Stumble-Proofing Six Sigma
When implementing successful Six Sigma programs with our clients, GP Operational Excellence follows these approaches...
Waning support, whining management—We insist on a top down and bottom-up approach to any project. We gain active commitment and drive action at the operational level (front-line employees, team leaders, supervisors) and have active commitment and ongoing project reviews by top management. The moment operational employees realize that the project is not on their boss’s plate, the project leaps off their own plate. Driving action and results at the operational level, communication of the results to top management, and top management acknowledgement of project results all keep our projects on the right track
Fitting square pegs into round holes—The measure phase of a DMAIC or DMADV is critical but often short-changed. We avoid being in the position of solving a problem only to find out that measures were subject to way too much measurement error. The two questions answered by the measure phase are “do you have data?” and “how do you know your data is any good?” The use of a gage R&R or formal MSA is not appropriate in many LSS projects, but a data collection plan is often the key tool for the measure phase. A data collection plan helps operationally define the process input and output data and determines how much confidence to place in each piece of data.
Projects, projects everywhere—People’s time is by far the most difficult resource to obtain for a project especially in an environment where there are many concurrent projects. Securing resources is the key role of the project sponsor who is often otherwise underutilized by the project leads. At the first hint of people resource issues on a project, the black-belt needs to make a beeline for the project sponsor to get immediate action to correct the issue. Workloads can often be shifted to accommodate project needs.
Meetings, meetings, and more meetings—When starting an improvement program, we create a meeting matrix to determine when important human resources are scheduled for routine meetings. The full use of Microsoft Outlook and similar programs for time management should be encouraged because these programs provide visibility for meeting scheduling. Every meeting should have an agenda and a known meeting duration. A meeting effectiveness checklist can be used to trim the fat from poorly conducted meetings and free up time for performance improvement.
The ever-moving voice of the customer—The use of quality function deployment (QFD) should be encouraged for collecting and utilizing the voice of the customer information. Ideally customers should be encouraged to attend team meetings and provide direct input to the improvement process. In the event that customers cannot readily attend team meetings QFD information can be shared electronically to ensure that you have the customers’ interests in mind as you drive process improvement.
The black and blue repercussion of quick hits—Nothing gets front line employee attention like a quick win, but this type of program can be a double-edged sword. We guard against raising employee expectations too high because we realize that what rises to the top of the quick win programs are often the bad ideas of the past that have high employee emotional involvement. Each idea that is generated from this type of program needs to be evaluated critically and responded to. Project teams need to have the horsepower to both drive excellent improvement ideas to realization and to kill ideas that are not practical in a non-threatening way.
No-so-standard operating procedures—Standard Operational Procedures (SOP) are just that; the standard way to perform a task. They are not to be deviated from, but they can be improved in a systematic way through a defined procedure improvement process. Desktop procedures can be used as guidelines and are more suggestive than prescriptive. We reserve SOP’s for setting procedures in concrete and use desktop procedures to draw lines in the sand.
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