training in Motorola Six Sigma throughout the company, however allows for a strong infrastructure development among the managers, champions, Black Belts, and other team members. Each of these individuals will be empowered with the knowledge and abilities for using the Motorola Six Sigma approach to improving each of the processes within the business for improving the results at the bottom line.

Though the cost of training has always been one that companies have struggled to incorporate in their budgets, especially when times are tough, Motorola Six Sigma should always be welcomed as an investment in the future of the business that will ensure dramatic and desirable results.

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution's Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts

Six Sigma Core Concepts

By definition, Six Sigma is a series of systems of metrics that are used to measure defects and improve quality by application of a methodology to reduce defect levels to under 3.4 instances per million. Six Sigma is a trademark of Motorola that, by its implementation, saved the company some $17 billion. It has so much evolved and come of age that comparison with the original process is hardly possible. Fundamentally, Six Sigma manages process variations that cause defects and systematically and statistically tackles the unacceptable deviations from the defined standards and works towards eliminating defect incidences.

Core Concepts Of Six Sigma

By and large, customers don't judge a product by averages like performance but by what they actually get out of each product. Overall customer satisfaction rests heavily on the consistency with which the products are delivered. This is a result of the combination of reduced process variation and improved process capability.

The Core Concept Of Six Sigma

Today Six Sigma core concepts concentrate around defects and process variations. Defects are measured by metrics known as DPMO, defects per million opportunities. We can think of defects as offsets from the standard. Nothing is subjective, as all parameters are quantifiable. Basic measurable dimensions include time/delivery, cost/price, quality etc. In industry jargon these are called Critical to Delivery (CTD), Critical to Price (CTP) and Critical to Quality (CTQ), respectively. Each of these has a different significance to different industries, which needs to be identified before embarking on Six Sigma implementation.

What comes under the microscope next is the measurement system. Common sense tells us that a little element of subjectivity is present in all man-made measurements. For example, the some singers may be marginally better than others. A group of observers will score each singer a little differently, even if standards for performance have been established. Thus the criteria for an individual's passing or failing is purely subjective, exposing the chinks in the measurement system. It is this way with companies' relationships with customers as well.

Process Variability is the second Six Sigma core concept. The more variability in a process the larger the probability for a defect somewhere. At the heart of this concept is elimination of variation of process for defect removal. For example, if a carriage takes 40 minutes to transport a 5-ton load a distance of 10 miles at 99.9997% defect free Six Sigma, a four sigma will take 45 minutes to cover the same distance per same load but at 99.94% defect free. It might appear that 99.94% is quite good - if this is your conclusion, you will need to think again. Taking Six Sigma concepts into account, this equals a 20% defect in the product, which passes on to the customer.

The concept of Six Sigma is to improve the existing methodology or create a new, defect- free methodology for production. This is achieved through a methodology known as DMAIC, which is an acronym for Define opportunities, Measure performance, Analyze opportunity, Improve performance, Control performance. DFSS is the design for Six Sigma principles. Black and green belts evaluate the whole system and various fixes are chosen to be implemented.

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution's Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts

Six Sigma Assessment

Assessing Six Sigma is not end-of-the-process post implementation, although an analysis of a failed Six Sigma project points out the lack of commitment by upper management and lack of attention to the cultural and business investment required for accomplishing and sustaining new tiers of performance. It is in this context that assessment of Six Sigma becomes necessary, especially when new attempts by companies on improvement projects, reveal that the journey will be long and hard.

Assessing The Different Implementation Stages of Six Sigma

The key to the success of Six Sigma implementation lies in assessing the status quo at various stages. Assessments reveal the deviations the implementation efforts have taken from the intended line of progress. As the deployment of Six Sigma is signified by emphasis on accomplishing benchmarks in process optimization and control to render progressively higher degrees of quality, performance efficiency and timeliness, a system of assessment needs to be inbuilt which puts in place an appropriate set of checks and balances.

Six Sigma Assessment Procedures

There has not been a single assessment procedure either devised or used by any one company which applies to all processes and industries. Companies successful at their Six Sigma implementation have developed and adopted their own assessment procedures. Some of them have used their own internal audit teams with their own criteria to assess the progress of Six Sigma implementation. Even using the audit procedures developed by Malcolm Baldrige Quality Awards is not new and unique. Many Six Sigma companies have actually gone ahead with evolving a custom developed audit system based on ISO 9000.

The Assessment Categories in Six Sigma

The fundamental premise of assessment in Six Sigma is identifying and reading the gaps between ‘as is’ and ‘should be’ conditions of the process stages. The ‘should be’ list of conditions is what is established at the beginning of the deployment described in great length for each category. The categories for assessment are listed below:

1. Leadership
2. Communication and Implementation in Everyday Activities
3. Project Effectiveness and Efficiency
4. Organizational Transformation
5. Customer Impact

The requirements of these top level categories are the customized topics needed for achieving overall objectives. The method of assessment contains written tests and interviews starting with top level managers down to line employees, in addition to meetings and seminars.

The overall results are shown as applicable to the core business process. The results of leadership assessments that show possible areas for improvements are essentially helpful in chalking out a course correction plan. The results also show weaknesses that are to be assessed as the first step toward fine tuning the exercise for needed changes.

The need for assessment may be fulfilled whenever it is warranted. In the normal course, where the results take 4-6 months to show, the assessment can be scheduled as an annual exercise. Experience from successful implementation of Six Sigma has shown that major roadblocks in changing an organizational mind set lies in sustaining the gains made.

Aveta Solutions – Six Sigma Online ( http://www.sixsigmaonline.org ) offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.