Mr. Goodie Minabo Ibru, Chairman of Ikeja Hotels PLC of Sheraton Lagos Hotel and Tower, has turned to Six Sigma in their operations.
Ibru said although that althought the model is relatively new in Nigeria, it has proved to be the key for survival in today’s corporate world where only the best survives.
Sheraton Lagos Hotel & Towers adopted Six Sigma about 2 years ago. In these two years, the company has improvements its processes from product delivery through service delivery to guest and employee satisfaction. All these have positive impact on the bottom line or profit.
What happened to Sheraton Lagos Hotel & Towers has also encouraged other organizations, such as City Bank and Cadbury Nigeria PLC, to practice Six Sigma.
“With mergers and acquisitions becoming commonplace in the Nigerian corporate world today, Six Sigma should become very useful in helping to model, measure, modify and improve companies’ business strategies for increased profitability.”
Dr. Obinna Muogboh, faculty member of Lagos Business School, Pan-African University, also said, “In many world-class organisations, Six Sigma has overshadowed techniques previously viewed as the continuous improvement tools of choice. This is as a result of the bottom-line effect — Six Sigma directly impacts financial results and customer satisfaction. However, even with the threat of globalisation, many Nigerian companies are still not aware of the tremendous power of Six Sigma as a competitive weapon and yet some are complacent and seem to be taking a “wait and see” attitude.”
