Six Sigma is about the rate of defect per one million opportunities. Noticed how most businesses that work at 4 Sigma, which is roughly 6200 defects per million opportunities, and these companies spend 25-40% of there time resolving defects. Because resolving problems is timely, and means wasted materials, it is always costly, and a cost that could have been avoided, if only the team had taken the time to reduce the defect in advance.
For the most part, 6 Sigma utilizes the scientific method, because it requires that the process be completely studied, hypothesis are to be developed and tested, adjusted, and retested. That is why any LEAN project will require a practitioner to be highly organized, methodical, inquisitive, and patient.
Your greatest asset in LEAN is being about to translate observations into metrics for calculation. Sigma is merely the statistical measure of deviation in a process. The greater the Sigma level, the lower the deviation experienced.
By know you have noticed that management is generally resistive to change, and yet, why is that? Have you ever noticed that management refuses to apply simple solutions to their problems?
Before you can change a process, you may have to, (1) Change the way people think, (2) Change the Norms, and finally, (3) Change the process, but why is this so?
If you don’t have buy in from leadership, whether formal or informal leadership, your project will likely fail or be only marginally successful, and marginally successful is for many businesses – failure.
6 Sigma Practitioner as Change Agent means also being an educator and mentor. You are going to have to prove to everyone that your data is truly in parity with reality, and that you can change reality with better processes, and then prove the quality of the changes with more data.
Why is identifying Champions and Sponsors critical to 6 Sigma?
The author for this book in chapter 1 gives you a example of an organizational structure for Lean projects, but the example is typically only applicable to large corporations that already have a very large internal lean program.
DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control (please understand these concepts)
Personal Experience: Lean Consulting (Dr. David Thompson)
I was asked to help a company determine how to increase their market share. They were a local company, that provided HVAC work for homes and businesses. I entered their boardroom, and spoke to the owners. They went through their list of problems and none of them had to do with gaining new customers. Their focus was on their competitors ability to gain new customers.
I asked if they had a map of their market area. They said no! I asked would they be willing to create a map of their market area and target subdivisions that were 10 years old, and work those markets to gain new clients. They felt that the activity was too narrow in scope, and that they wanted a more broad marketing plan.
By the end of the meeting they asked me my opinion. I gave it honestly. I told them to sell the business for the following reasons:
- Owners were disengaged
- Not willing to target their most reliable markets
- Not willing to change their leadership goals
- Not willing to alter their current business models
They seemed unsure of my statements, and of course began to defend their prior complaints, which I accepted because it is not my place to argue with them, but to advise them. They could not accept that they were the problem and not the staff, nor their competitors. They were unwilling to change and improve their leadership, therefore, the business would always be hampered by their lack of leadership.
A few years later. They sold the business, and I met the new owners, who were targeting my neighborhood for additional clients, and rebuilding their portfolio by creating more flexible business models.
