Sun Chemical Corporation is the world’s largest producer of printing inks, organic pigments, colorants and coatings. With years of continuous improvement and research, it is able to provide high quality supplies and services for a wide range of operations.
Through the years, it operates on the promise of delivering the right solution at the right time. Every time.
How do you think the company is able to achieve that? Through Six Sigma, of course.
The company’s Six Sigma deployment was not without challenges—naturally. Because of its 300 sites around the world and products sold in every country, first, it had to contend with a highly decentralized organization. It also had to introduce Six Sigma in local languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Dutch, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, and Czech. When the company decided to launch the initiative, its budget had already been approved. There were many other internal challenges, too.
Still the company persevered. One of its guiding principles was “the process must be owned to be sustained.” True enough, it launched a breakthrough strategy involving the following:
- senior management commitment and support
- leadership training and alignment with Business
- strategy and their goals
- Bblack Belts dedicated full time
- renewal every six to nine months
- strive for entitlement and set stretch goals
- share best practices
- benchmark the best
- finance and business leaders report savings
SunChemical’s roadmap to winning has Six Sigma at the center surrounded by safety, customer value system, productivity, and people development. This roadmap resulted in the following:
Actions
- Deliver Targeted Savings
- Identify/Train Master Blackbelts
- Train 75 Blackbelts and 200 Greenbelts, DfSS in Europe
- Reenergize with Visual Workplace & CIR Deployment
- Develop Metric Maps for All Major Processes
- Every Employee Minimum 4 hours Six Sigma Training
Results
- Delivered 65% of Targeted Savings in 2003
- Common Language and Foundation for Productivity
- 9 Master Black Belts, 60 Black Belts, 289 Green Belts and 34 DfSS Black Belts; 85% Black Belt certified by 2004
- Deployed Visual Workplace & CIRs
- Continued Communications and Celebrations
- Six Sigma Goals built into Business Unit Plan in 2004
- MBBs Aligned with Business Unit Leaders in 2004
- Deployed Product Quality & Fitness for Use in 2004
- Lean Sigma Piloted and Rollout in 2005
At the bottom of all these is creating a system to understand and meet customer requirements. As if this is not enough, SunChemicals went on to combine Lean with Six Sigma. By 2006, the company will be totally transformed by maximing its Six Sigma investment.
Read more: Reviewing, Measuring and Maintaining the Effectiveness of your Six Sigma Deployment
