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PAST EVENT: The Global Six Sigma Summit & Industry Awards - The Largest Global Six Sigma Senior-Level Event
The Venetian Resort Hotel & Casino. Las Vegas (June 27-30, 2006) |
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| May 2006 |
Jill Considine, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, wins the Six Sigma CEO of the Year Award as The Global Six Sigma Awards announces the finalists for the 2006 program
The Global Six Sigma Awards, organized by WCBF, today announced that Jill M. Considine, Chairman & CEO, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), has been named the winner of its prestigious Six Sigma CEO of the Year Award.
Ms. Considine will be presented with the award at The Global Six Sigma Awards Gala Dinner on June 28, at The Venetian Resort, Las Vegas, where she will address the audience on Six Sigma success at DTCC.
Sponsored by Breakthrough Management Group, the Six Sigma CEO of the Year Award is the premium category of The Global Six Sigma Awards program, which has been established to identify outstanding organizational success achieved through the application of Six Sigma methodologies.
Following evaluation of Six Sigma activities at over 30 global organizations, Ms. Considine was selected from the list of finalists by the independent judging panel as the Six Sigma CEO of the Year Award for the deployment of Six Sigma at DTCC to drive through organizational success.
Dr. Subir Chowdhury, best-selling Six Sigma author, Chairman and CEO of ASI Consulting Group, LLC and a member of the independent judging panel, said: “Ms. Considine emerged as a clear winner of this accolade through her personal championship of Six Sigma within DTCC, ensuring that Six Sigma was embedded within daily operations as well as the organizational culture. She also has to be applauded for her vision, bringing in Six Sigma back in 2001, a time when Six Sigma concepts were new to the financial services sector.”
“It is an honor that our Six Sigma efforts at DTCC have been singled out by Tthe Global Six Sigma Awards program,” Ms. Considine said. “Since DTCC’s earliest years, we’ve operated under the premise that if we’re going to meet rising customer demands, and if we are to stay relevant in this changing financial services environment -- then Six Sigma methodology and metrics must reach deeply into our organization. Quality at DTCC is not a catch phrase or a nice-to-do. It’s a business imperative. It’s the way we do business every day.”
DTCC is the world’s largest post-trade infrastructure organization and, last year, settled in excess of 1.4 quadrillion dollars in securities transactions. With operating facilities in multiple locations in the United States and overseas, the company provides clearance, settlement and information services for equities, corporate and municipal bonds, government and mortgage-backed securities and over-the-counter credit and equity derivatives. DTCC’s depository also provides custody and asset servicing for more than two million securities issues from the United States and 100 other countries and territories. In addition, DTCC is a leading processor of mutual funds and insurance transactions, linking funds and carriers with their distribution networks.
“DTCC plays a critical role in bringing safety, soundness and reliability to the post-trade processing infrastructure in the U.S. markets,” Ms. Considine commented, “and we play a collaborative role with other service providers and infrastructure organizations around the world. Our Six Sigma initiatives help us ensure that we continue to protect the industry from risks inherent in growing trading volumes, the complexity of trading instruments and the influence of globalization and consolidation.
Ms. Considine is an internationally recognized leader in financial services. She is a member and regular speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a board member of the Partnership for New York City. In addition, Ms. Considine currently serves on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in addition to serving on other public and non-profit boards.
The Six Sigma CEO of the Year Award is the premium of 13 categories within The Global Six Sigma Awards program. The program received 65 entries from organizations based in India, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, the UK and the U.S. for the 2006 competition.
Also announced today are the 31 entries going forward for the final stages of judging in seven of the organizational categories and the Six Sigma VP of the Year Award.
Listed by category, the finalists for the 2006 Global Six Sigma Awards program are:
Best Achievement of Design for Six Sigma
Cooper Standard Automotive, Global Fluid Systems - Automotive Water Valve for Nissan
Cooper Tire & Rubber Company – DFSS - Sidewall Design Development Project
Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Financial Services
Capital One Direct Banking - Capital One Direct Banking Process Management Framework
Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation - Southern Business Center Project
TD Canada Trust - Deploying Six Sigma to Improve the Customer Experience at TD VISA
Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Healthcare
CHRISTUS Schumpert Health System – CHRISTUS Schumpert Revenue Cycle
DaimlerChrysler Corporation - HMO Group Enrollment
Deaconess Women's Hospital, Indiana - Reducing Surgical Site Infections Using the Six Sigma Approach
New York Presbyterian Hospital - New York Presbyterian Six Sigma Initiative
North Shore-LIJ Health System – Increasing CT Capacity in a Tertiary Hospital
North Shore-LIJ Health System - Long Island Jewish Medical Center - Revenue Cycle
Quest Diagnostics – Submission from West
Best Achievement of Innovation through Six Sigma
CHRISTUS Schumpert Health System – CHRISTUS Schumpert Revenue Cycle
Best Achievement of Integrating Lean and Six Sigma
North Shore-LIJ Health System – Increasing CT Capacity in a Tertiary Hospital
PACCAR Inc - Integrating Lean and Six Sigma
Saudi Aramco - Saudi Aramco SAP Training Services Optimization
Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Manufacturing
Celanese Corporation - Celanese Manufacturing Six Sigma Achievements
General Cable - Lean Sigma Implementation at General Cable
Lonmin plc - Lonmin Platinum Six Sigma Program
PACCAR Inc - Integrating Lean and Six Sigma
Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Services & Transactional Environments
Alexandra Hospital - To Improve Phonecall Answered Rate at Dental Clinic
Alta Resources - Improving Business Results for One Client of Alta Resources
Capital One Direct Banking - Capital One Direct Banking Process Management Framework
CHEP - Revenue Recovery Project
CHRISTUS Schumpert Health System – CHRISTUS Schumpert Revenue Cycle
CIGNA - Leveraging Six Sigma Across the Whole Company – CIGNA’s Model for Implementation
North Shore – LIJ Health System - Long Island Jewish Medical Center - Revenue Cycle
Progeon - Improving Calls Per Hour
The VP of Six Sigma Award
Leslie Behnke, CIGNA Vice-President, Six Sigma Business Excellence, CIGNA
James O. Pearson, Vice President of Customer Quality and Six Sigma, EMC Corporation
Don Walker, Senior Vice President of Business Process Redesign, McKesson Corporation
The winners will be announced at The Global Six Sigma Awards Dinner on June 28 at the Venetian Resort, Las Vegas. The Gala Dinner coincides with WCBF’s Global Six Sigma Summit (www.gsssa.com), the largest gathering of CEOs and senior executives passionate about Six Sigma. The three keynote speakers for this Summit will be best-selling authors Malcolm Gladwell (“blink” and “The Tipping Point”), Dr. Subir Chowdhury (“The Power of Six Sigma: An Inspiring Tale of How Six Sigma is Transforming the Way We Work”) and Joseph Grenny, a founder of VitalSmarts and leading authority in organizational effectiveness.
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| January 2006 |
WCBF presents the largest Global Summit for Six Sigma professionals:
GLOBAL SIX SIGMA SUMMIT & INDUSTRY AWARDS
June 27th – 30th 2006 The Venetian, Las Vegas
Find out what the industry leaders are doing for the integration of Six Sigma and beyond to take quality to the next level at WCBF’s Global Six Sigma Summit and Industry Awards, positioned to be the largest gathering of CEOs and senior executives across industry passionate about Six Sigma.
Forecasting over 700 senior-level attendees and an unrivalled global speaker panel including 6 leading industry CEOs, WCBF’s Global Six Sigma Summit offers you unparalleled learning, benchmarking and networking opportunities for your organization to drive forward business excellence.
WCBF presents the Featured Keynote MALCOLM GLADWELL, Author of two New York Times No. 1 Best Sellers: The Tipping Point and Blink and Opening Addresses from SUBIR CHOWDHURY, Author of Seven Best-Selling Six Sigma Books and JOSEPH GRENNY, New York Times Best-Selling Author and leading Business Communications Expert to give you a unique combination of perspectives for exceptional quality, leadership, strategy and change management.
What’s Different about WCBF’s Global Six Sigma Summit?
WCBF’s global speaker panel is truly unique, with a superb line-up of cross-industry CEOs including:
Tim Tyson, CEO, VALEANT PHARMACEUTICALS
Richard Morgante, Commissioner, INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE
Edward Hanway, CEO, CIGNA CORPORATION
Greg Spierkel, CEO, INGRAM MICRO
Michael Dowling, CEO, NORTHSHORE LIJ HEALTH SYSTEM
Gain insight from a wealth of first-class Six Sigma experts and practitioners worldwide across all industries and small, medium to large businesses such as:
COUNTRYWIDE FINANCIAL, DELL, XEROX, JOHNSON & JOHNSON, MICROSOFT, DUPONT, SEAGATE, RAYTHEON, TEXTRON, YALE NEW HAVEN HEALTH SYSTEM, US NAVY, GE CONSUMER FINANCE, UNITED HEALTHCARE, GENERAL DYNAMICS, LG PHILIPS ..…. and many more!
The agenda is packed with over 56 powerful case study presentations and topical break-out sessions in 16 dedicated tracks as well as a choice of 13 practical workshops to ensure to meet your specific organization’s needs depending on your size, industry and level of advancement in Six Sigma.
This is the only Six Sigma event to really maximize learning through interactive sessions in every track of an evenly balanced agenda.
The dedicated tracks focus on key sectors including Government & Defense, Healthcare, Software & IT, as well as key challenges for Lean Six Sigma (and Transactional Lean and Six Sigma), DFSS in both Product Development and Transactional Environments, Sales & Marketing, Compliance and other need-to-know burning issues and challenges for Six Sigma.
Unparalleled Opportunities for CEOs and Senior Executives
The Summit delivers new, unmissable opportunities for networking and learning for CEOs and senior executives through the Six Sigma CEO Benchmarking Forum, a 90 minute discussion session on the future of Six Sigma exclusive to corporate CEOs and the VP of Six Sigma Roundtable.
WCBF’s Global Six Sigma Summit offers an exceptional variety of social opportunities in the luxurious surroundings of Las Vegas to really maximize networking and benchmarking.
The highlights include the Global Six Sigma Awards Gala Dinner, the Behind the Scenes “Heart of the House” Tour of The Venetian Resort Hotel, recognized for award-winning quality and service, and the DineAround Las Vegas with your colleagues for the ultimate culinary experience. Plus! Take advantage of book signings by best-selling business authors, free takeaways and prize draws.
Attend the largest global Six Sigma event in 2006 to meet an unbeatable speaker panel of CEOs and first-class Six Sigma gurus world-wide. Revealing what the industry leaders are doing for the integration, innovation, next step and beyond for Six Sigma.
Global Six Sigma Summit Awards
WCBF’s Global Six Sigma Summit also hosts the prestigious Global Six Sigma Awards, a professional awards program judged by an independent panel of esteemed experts and practitioners in Six Sigma. The winning organizations of the most outstanding business achievements through Six Sigma will be presented with their awards at the Global Six Sigma Awards Gala Dinner at the Summit.
To find out more and how to submit your organization’s Six Sigma projects to gain recognition for the outstanding results that have been achieved, please go to www.tgssa.com or contact Flora Hamilton, Head of the Global Six Sigma Awards at flora.hamilton@tgssa.com
REGISTER NOW – Huge Summit Early Bird and Team Discounts
The Global Six Sigma Summit will be a sell-out and you and your teams need to be there. Take advantage of the limited early bird booking offer and register your project team now for team discounts of up to 40%. WCBF will also assist and help you facilitate an off-site meeting with your team and coordinate all networking opportunities at the event.
For more information and to secure your place NOW to avoid disappointment, please call 800-959-6549/ 312-466-5774 or email register@gsssa.com. If you have any questions or queries, please call the number above or email Nicky Sims, Head of Customer Service at nicky.sims@wcbf.com.
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| May 2005 |
Six Sigma Goes to Washington
Public Agencies, from the Navy to city governments, improve quality.
May 2005, Quality Digest
Want to hear a joke about waste in government? Here goes: A guy stops at a gas station and, after filling his tank, buys a soda and stands next to his car to drink it. Nearby, two men are working alongside the road, repeating the same process over and over. The first man digs a hole two or three feet deep and then moves on. The other man comes along behind him and fills in the hole. After a few minutes of watching this curious behavior, the man with the soda walks up and asks what the workers are doing.
“Well, we work for the government, and we’re just doing our jobs,” they reply.
“But one of you is digging a hole and the other fills it up,” the man says. “You’re not accomplishing anything. Aren’t you wasting the taxpayer’s money?”
“You don’t understand,” says the first worker. “Normally there are three of us: me, Elmer and Leroy. I dig the hole, Elmer sticks the tree in and Leroy here puts the dirt back. Elmer’s job’s been cut, so now it’s just me and Leroy.”
These kinds of jokes are ubiquitous, and they’re funny because, unfortunately, they contain a grain of truth. Historically, government hasn’t been a model of efficiency, innovation or nimbleness. But, as Bob Dylan sings, the times, they are a-changin’.
Six Sigma has proven its worth to the manufacturing industry, causing the education, health care and service industries to sit up and take note. Governments, though, have been slower to respond to the methodology’s potential. This is understandable. Governments, whether local or federal, have huge and entrenched bureaucracies, and they lack the all-important market incentive for change. Waste in governmental processes is usually hidden in masses of paperwork, behind bureaucrats who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. The predictable result has been more of the same in municipalities across the country.
But that’s beginning to change. Governments have taken note of the dramatic successes the manufacturing industry has enjoyed with Six Sigma, and an increasing number are implementing Six Sigma programs of their own. Implementing Six Sigma within government bureaucracies brings challenges that are specific to the public sector. Chief among these are reluctant employees and a lack of available funding for the necessary training. But those hesitant employees are often more easily convinced than their manufacturing counterparts that Six Sigma can work. There’s little of the “been there, done that” attitude that some private-sector employees have about yet another quality program.
The benefits of Six Sigma are often more prominent in local municipalities, but whether local or federal, the results are impressive.
In the Navy
Until three years ago, the U.S. Navy had annual cost increases of 5 to 10 percent of its budget, a situation that was unsustainable even for the military. The organization’s structure lacked effective internal communications, especially among its 32 maintenance facilities spread around the country.
“It was a stovepipe design, in which each of the depots was operating on its own,” says Captain Fred E. Cleveland, executive officer of the NAVAIR Depot in San Diego. “It wasn’t very efficient.”
The tide turned three years ago with the formation of the Naval Aviation Enterprise, which joined together the Navy’s labyrinthine management structures, and the subsequent implementation of a host of Six Sigma, theory of constraints (TOC) and lean projects. In August 2004, the Navy launched Task Force Lean, an initiative designed to support lean projects in the Navy’s NAVSEA command structure. This initiative also established a Lean Office, which is staffed full time.
The Navy commissioned three consulting firms to train its officers in Six Sigma, and plans to award Green and Black Belts in several rounds this year. There was a workshop on continuous improvement held in August 2004, attended by representatives from NAVSEA headquarters, warfare centers, shipyards and maintenance centers. Navy leaders in Washington, D.C., recently announced a new requirement that its commanding officers, executive officers, department heads, command master chiefs and senior enlisted advisors must complete lean Six Sigma and TOC training, noting that it will probably extend the requirement to other personnel as well.
In the three years since its implementation, lean, Six Sigma and TOC have had a huge effect on the NAVAIR Depot in San Diego. The depot employs 3,200 people and is charged with maintaining maritime aircraft between deployments, a task that requires it to maintain very specific schedules. Last year, the department refurbished 100 of the Navy’s F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets, as well as dozens of EA-CB Prowlers, E-2 Hawkeyes, S-3 Vikings and others--a total of 245 aircraft. NAVAIR’s innovative management program, Airspeed, has helped drive costs down to the point where the average cost for an hour of work on one of its sophisticated aircraft--including engineering and logistical support--is only $77, according to NAVAIR materials. Contrast this to local automotive repair shops that charge an average of $90 an hour.
Value-stream mapping and TOC studies showed Cleveland and other North Island Depot executives that there were serious bottlenecks in its production schedules, and that cycle times could be dramatically reduced. New, more efficient processes allowed high-tech fighter jets maintained at the facility to be completely refurbished in 134 days, instead of 192.
“That’s millions and millions of dollars that we’ve saved,” Cleveland says. “It’s really working well.”
The Naval Aviation Enterprise now meets regularly to share best practices--another product of the lean Six Sigma initiative, according to Cleveland.
“The Navy’s consumption [of re sources] is huge, but we’ve never com pared which departments and squadrons were consuming more or less because we’d never compared them like that before,” he says. “The meetings allow us to efficiently spread the word about how other squadrons are performing tasks, and to learn how we might do them better, at lower costs.”
Some results of Airspeed at the San Diego NAVAIR Depot include:
3- to 5-percent reduction in operations costs, consistent with industry standards
Opportunity costs were recovered as a result of cutting work-in-progress from 31 Hornets to 19 and returning 12 Hornets (one squadron) to fleet flight operations
Increased efficiency allows the depot to invest 8,000 hours per jet in 134 days compared to 6,000 hours in 192 days.
Work is accomplished faster, with fewer people and requiring a smaller inventory of costly spare parts.
Government mimics business
That governments are starting to mimic manufacturing industry quality systems comes as no surprise to Mikel Harry, whom some call the “Father of Six Sigma.” Along with engineer Bill Smith, Harry developed Six Sigma at Motorola in the early 1980s. Since then, he’s had calls from governments all over the world interested in implementing the methodology.
Harry has met with government officials from the United States, India, South Korea, Japan, Australia and Singapore to discuss implementing Six Sigma processes in everything from water quality and distribution, to electricity production, to state-run education systems.
“The question these agencies are asking is, ‘How can we shape the national agenda to support the corporate enterprise of our nation?’” Harry says. “‘How do we make our nation more attractive to businesses, more competitive?’ They see Six Sigma as a way to enhance the government to make it work more like a business, which is good for everyone.”
Harry has done extensive consulting with the federal government about the possibility of using Six Sigma to enhance U.S. intelligence gathering in the war on terrorism. Though prevented from discussing the possibilities, Harry has said previously that unleashing the discipline of Six Sigma into intelligence gathering would be very beneficial.
Outside of the profit-driven private sector, Six Sigma’s goals shift from making and saving money to improving cycle time. Many nonprofits realize significant cost savings after implementing Six Sigma, but that is more a result of improved cycle times and efficient supply-chain management than separate effects of their own.
“Governments don’t exist to make money, so in a way, it doesn’t matter to them what they do, as long as their costs are reduced,” Harry says. “Supply-chain management is essentially the same for government as it is for industry. For government, the goal is cycle time improvement.”
Fixing potholes and processes
Fort Wayne, Indiana, is one of the first major U.S. cities to roll out Six Sigma. Mayor Graham Richard, elected to the position in 1999, had long been familiar with quality improvement. In 1991, while serving as a state senator, Richard helped start the TQM Network, a group of small to midsized companies that used benchmarks to improve their processes. Most of these companies were suppliers to General Electric, a company that famously enjoyed success with Six Sigma. GE’s suppliers in the TQM Network took note, and many of them implemented Six Sigma programs of their own, Richard says. When he became mayor, those successes were still fresh in his mind.
Fort Wayne’s official Six Sigma implementation began in February 2000, with the establishment of an executive council that would serve as a deployment team. Division and department managers attended a two-day training session on the basics of Six Sigma, and Richard created the position of quality enhancement manager, appointing the city’s first Black Belt to fill it. Soon after, five more city employees went through Black Belt training, and a member of the city’s executive council started developing Green Belt training.
Richard says he knew that there would be some “head scratching” among city employees when he introduced the methodology. The city’s first Six Sigma projects, permitting and pothole repair, were chosen for this reason because they were high profile and would provide noticeable results for Fort Wayne’s 250,000 residents. Both were problem areas: Before Six Sigma, it took an average of 50 days to get a city building permit, and it took up to four days for city workers to fill the many dangerous potholes that form on the city’s roads. Of course, before Six Sigma no one in the city’s offices knew these statistics, as no one had ever collectively examined them.
Richard’s goal was to get potholes fixed within 24 hours of their reporting. “Everyone thought I was crazy,” Richard remembers. “Everyone said, ‘You’ll never make it.’” Black Belts mapped the locations of potholes, finding the areas of the city where they happened most often and concentrated their efforts there. Today, most potholes are fixed within four hours after they’re reported.
In addition, Black Belts used flowcharts and maps to highlight redundancies in the city’s permitting system and slashed the amount of time it takes to issue a permit from 50 days to just 11 or 12.
The trick, Richard says, is for public agencies to institutionalize the notion that they are service providers, not bureaucrats.
“When you remember that fact, you’re telling people that you’re there to provide a service, just as anyone in the public sector would,” he says. “People don’t think of government as a business, but they should. We’re one of the biggest service organizations in the area.”
The often-substantial cost of Six Sigma training can be a deterrent to its successful implementation--especially for smaller companies and governments--but Richard found an innovative way to provide it. He used his connections with the TQM Network to have experienced Black Belts provide training, and then reached a deal with Six Sigma giants Raytheon and ITT to allow city workers to attend internal Six Sigma training sessions. A TQM Network Master Black Belt, Roger Hirt, served as a mentor to Fort Wayne’s fledging Six Sigma practitioners, and also offered Green Belt training.
Richard estimates that the training could have cost the city $50,000 per Black Belt, but it totaled less than a tenth of that sum.
In just five years, Six Sigma has revolutionized Fort Wayne’s city government. City workers have completed 60 Six Sigma projects, which have saved upward of $10 million, and there are now 35 Six Sigma belts on the staff. Fort Wayne’s school district is now implementing Six Sigma, and the city gets monthly requests for information from other public administrators interested in modeling Fort Wayne’s success in their own cities.
Fort Wayne’s Six Sigma-facilitated improvements include:
Variation elimination and bottleneck reduction, allowing the fire department inspectors to perform 23 percent more reinspections annually, without any staff increases.
Parks department workers, led by a Six Sigma Black Belt, designed an experiment to determine if city trees were trimmed at the right frequencies, reducing complaint calls from citizens by 33 percent.
Improved accounting in the transportation engineering department freed $150,000 that had previously been tied up due to inaccurate estimations of project costs.
On-the-job injuries have plummeted to one of the lowest rates in the country.
Cost-saving incentives are important to innovative employees, and in private firms, they often come in the form of cash bonuses. Because the city doesn’t have the money to provide them, Richard and his quality council provide “prizes” in the form of laptop computers and other useful tools for departments that save significant amounts of money for the city.
With governments getting smarter about quality and trimming their processes with lean precision, we may soon see the day when private-sector companies look for new executives in city halls and government buildings--and many of those executives will bring with them a fundamental understanding of the benefits that Six Sigma can deliver.
About the author
Laura Smith is Quality Digest’s assistant editor.
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| October 2005 |
Sundae Innovation
The Ice-Cream Maker explains that while Americans have cornered the market on innovation, they lack in quality consistency.
by Subir Chowdhury
October 2005, Quality Digest
In his new book The Ice Cream Maker (Currency Doubleday, October 2005), quality consultant Subir Chowdhury tells the simple yet compelling story of a regional ice cream manufacturer that's on the verge of closure but remains determined to sell its ice cream to a flourishing national grocery chain, Natural Foods. The story illustrates what businesses must do to instill quality into every product they design, build and market.
In the following excerpt, the beleaguered plant manager of Dairy Cream, Peter Delvecchio, reaches out to his former neighbor Mike McMaster of Natural Foods, who has a magical influence on him. Through an engaging series of conversations, Chowdhury reveals how Mike helps Peter enable Dairy Cream to rise from the ashes, driving home the point of building quality in every aspect of organizational culture.
"I have to ask," Mike went on, "is quality really the driving force behind your brand? Does it really shape everything you do?"
I could only bite my lip, embarrassed.
"I think the reason you're so upset that we don't buy your ice cream," he continued, in a surprisingly direct manner, "is not because you feel our customers are missing out on how wonderful your ice cream is, but because you are missing out on selling to more customers. You're amazed that we don't agree with your criteria, or your results.
"Pete, if I may," he said, speaking softly, "you're a bright guy, a decent guy from a good family. I'm sure you spend a lot of time at your factory worrying about how to improve the quality of your ice cream and increase your factory's productivity so that you can reduce costs and offer more competitive prices. You clearly have pride in what you do.
"But you don't seem to know where to begin in thinking about what quality is and how you can improve it. You're dying to make this sale. I understand that. But your people have never asked us what we want or what our customers want. You haven't asked how you could help Natural Foods or our guests. Your focus is on selling your ice cream and not much else.
"I'm not surprised," Mike continued. "What you do at Dairy Cream is similar to what so many companies in our country do. Let me tell you something that Glen Goodwill explained to me years ago, when he was first creating Natural Foods. When it comes to innovation--coming up with great new products or technology or ideas--American companies are the best in the world, hands down. Innovation is part of our DNA. That's not true in other countries. But when it comes to quality, to the constant, continual daily efforts to improve a product or service, to really ensure that it meets exacting standards every time, and thereby build lasting loyalty, we falter.
"It's like the story of the tortoise and the hare--and we're the hare, leading the race with our innovations. But eventually the tortoise catches up, just as your competitors catch up to your new flavors and pass you by with constant, incremental improvements, simply because they make quality the priority in everything they do.
"The fact is, as Glen pointed out to me, quality is just not part of our DNA. And it is part of the DNA of companies in Japan and has gradually become part of the makeup of Korean companies. As a result, we're constantly creating new products, and new markets, only to lose them to other companies. American companies find themselves on a treadmill, constantly having to come up with new innovations in order to stay ahead of our competition. Did you know that America created the global positioning system in cars? We invented the transistor, the computer chip, the airplane--so much of the stuff that is a part of our lives. And yet we lose most of those markets as fast as we create them.
"To bring this back to earth, you guys at Dairy Cream are constantly outsmarting your competitors by coming out with snazzy new ice cream flavors. But because you don't make the effort to find out what we, the customers, want in terms of quality, your competitors end up eating your lunch."
I felt humiliated. I could tell I was near tears--unbelievably, to me, for I was a pretty stoic guy. I only hoped he'd stop.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But I'm a lot older and hopefully a little wiser. I've already made the mistakes you're making now. At Natural Foods, quality is at the heart of everything we do. We're the exception in our niche--where everyone else seems intent to chase the latest trend--and that's why we've been so tremendously successfully."
"Mike," I finally said, the knot in my stomach urging me to come clean. "I need help. The fact is, we're in trouble. If I can't help us find a way to increase revenues and profits--and soon!--Malcolm Jones, our owner, has threatened to fire the current management team, or sell off the whole company. Either way, I'm out of a job and our scores of employees are out of work. Malcolm has charged me with shaking things up, and I don't know what to do--I just don't know how to turn things around at Dairy Cream. I've got a wife and two kids. I'm embarrassed to ask this of you, when I haven't seen you in so long, but I need your help. You seem to have found a way to do this. Tell me what I can do to make quality part of our culture, too."
Mike looked at me thoughtfully. Then he nodded his head. "If you're looking for help selling your ice cream, we might as well go to the source. Natural Foods is built on the idea of excellence, and excellence starts with helping others as much as you can--every day. Excellence isn't a task or chore we perform to sell something. It's a passion to help others that restores us in the process. Until you understand that, you'll never change your thinking, or increase your sales. The first step, my friend, is to start talking to and taking care of the people who have taken care of you. Let me ask you something. You've been worried about how things have been going for awhile, right?"
I nodded, numbly.
"One place to start--have you talked about your concerns with your closest advisor and consumer--your wife?"
I shook my head, suddenly embarrassed.
"Listen, I've got to tackle a few things here this afternoon. But I've got some time in the morning. Why don't you drop by before we open, at say 7, and I'll give you a few pointers on how to get started. Improving quality won't happen overnight--it'll take work. But I think I can give you some suggestions on how to get the ball rolling--and get your owner off your back."
I didn't sell any ice cream that day, but that no longer seemed quite so important.
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| September 2005 |
The Future of Quality
by H. James Harrington and Frank Voehl
Quality Digest, September 2005
Changes in practices, technologies and methods that show promise today most likely will be extended and widely used tomorrow. One future-looking trend in today's leading organizations is the renewed interest in customer focus. As more companies improve information technologies and implement just-in-time and lean production systems, an increasing number of made-to-order products and services will become available. Managing quality in the year 2020 will demand new types of quality management functionalities, more intensive supplier-qualification systems, and shared design and production information.
Buzzwords are emerging already for the new quality world, as predicted by quality researchers and futurists such as A. Blanton Godfrey and Patrick Dixon. These buzzwords point to "sense-and-respond" systems replacing the former "make-and-sell" systems. The advantages of low-inventory or no-inventory systems, coupled with no unsold or discounted merchandise and truly satisfied customers, are so promising that future-focused organizations are encouraged to move quickly and endorse these concepts. Given all the buzz, it's interesting to stand back for a moment and see what the world of quality might look like in the year 2020.
The FUTURE of quality defined
The organization of 2020 will be dominated by six factors represented by the acronym FUTURE, which stands for fast, urban, tribal, universal, revolutionary and ethics. The acronym is based on the research and work of Patrick Dixon (www.globalchange.com), a well-known international futurist. In the business world of 2020, mastering the quality-related aspects of these six factors will be essential to survival and prosperity.
Fast
The world is changing faster than management realizes. Survival will require organizations to use quality-based scenario planning before events occur. Quality improvement rapid-response plans will help to make every dollar count. The binocular lens of market research can't predict the future in a rapidly changing world--it just shows what consumers think. In 2020, we'll need bifocal leadership: clear, short-range thinking and sharp action to steer through the downturns, as well as accurate vision and steady nerves to see well into the future. Quality managers in the year 2020 will need to be familiar with the next wave of techno-change.
•Implications for the quality practitioner: Speed will be foremost, and value-information and early-warning systems will provide managers with comprehensive solutions to their day-to-day problems. "Management historians" will provide value information to analyze organizational successes and failures. In 2020, who will be watching your radar screen? Where will you get fresh insights? What quality tools will you use to harness external perspectives to protect you from institutional blindness?
Urban
Big demographic and social "lifestyle" shifts will affect your business: fickle fashions, aging but wealthy populations, retired people inheriting trillions of dollars, aggressive competition for top talent, female consumer influence, human cloning, medical breakthroughs, virtual relationships and a host of other factors, including the huge untapped challenge of megacity markets in emerging economies. These societal changes are fundamental to the future shape of your business because they'll alter how people think and feel. Soft factors might create your best business opportunities. But are your teams gearing up to exploit them?
•Implications for the quality practitioner: Population growth, water shortages, and crime and drug addiction will be major threats to the quality of life in our communities and our homes. What early-warning indicators will you have in place to lessen the effects upon your organization?
Tribal
Poor project management is one of the major causes of quality program failure. Although the world of 2020 will be increasingly globalized, tribalism will become the most powerful force on Earth. Groups of people will identify only with each other, often through projects. Brands will act as relationship partners and create product tribalism, where consumers will "belong" to their products (and vice-versa). Relationship marketing will foster special alliances with customers by gathering and employing massive amounts of information about individual vs. tribal behaviors and buying habits.
Tribalism today makes people proud of who they are and provides a national identity. It also affects us all through niche branding and product loyalty. The key to all successful mergers and leadership will be harnessing the quality elements of tribal culture. Although future team leaders will continue to manage up to 20 others, successful tribal leaders will create dynamic people movements of more than 100,000.
•Implications for the quality practitioner: Tribalism will continue to be the basis of all family, team and workplace belonging, with a renewed and increased respect for culture. How will you make tribalism work for your organization and its quality of worklife, while rebuilding group confidence and a sense of belonging in a future world of constant workforce reductions?
Universal
The opposite of tribalism is universality. Globalization will hasten the emergence of the global super-brand and create huge pressures to manage global operations more effectively. New technologies as well as virtual teams and companies will be key to this new paradigm. In today's business environment, we're still playing games with globalization. Many business leaders are already spending more than six weeks a year flying to and fro at 35,000 feet, and it's no fun anymore. Successful multinationals will need new management models to grow beyond the constraints of constant air travel. Quality leadership will dominate the shape of all large corporations, as competitors realign through rapid mergers, acquisitions, disposals or new partnerships. However, reactions to universal quality standards will grow and require careful handling. Powerful global structures will emerge and affect many organizations' international interests.
•Implications for the quality practitioner: Global management will most certainly lead to job insecurity, erosion of nonwage benefits and further weakening of trade unions. How will you globalize your organization's management style and structures?
Revolutionary
Few people in your workforce will likely be active members of political parties, although vast numbers will have signed petitions or campaigned for causes. With the death of left/right politics and the weakening of "big" government power, corporations will increasingly be held responsible for their actions by single-issue groups. Examples include the war against terrorism, animal welfare and child labor in the textiles industry. Quality-related issues strike hard, and their effect can be difficult to predict. Clear quality policies, strong values and rapid media response teams will be vital to success in 2020. Will you have quality measures in place for monitoring these areas sufficiently? Just-in-time will continue to grow as a major quality program, even though its effect to date has been on inventory cost. In 2020, we'll need to look at total inventory costs because a high percentage of our products' components will be manufactured in Asia.
•Implications for the quality practitioner: The inventory cost of one month's shipping will be a major consideration when outsourcing decisions are made. Add to that the additional cost of fuel, and many of the decisions we make today to outsource labor-intensive activities won't be justified. Tax structures will be negatively directed toward the company that puts an individual out of work. If your organization outsources from the United States, be prepared to pay higher taxes to offset the additional costs that unemployed workers bring to humanity.
Ethics
The United States will stop focusing its quality effort on manufacturing and technology because in the future it will have no engineering capabilities. At the present time less than 5 percent of U.S. students are taking engineering classes, compared to China's 40 percent, according to a National Science Foundation study. By 2020, more than 90 percent of all engineering students who graduate from college could be Asian. With that kind of skill shift, there's no way that the United States will be able to compete in the manufacturing and technology fields. Instead, the areas of culture change and quality philosophy will become increasingly important in shaping the vision and values of the organization. Whenever CEOs talk about the future, they end up focusing on the personal concerns they have, their vision and values, priorities, ethics, motivation, culture and spirituality. All these will be key issues for large corporations in the year 2020.
•Implications for the quality practitioner: What kind of world do you want to live in? Because ethics and values will carry us through periods of tremendous change and continue to provide increased context and meaning to visions and missions, what will your role be in shaping these changes?
The FUTURE at work
Financial rewards are not motivating factors in and of themselves. The genesis of this thinking goes back to the work of Abraham Maslow and Frederick Hertzberg. Retaining and motivating top executives in the future will involve various core job dimensions, such as autonomy, feedback, task identity, skill variety and supervisory satisfaction. Personal work motivation has already changed dramatically during the last five years and will continue to do so because it's much deeper than work-life balance. The key to capturing people's passion will be to show how the quality of your products and services builds a better world, not only for individuals and their families, but also for the community and humanity as a whole.
A second force, the explosion of information technology, will continue to drive change in ways we're just now beginning to grasp. The Internet, with its promise of new distribution channels, customer information on unimagined scales and instant communication across continents, will continue to change the way people think about business. We'll select hotel rooms, buy plane tickets, listen to and download music, browse newspapers from thousands of cities, and shop for almost every conceivable product without leaving our own portals. Managing the quality of these transactions, services and products will demand new ideas, new methods, critical thinking and new tools.
A third force, virtual companies, will also stretch our ability to manage quality in the year 2020 and beyond. As companies follow the lead of Nike, Williams-Sonoma or Sara Lee and establish business-partner networks rather than vertical or horizontal organizations, we'll find a vastly increased need for clear specifications, procedures and communication. Companies such as Volkswagen in Brazil now have suppliers install and test parts on the assembly line, which changes Volkswagen's role to that of coordinator and planner rather than manufacturer.
Imagining current trends taken to extreme limits will offer another way to safely extrapolate the future. Customer focus will continue to be essential. Nypro Clinton, for example, has reduced its customer base by more than 90 percent to become more customer-focused. By concentrating on a small number of good customers, the company can co-design and co-locate production facilities and develop true business partnerships.
Riskier predictions include speculations about technological breakthroughs or other societal or managerial changes. What happens when information and communication become virtually free? Or when products and services become available anywhere in the world? The year 2020 will require that we manage development teams comprising thousands of far-flung independent programmers who create new operating systems and make them available for almost nothing. Information quality will become a critical issue, while new methods and tools for managing across company boundaries will be essential. Old practices of price negotiations and contracts will have radically changed and transformed into new cooperative partnerships with rapid sharing of information, plans and practices. Quality-driven business-process management will radically extend across company and value-chain boundaries and into customer operations. Time cycles will continue to shrink, and information flows, decisions and changes will occur with lightning speed.
Conclusion
Today's focus is on Six Sigma; tomorrow's focus will be on error-free performance. There will be a radical focus on reducing the time interval between when errors occur and when they're measured at the individual level. Knowledge management will play a big part in quality in the service industry. Historically, prevention is one art to which we've never found the key. We talk prevention but practice correction.
By 2020, we'll stop teaching problem solving and focus on developing new methodologies in prevention--ones that really work so we don't need to solve the same problems over and over again. Quality in U.S. manufacturing organizations is improving at a rate of about 10 percent a year. Quality in service is improving at less than 5 percent a year, and in some sectors, such as the airline industry, it's going in a negative direction. Meanwhile, customer expectations are increasing at a rate of 15 percent to 20 percent per year.
The bottom line is this: The FUTURE of quality lies in reversing the existing negative trends while there's still time.
About the authors
H. James Harrington is CEO of the Harrington Institute Inc. and chairman of the board of Harrington Group. He has more than 55 years of experience as a quality professional and is the author of 22 books. Visit his Web site at www.harrington-institute.com.
Frank Voehl has more than 30 years of experience as a systems engineer and quality professional and is the author/co-author of 16 books and hundreds of articles and papers on quality management, continuous improvement and teamwork. He is the chairman and CEO of Strategy Associates Inc.
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| October 2005 |
SecArmy opens AUSA with thoughts on future
By Lt. Col. Thomas W. Collins
October 4, 2005
http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?storyidkey=8008
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Oct. 4, 2005) -- Secretary of the Army Francis J. Harvey opened the annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army with a speech that touched on the service and sacrifice of American Soldiers and his thoughts on how the Army is transforming to meet the threats of the 21st century.
“Because of (the Soldiers’) service, the Army is, and will remain, the pre-eminent land power in the world today. In pitched battles at places like Samarra, An Najaf, Falluja, Tal Al Afar and Mosul, our Soldiers are defeating insurgents and giving the Iraqi people an alternative to those immoral, ruthless dictators and terrorists who sow hate and intolerance and kill innocent civilians,” Harvey said.
Soldiers answer `Call to duty'
Echoing the theme of this year’s meeting, “the Call to duty,” Harvey spoke at length about the willingness of Soldiers to defend the nation.
“Those who volunteer and answer the call to duty are willing to give more than they take. They are driven, I believe, by love of country, a devotion to duty, and a willingness to sacrifice everything so others might live in peace and freedom,” he said.
Transformation more than material
Noting the service and sacrifice of Soldiers throughout the nation’s history, Harvey said the contemporary security environment has changed dramatically since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He noted that the Army’s transformation is more than just material solutions; it’s about developing a full-spectrum force with greatly enhanced capabilities that are continuously striving for improvement.
“These changes are not about one piece of hardware, or one technology development, or one process improvement or one organization,” Harvey said. Change “is a continuous process that, in essence, never ends.”
Among these changes, Harvey said the Army Modular Force Initiative is at the center of Army Force Transformation, while the Future Combat Systems is at the center of the effort to modernize ground forces.
MOSs to move between AC/RC
In combination with the modular force initiative and FCS, Harvey said rebalancing the force is another essential element of Transformation. He said about 125,000 military occupational specialty positions will be moved between the active and reserve components by 2011, enabling the Army to provide the right mix of job skills, relieve stress on the force and improve readiness.
Harvey also said the Army is taking steps to increase the size of the operational Army – the warfighting side of the Army – by 40,000 Soldiers by the end of 2007. Harvey said the focus is on providing the necessary manpower to fill out the modular brigade combat teams, the redesigned division and corps headquarters, and the maneuver support and sustainment units in the operational Army.
Lean/Six Sigma to re-engineer business
Along with Army Force Transformation, Harvey also outlined the plan for improving how the Army does business. He noted that earlier this year, the Army initiated a comprehensive Army-wide Business Transformation centered on re-engineering business processes. This process, called Lean/Six Sigma, is designed to take work out and improve cycle time. Ultimately, it will lead to more efficient production that frees resources that can be used to better support the warfighting side of the Army, he said.
Harvey closed his remarks with a reminder of how much the Army and its Soldiers have accomplished over the past year.
“With unsurpassed professionalism, courage and commitment, our Soldiers have endured great hardship, lost many friends and comrades along the way, and have made lasting contributions to the peace, freedom and security,” he said. “I am honored to serve as the Secretary of the Army and I look forward to 2006 to continue the tremendous progress we have made in building the Army of the future through transformation and modernization,” Harvey said.
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| September 2005 |
Bringing Lean Systems Thinking to Six Sigma
Used together, these two methodologies improve each other.
by Paul Mullenhour and Jamie Flinchbaugh
March 2005, Quality Digest
For years companies have struggled with the dilemma of which quality improvement program to use: lean or Six Sigma. While some are still debating the either/or issue, others have come to realize that lean tools and Six Sigma
work well together to achieve quick process improvements and greater product consistencies. This is true particularly if you subscribe to a top-level and often misunderstood and misaligned definition of each. Lean equals zero waste. Six Sigma equals zero variation. Certainly there’s some overlap here because lean includes variation elimination as well, but the point is, you really can’t separate the two when it comes to developing an overall improvement effort.
Lean encourages action along a broad front by empowering people at all levels to contribute. This allows organizations to welcome challenges and implement improvement initiatives. Of course, improvement starts by using the appropriate tools. We’re all familiar with the results of lean tools and practices such as process mapping, kanban, kaizen and 5S. Kaizen can help us standardize a process or eliminate waste, and often we see results within days. 5S can help us structure our environment so that problems can be identified more quickly.
Six Sigma brings the discipline of define, measure, analyze, improve and control, as well as the rigor of statistical analysis, to identify a root cause, sustain improvement and provide the solid measurements that create a balanced scorecard. Most of us know by experience that Six Sigma is a solid, scientific methodology for reducing process variability. Process variability affects quality because the more you reduce variation, the more likely it is that the process will produce a good product. It’s not just quality, though. Variation reduction also affects the entire value stream (a uniquely lean view) because reducing variation will provide more consistent yields, which means that you can predict what you will get out based on what you put in. Therefore, you can design your process to flow more continuously, with less just-in-case inventory and improved lead times. Very often this is an underappreciated benefit of reducing variation.
If we look at improvement through both lean and Six Sigma lenses, we have the necessary tools, methods and strategies to not only uncover root causes, but also to pay attention to the obvious. In the old days, this was known as “common sense,” and as Mark Twain once observed, “There’s nothing common about common sense anymore.”
A winning combination
For many of us, it’s no longer a matter of lean vs. Six Sigma, but one question still remains: How do we integrate the various efforts at improvement to deliver sustainable results?
To answer this question, we have to know how companies fail at integrating lean and Six Sigma. One major way of failing is to do this improvement work strictly for the sake of lean or the sake of Six Sigma. These are the wrong reasons. Companies should execute lean and Six Sigma for the sake of business results. If leaders don’t clearly provide a “why” and “how” for lean and Six Sigma, the focus will not be on leveraging the methods for business results.
The second most common way companies fail is in choosing a few tools—whether lean, Six Sigma or something else—and drastically overusing them. An example of this is the overuse of kaizen. There are no magical tools that can do all things. It takes the right tool at the right time. If you can’t find a tool to do what you need, you shouldn’t force-fit one. Develop your own tool to accomplish what you need.
A major utility company that leveraged its improvement project selection criteria for business results used the right combination of lean tools and Six Sigma to solve a problem with respect to third-party billing. Challenged with improving the billing process, eliminating the defect and retrieving lost revenue, the company assembled a team consisting of a lean Six Sigma Black Belt from finance, a Green Belt from the pole yard, a pole yard foreman and various yard personnel. One of the first steps was a kaizen workshop where the current state was documented through a series of process maps. Next, waste and nonvalue-added activities in the current state were identified. From that information, the team worked to redesign a more ideal state. At that stage, specific lean tools such as one-piece flow, 5S, visual control, control point standardization and error proofing were used. Proving that Six Sigma can be equally effective outside the manufacturing arena, the company also used tools such as FMEA and hypothesis testing to understand, measure and systematically reduce the variations in the billing process. The result? A $1.4 million revenue enhancement.
Another example is that of a food company that wanted to improve its processing. Like the utility company, this organization was focused on business results and used both lean tools and Six Sigma to realize them. For the Six Sigma initiative, one of its suppliers even loaned it a Black Belt to help establish baseline data on its equipment.
This company was faced with a regulation that required it to completely purge, clean and check its system every 72 hours to test for bacterial growth before running production again. This cleaning process was taking too long, chewing up capacity and resulting in back orders and quality issues. The challenge was to reduce the 10-hour cleaning cycle time without sacrificing the quality of the product or equipment.
The company mobilized the key people involved with the process and attacked the problem like a NASCAR racing team pit crew. The crew was coached by a lean Six Sigma Black Belt using process mapping, lean layout, visual management with digital cameras and process capability analysis in the product packing area. Cycle time was reduced by more than two hours, and improvement in the overall capability of the packaging line equaled an additional increase in annual production of more than 30 percent. All backlog was eliminated.
Lean systems thinking
Chances are you’ve never sat on a two-legged stool, and with good reason: It’s tough to do when you can’t find the right balance.
Balancing lean and Six Sigma in your operation might give you the best of both worlds, but not the best of all worlds. Without a third essential component, real success doesn’t have a leg to stand on (pardon the pun). The cultural transformation brought on by lean leadership and lean systems thinking within an organization provides the long-term stability—or balance—necessary to sustain your quality improvement efforts.
Whatever combination of lean tools and Six Sigma you’re using, when it comes to quality improvement, they work. This is good news, but it’s not the whole story.
The real “Aha” moment for companies comes when lean systems thinking is factored into the quality improvement equation. Lean systems thinking is about empowering people to drive change. This is accomplished by following these five key principles:
Directly observe work as activities, connections and flows
Systematically eliminate waste
Establish high agreement of both what and how
Systematically solve problems
Create a learning organization
The fundamental message here is simple, yet not universally understood. No technique, tool or methodology alone can improve a process or system and sustain that improvement long-term. It takes lean systems thinkers to successfully implement lean tools and drive Six Sigma change.
To see lean systems thinking as a distinct leg in our stool analogy—separate from lean tools and as a companion to Six Sigma—is to understand that it’s not just a series of events or methodologies that contribute to problem fixes. These efforts often lead to what we call the three Fs of improvement: frustration, flavor of the month and, ultimately, failure to deliver sustainable results.
Lean rules provide the guidance needed to implement improvement, explaining the “why” behind lean tools and the Six Sigma methodology. Lean rules also help develop new solutions to problems. For everyone in an organization, these rules help structure activities, connect customers and suppliers, specify and simplify flow paths, and bring improvement through experimentation at the right level.
Imagine driving in your car. You have all the tools at your disposal: an easy-to-read speedometer, a clear windshield with an accurate view of the speed limit sign, a smooth accelerator pedal and even cruise control. However, if the principles or beliefs of the driver are inconsistent with the correct use of these tools, there’s very little chance that individual will stay within the speed limit. No amount of tools or rules will change people’s behavior. They can guide, coax, constrain and aid, but they cannot change how someone acts. Only by changing their beliefs can you change their actions for good.
Lean tools and Six Sigma initiatives can help us change the way we do things, but without a mechanism such as lean systems thinking to align the organization’s goals and objectives for the most effective application of these tools, an improvement strategy won’t be complete.
The best of all worlds
Consider one plant manager who recently bought a new piece of equipment designed to increase production by 30 percent and free up 3,000 square feet of floor space. While he couldn’t wait to get it into his shop, he wondered how he would get the equipment up and running without causing order delays or increasing his number of defects, which averaged about 2.5 percent.
With the assistance of a lean Six Sigma specialist, the plant manager trained, engaged and empowered a cross-functional team to accomplish this mission. On the lean side, the team’s efforts included a kaizen workshop, waste walks and process mapping. As for Six Sigma, the team performed process capability studies, looked at quality data for defect identification and did baseline metrics for all product lines.
The team was also introduced to lean systems thinking. With an understanding of the current state, the team established an ideal vision and developed an action plan. This process improvement plan encompassed input measurements around safety, delivery and cost—all of which directly affected output. The team is now implementing a complete relayout of the shop floor and undertaking a substantial 5S effort to uncover other improvement opportunities. All of this has been done, by the way, during the company’s SAP implementation, which included the introduction of bar coding on the shop floor.
It seems like an impossible task, but the balanced effort provided by lean tools, Six Sigma and lean systems thinking is helping to accomplish it in a smooth, undisruptive manner. Thanks to the third leg of our proverbial stool, the team approached the challenge systematically, with a shared vision.
Successful quality improvement involves using all the tools and methodologies at your disposal. Traditional lean efforts will help you reduce flow time and waste, leading to improvements that will boost overall quality. Six Sigma, with its focus on statistics, will help you deliver a more consistent product. But to fully support your long-term goals, you need the all-important third component: the cultural change that comes with adopting lean rules, principles and vision.
About the authors
Paul Mullenhour is a senior management consultant with Achievement Dynamics and a partner of The Lean Learning Center. He provides consulting services, training and education in a wide variety of areas, specifically lean manufacturing and Six Sigma. He has more than 20 years of experience in all aspects of developing and implementing quality improvement. Mullenhour is a graduate of the Goldratt Institute and is a certified Master Black Belt.
Jamie Flinchbaugh is a founder and managing partner of The Lean Learning Center (www.leanlearningcenter.com) and has become one of the nation’s top thinkers and leaders in lean transformation and lean manufacturing. Through years of research and application, including previous stints at DaimlerChrysler Corp., DTE Energy and research at MIT, Flinchbaugh has created, presented, and successfully implemented new and powerful approaches to lean.
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