Identifying And Selecting A Six Sigma Consultant

When tested quality programs such as Six Sigma are implemented the right way, process improvement in a company can result in tangible gains within 3 to 6 months. Employees feel satisfied and ultimately, the shareholders also benefit from the overall results. While it is possible for business owners to study quality initiatives and effect changes within their organization on their own, sometimes an external consultant with expertise in Six Sigma might be the best person to help lead the change. Consultants are immune to a company's internal politics and have the advantage of exposure to information and best practices from other companies where they have implemented the procedure.

Choosing The Appropriate Consultant

Selecting the right Six Sigma Consultant is a vital decision that can have a tremendous effect on your business. Ways to assess a Six Sigma consultant include checking if their experience is relevant, if their track record is successful, if they are willing to impart their knowledge systematically and if they are skilled at training and facilitation.

Features Of A Good Consultant

- Six Sigma Consultants should have a unique blend of skills in Six Sigma and relationship management in team development and conflict resolution. - They should serve as good communication lines between the employees or the customers and the leaders of the organization. - They should take adequate responsibility for writing projects, documenting them and making decisions for the project. - They should be able to lead the projects and facilitate conferences. - Six Sigma consultants should also be able to make presentations to associates and contribute to a company's change of management process.

Selection Criteria

- The key to selecting a good Six Sigma consultant is becoming aware of the specific needs and work culture of your firm. - Companies hiring a Six Sigma Consultant should initially perform a careful assessment of their internal environment and then formulate a team that can oversee the whole process. - The company should know whether it requires a full Six Sigma service implementation or whether it only requires training. - The main reasons for hiring Six Sigma Consultants should be their expertise on certain subject matters, are skilled at communication, be it written or verbal, are unbiased and can implement their skills within the company in a non-partial manner. - Accountability is also an important consideration; if the implementation doesn't work then it can be placed squarely as the responsibility of the consultant. From an owner's point of view, it's easier to blame an external consultant than to take sides within the company itself. - Cost is certainly a major factor while choosing a consultant but it should not be the only one. The professional fees charged by Six Sigma firms can vary from reasonable to very expensive and the key consideration should be the value that the consultant brings to the organization.

Pre-Hiring Measures

- It is advisable for companies to identify about 10 Six Sigma Consultants and ask for a proposal, based on which, they could shortlist 3 to make a presentation. This method of selection has worked very well for many companies. - Background information about a consultant can be obtained from other businesses that have been through the process before. - It is important to select a firm with more than a few years of Six Sigma experience. - During the selection process, team leaders must decide what role the consultant has to play during the project. The consultant can be a strong facilitator and an experienced practitioner, a team member or a subject matter expert. - To fit into any of these roles, a consultant has to have strong facilitation skills, in-depth process knowledge, industry exposure and should be able to perform specific tasks for the team.

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 And Online Training

While nothing can exceed the breadth, depth, and quality of direct in-person training, various factors can make it inconvenient. If your organization is serious about Six Sigma training, but find it difficult to get everyone together for instructor-led training, then an online Six Sigma course is a worthy alternative. An online training program can give your organization more flexibility and even reduce your training costs.

Online training has been shown to be useful for many learning applications and Six Sigma is one of those. The advantages of online training over instructor-led training are simple but profound. There is considerable savings in cost as online instruction is less expensive than in person classroom training and there are no travel expenses. Also online training offers greater flexibility in scheduling and causes less interruption in work schedules.

An online training course combines the advantages of uniformity in training and self-paced training. The basic course is the same for each trainee but can be delivered to different people at different times. While a human instructor is only available a limited time, online training materials don?t ?go home? and trainees can review the subject matter as needed or desired. Support can be supplied via e-mail or phone. This scheduling flexibility is one of the benefits of online training. Six Sigma courses can be made available for a specific amount of time. For example, you could be granted access to the course material for four weeks which could be extended an additional two weeks on request at minimal or no extra cost.

The electronic format of online training makes it easier to tailor training to your specific needs. Training can be split into modules and you can present different modules to different people in your organization giving them only the training they need to fulfill their role. A Six Sigma online training program can provide an overview of the Six Sigma concepts and tools while going into detailed procedures and knowledge as needed. Those who need the basics of the Six Sigma methodology can receive it in a concise and easy-to-understand format. Those who need more advanced topics such as Six Sigma deployment practices, project development, and the DMAIC problem-solving approach can receive those.

Six Sigma training in an online electronic format focuses on active and applied learning methods where people can interact directly with the material and tools. Trainees are able to view samples of Six Sigma projects including some of the methods used within a Six Sigma project. Trainees can also get hands-on experience using some of the many statistical tools used in Six Sigma. Rather than just hear about statistical methods, they can see how they work in a spreadsheet in front of them. They can play with the numbers and even practice computing for variables to see directly how the tools function.

The online format also gives you more control over the training and greater assurance that your people are achieving each learning objective. Well placed mini quizzes can be employed to check for student understanding and give immediate feedback. Trainees will know in ?real-time? whether they understand the concepts presented and the online course can provide repetition of content if needed. Trainees can spend more time on the modules you need. --invest as much or as little time as appropriate for you and not a class on each module.

Online training most likely will not require any additional equipment at your location. Training is delivered through existing computers and an Internet connection. Most online courses will run through any Internet browser on any operating system. You will need to dedicate newer and powerful computers to the training is the course has graphics, sound or video. Don?t make the mistake of using old castoff computers as your training computers. That will just make your trainees frustrated.

A well designed Six Sigma online training course can be highly effective. The flexibility of scheduling and content delivery, plus the cost savings make online Six Sigma training either as an addition to or a replacement for the face-to-face classroom environment, a strong part of your organization?s Six Sigma deployment. http://www.6sigma.us Peter Peterka is the Principal Consultant in practice areas of DMAIC and DFSS. Peter has eleven years of experience performing as a Master Black Belt, and has over 15 years experience in industry as an improvement specialist and engineer working with numerous companies.

Thinking Six Sigma

 

The sole purpose behind thinking Six Sigma is the uncovering of the mystery of process variations. Six Sigma professionals, starting from top down, must combine their goals so that they all think in unison about 2 things: maximizing customer satisfaction and minimizing wastage, both of which are the essence of Six Sigma thinking.

Six Sigma Mindset

The Six Sigma mindset is a special state of mind which looks at things in a rather critical way, analyzing rationally about the need for each elemental process and why and how they are what they are.

Defining Six Sigma metrics and processes with customer specifications as a target of achievement brings out what can be called the skillful uncovering of the process specifics that destabilize the end results. The irrepressible urge to question things to tie up all loose ends exposes the value of each of the process steps.

The guiding force behind defining and analyzing process steps is clearly the path to problem solving. Naturally, a Black Belt or a Master Black Belt is inclined to interact with all persons involved in Six Sigma implementation. Interpersonal skills take center stage as the mindset is focused on brainstorming to produce accurate data. A Six Sigma “belt” is never hesitant to make use of statistical tools.

The Art Of Six Sigma Thinking And Creating The Mindset

The fundamental quality of thinking Six Sigma is dependent on the ingenuity of all the professionals involved. Furthermore, it is through clear direction during Six Sigma training that such qualities are honed for better. Here are several steps to help you develop the Six Sigma mindset:

1. Identifying A Problem: Realize that problems fall into different categories. If one problem originates from customer, others are caused by internal organization reasons. Solving them requires developing a ‘problem focus,’ involving data collection, measurement systems and analyzing discrepancies.

2. Finding The Problems To Attack: Segregate the problems making use of available tools such as ‘Pareto Diagram’.

3. Formulating Measures: Analyzing why each problem could have occurred opens the doors on the steps required to work them out.

4. Perfecting Countermeasures: Before short-listing countermeasures for implementation, identify the discrepancies in them by trial and error. At this stage, you must be open to possibly scrapping a measure that fails and to start from scratch all over again.

5. Keeping The Wheel In Motion: When implementing the now ‘refined’ procedure is complete, a Six Sigma “Belt” cannot relax. Using feedback from the line staff and upper management, interpreting the feedback may expose further gaps in the process for improvements.

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. 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.