"Lean Six Sigma Leads Xerox"

Arthur Fornari and George Maszle

Six Sigma Forum Magazine

August 2004, pp. 11-16

Xerox has long been a leader in Total Quality Management. In the late 1990's, Xerox tried out Lean and Six Sigma approaches in a number of local manufacturing and supply chain operations. Then, in mid-2002, Xerox corporate leaders committed the resources to deploy "Xerox Lean Six Sigma" corporate-wide. This deployment has three dimensions: projects and results, cultural change, and leadership development.

Xerox leadership feels that the key differentiators of success are the following:

• The ability to achieve full integration into the business and how Xerox employees work
• Project selection linked to business strategies and customer value
• The ability to change culture and leadership behavior
• Engaging the full value chain in all geographies and operations
• Ability to track results using a robust tracking system

In implementing Xerox Lean Six Sigma, Xerox followed the following approach:

1. Select projects based on value-creation opportunity such as return on invested capital and economic profit, with control of the number of projects in process
2. Use a consistent financial results tracking approach established by the deployment team and financial organization
3. Consistently deploy and train full-time black-belts, full-time deployment managers, sponsors, and green-belts
4. Assign demonstrated top performers to the full-time roles
5. Adopt the organizational structure necessary for success
6. Engage operations leadership in the process and integrate lean Six Sigma into daily business operations
7. Achieve critical mass by training at least 0.5% of the employee population as black-belts in 2003 and another 0.5% in 2004.

(Note: Xerox has 36,000 employees, so 0.5% is 180 black belts.)

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