Mike Wroblewski is the former Continuous Improvement Manager and Quality Manager with Matthews International, and has some previous experiences with lean manufacturing and other quality strategies. He is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt. In 2006, he left the manufacturing corporate world and became a consultant helping others on their lean journey and with Six Sigma.
He maintains a blog called Got Boondoggle
All the answers below were from Mike’s experiences as a Continuous Improvement Manager and Quality Manger with Matthews International plus some previous experiences.
1. How long have you been a Six Sigma practitioner/Black Belt?
I completed my Six Sigma Black Belt certification in 2003.
2. What made you decide to go Six Sigma?
After years in industrial engineering and manufacturing management positions, I was hired as a quality manager to promote quality improvements and basic lean implementation. I decided to improve my own quality knowledge by studying the six sigma approach to quality improvement.
3. What benefits so far are derived from it? Could you quantify them, even in terms of percentage?
The first 5 six sigma projects completed in 2003 – 2005 helped us completely eliminate one quality defect present for over 10 years, and dramatically reduce occurances of several other nonconformances. In another case, we experienced a defect in 50% of our units caught in house and improved our first pass yield to 99.9% after improvement using the six sigma methodology. The best benefit was getting a better understanding and use of quality improvement tools by both the shop floor employees and management.
4. What is the most difficult part in the deployment/implementation?
The most difficult part is getting management support to properly use the six sigma approach. Management wants quick results and proper six sigma takes longer to get results. In addition, the day to day problems in business can prevent you from spending the proactive time to use six sigma.
5. What were/are the obstacles?
Beside getting time to work on six sigma projects, it is difficult for some people in the company to accept some of the results of a six sigma investigation. Many times they have strong beliefs as to the source of the problem and that may not turn out to be true. This presents a problem getting buying to the solution.
6. How did you overcome them?
I use data to get everybody on the same page and getting everybody to go to gemba to see for themselves helps!
7. What is the level of acceptance from your people and managers?
Typically, the shop floor is supportive of any improvements that makes their work easier and better so they accept it as long as you include them in generating ideas for a solution. Management is tougher to get acceptance. They don’t like to appear incompetent or want you changing their area. Part of it is a control issue. Also, they don’t see some of the value in the six sigma approach and have other “top priorities” that they want their people working on.
8. What is the cost of your Six Sigma deployment so far?
Most of the cost is in time for the six sigma team to work on the project. None of our improvements required major capital dollars. I think the most I spent on tool was under $5000.
9. Do you have consultants?
No consultants, we did it all internal after my training.
10. What advice can you give to those who are thinking of going into Six Sigma?
Understand that the six sigma projects take longer to complete versus kaizen events in lean but delivers excellent quality results. Remember that six sigma approach starts and ends with your customer, (quality improvements that delight your customers), it is not for company benefits that can’t be experienced by your customer. The tools of six sigma are not revolutionary or new, it just the methodology that is new. Six sigma in not about how many people became black belts or green belts, it’s about using the tools to make quality improvements. Finally, focus your efforts on a few projects at a time and complete them, that is better then having many open projects draining resources and failing to finish any of them.
