Using Six Sigma Tools for Talent Acquisition

I used to work for a training center of a placement agency. Every day, people seeking jobs overseas would crowd the office. And so I thought, recruitment work or the placement business is fast and easy. But that was a misconception. I knew about this when the HR of that agency approached me for help in looking for engineers for a steel company in the Middle East.

I found that there was pressure from employers to fill certain positions with highly qualified people, and the agency was having a hard time accomplishing that task. Maybe for those companies facing the same dilemma, you can learn from what Volta Asia Enterprises is doing.

Volt Asia Enterprises, is a world class leader in the staffing service industry based in Malaysia. To improve efficiencies, the company is going into Six Sigma and using Six Sigma tools such as DMAIC and SIPOC.

Speaking before the American Chamber of Commerce Human Resources Committee workshop in Taipei, Excelsis Magno, regional general manager of Volt Asia Enterprises, said that “Six Sigma is a business philosophy that matches a company’s basic strategies to customer needs and expectations.”

At Volta for example, she further said:

The basic approach is to understand the current performance level. To improve existing processes, the DMAIC roadmap is applied to define, measure, analyze, improve and control. For redesigning a process, the technique is define, measure, analyze, design and verify. She then defined the various roles, before discussing concepts and sharing possible applications.

Statistical metrics are used to describe the quality of a process in a state of near perfection with only 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO). To emphasize the benefits of working towards Six Sigma, here are two examples: For every opening out of 10,000 total that are not filled in a year,” posited Magno, “at 93 percent (three sigma), there are 58 openings a month; at 99 percent (four sigma), there are 19 a month; at 99.9997 percent (six sigma), there are merely three every 100 years.

Continue reading…

Source:
China Post

*Photo from Stock.Xchng

Filed under: Six Sigma Organizations, Human Resource, DMAIC, Six Sigma, SIPOC

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Hattiesburg, Missouri Adopts Lean Six Sigma

The list of governments going into Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma is getting longer. My previous posts had featured Erie County, City of Fort Wayne in Indiana, and Iowa. These governments have implemented Six Sigma and Lean to improve operations and ultimately their service to their people.

Hattiesburg, Forrest County in Mississippi is another city that is adopting Lean Six Sigma for the same reason. According to the news article on the city’s website, HattiesburgAmerican.com, city officials have said that their program will focus on key principles known as DMAIC: Define opportunities, measure performance, analyze opportunity, improve performance and control performance.

Already, under this program, the city has selected city employees, Julia Lowe, an Urban Development accountant, and Maj. Billy Lane with the police department to attend Lean Six Sigma training classes.

Common notion has it that public service sucks. But with these cities taking the lead in changing that reputation, I’m sure in time, excellent public service will be achieved and sustained.

Source:
hattiesburgamerican.com, City adopts Lean Six Sigma

Filed under: Services, Lean Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations, Public Sector, DMAIC, Six Sigma

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Reinvigorating Your Six Sigma Deployments

The biggest challenge in any Six Sigma initiative—or any other initiatives for that matter—is how to sustain the enthusiasm of everyone. Better yet, how to get them inspired every step of the way, especially when they are faced with one roadblock after another.

Isn’t it that in the DMAIC, the Control phase is probably the most difficult one to manage?

If you’re faced with a similar situation, you may learn from this podcast script courtesy of SBTI.

In that podcast titled, Six Sigma Reinvigoration, Bill Hertzing and Debby Sollenberger, Vice-President for SBTI, talk about how to overcome malaise in your Six Sigma deployment.

BH: What then IS reinvigoration.what does that mean?

DS: Well, reinvigoration means understanding where your deployment is at its current state and then making it better. Reinvigoration can take many forms.again depending upon where a Company is in their Lean Six Sigma journey. The first step, as with everything in Six Sigma, is to measure.to assess your deployment in its current state.in other words conduct a critical analysis of your deployment. And, based on what you find, reinvigoration may mean going back to basics. Back to basics meaning understanding the known critical to quality deployment dimensions.and making sure they’re not overlooked. OR.Reinvigoration may not be a back to basics issue.reinvigoration may mean that it’s time to extend your great deployment.take your current deployment successing further across the organization.

Read more…

Listen to the podcast here.

*Photo from MorgueFile

Filed under: Deployment, Six Sigma References, DMAIC, SBTI, Six Sigma

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Linh Ho’s 2008 Six Sigma Resolutions for IT Service Management

For those companies that are enjoying the benefits of Six Sigma, I’m sure they would continue with Six Sigma in 2008. However, for those who have yet to see the value of Six Sigma in their organizations, I hope you’ll find that one methodology that will help prople your organization to success this year.

For all of us, let us learn from the insights below.

Over at eweek.com, Linh Ho, co-author of the IT Service Management Forum’s Six Sigma for IT Management, shared her Six Sigma Resolutions for IT Service Management in 2008.

• Listen to the business/customers. Six Sigma and ITIL suggest ways to do that and improve the value IT brings to the business and understand the priorities to really capture what’s important to the client.
• Focus on what is critical to quality. Often, IT shops are oblivious to the needs of their customers. Six Sigma helps IT really understand what’s more client and revenue impacting.
• Improve, pay attention to quality improvement. If you improve the quality of service, essentially the business that depends on those services sees a bottom line improvement.
• Measure and report. Many IT shops have no mechanism to measure and report on service quality. Six Sigma has the tools.
• Initiative a continual cycle or continual service improvement project. Six Sigma techniques such as DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) can help with such efforts, which should start small.
• Create SLAs (service level agreements) that are relevant to the business stakeholders. These SLAs have to be more client-focused and less infrastructure component focused. Involve your business counterparts to set these SLAs to insure the services you are delivering are relevant to the business and to customer needs.

Read more…

Filed under: Tools/Toolkits, Deployment, DMAIC, Six Sigma

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Six Sigma Questions for the Holidays

I don’t know about other countries, but here in the Philippines, we prepare—anticipate may even be a better word—for Christmas about three months before the day itself.

Preparing means playing Christmas songs, putting on Christmas decors. Stores begin to sell Christmas stuff as early too, and I know some people start their Christmas shopping, too, that early.

Now, if we view it from a management standpoint, we would ask:

• do those stores selling Christmas stuff early get good ROIs without battling with inventory issues?
• do they avoid the holiday rush thus they don’t suffer from delays in delivery
• is the early selling dictated by VOC?
• do these stores have the data to support their action?
• what metrics did they use to connect supply to ROI?
• since I see this happening every year, do most customers really shop early?
• do these stores try to improve the quality of their product and service every year?
• have they set up a devise that will tell them that this is the way to go?
• or are they just doing some agenda-setting, that is condition the mind of customers to shop early and prepare for Christmas early, to increase bottomline?

Holly Hawkins had similar questions more than a year ago. Check her post!

If you have the answers to these questions, do share them with us.

*Photo from pbhomepage

Filed under: Benefits and Savings, DMAIC, Six Sigma, ROI, VOC

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Six Sigma Not the Be-all and End-all at 3M

A few months back, there was some controversy over innovation and Six Sigma, and that some say never the twain shall meet. Some quarters say, Six Sigma stifle creativity or innovation, others say Six Sigma improves innovation.

Perhaps the company that is most associated with innovation and creativity is 3M. For years, too, we know that 3M has been an advocate of Six Sigma, until a new leadership says otherwise.

In my previoous post, I even hinted that 3M should not abandon Six Sigma at all in favor of innovation. Now, an article on Design News says that 3M will not be using Six Sigma on its R&D efforts, and probably for good measure.

The new chief at 3M, George Buckley is not an anti-Six Sigma guy. In fact, he’s a strong proponent of lean Six Sigma in manufacturing and supply chain. However, for 3M, he believes that Six Sigma will find better use for transactional activities rather than for research and development.

Further, 3M will still be using Six Sigma DOE routinely in basic research and 3M researchers still use elements of DMAIC toolset. In fact, 58,000 projects at 3M have used some element of DMAIC and more than 55,000 3M employees have achieved the minimum level “Green Belt” training since the year 2000.

Click here for the features and podcasts that tell the story of 3M’s journey with innovation and Six Sigma.

Source:
Design News, a Six Sigma Zone featured link

*Photo from Stock.Xchng

Filed under: Manufacturing, Lean Six Sigma, Six Sigma Organizations, 3M, R&D, DMAIC, Innovation

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When is Six Sigma Six Sigma?

I’ve just finished reading an article on ICMI titled “What Does Six Sigma Really Mean for Call Centers?”

Peter Bloom, president of Customer Operations Performance Center Inc. (COPC), one of the few organizations that offers call center Six Sigma training and certification, says,“Most call centers are operating between 1 and 1.5 Sigma, and those that have adopted the Six Sigma methodology are striving to develop from 1 to 1. 5, 1.5 to 2 and 2.5 to 3 Sigma. There is no company in the call center space or in the service space that is really working toward achieving processes with a Six Sigma outcome, and that’s because we don’t have to be that good. We’re not building rocket ships where peoples’ lives are at stake, so you don’t have to have that level of performance.”

Rather what call centers do is adhere to the principles of the Six Sigma methodology, that is using metrics to measure and drive performance, the companies are able to focus on continuous improvement, very process-oriented, and very focused on the customer requirements.

That’s what Ilene Lustigman, Director of Customer Service, NCCI, is also doing for her company, which right now is benefitting the company a lot. They follow the DMAIC and incorporate it to their QMS methodology. So it’s not entirely Six Sigma, but their quality management system is DMAIC dominated.

So let me go back to my original question: When is Six Sigma Six Sigma?

*Photo from Stock.Xchng

Filed under: Six Sigma Organizations, Software/Technology, Deployment, Call Center/BPO, DMAIC, Six Sigma

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Six Sigma Improves Processes at Hotels

Saurabh Jaggi, Senior Manager Quality and leads the six sigma initiative at Prudential Process Management Services, shares some interesting insights on how to use Six Sigma in the hospitality industry.

I agree with him when he says that the hospitality industry can benefit a lot from Six Sigma, especially that in every operating hour, hotel personnel are in touch with the customers and building meaningful relationships with them.

Saurabh shares the following:

Some of the areas/ processes where this approach may add value.

Hotel-wide

• Enhance Customer Loyalty
• Reduce Employee attrition
• Productivity/Efficiency Improvement
• Improve Work-life balance
• Reduce Billing errors/losses
• Developing better performance measures/ metrics
• Increase Revenue
• Reduce Cost
• Capture ‘Voice of Customer’ data

Front Office Operations/ Sales & Marketing

• Reduce wait time during peak check-in time
• Reduce wait time during peak check-out time
• Eliminate billing errors and improve accuracy
• Reduce No shows
• Increase Occupancy
• Optimal utilisation of the current product mix (rooms) to increase revenue
• Increase customer delight at the Executive Club
• Reduce/eliminate loss calls (Operators area)
• Accuracy of information

Food and Beverage Service / Production

• To maintain optimal inventory
• Minimise wastage/pilferage
• Standardised output of Food and Beverage
• Reduce the time from order to service
• Optimal utilisation of current product mix (F&B/Outlets) to increase revenue

Accommodation Operation (Housekeeping)

• Reduce the turnaround time of making/turning down a room
• Standardisation of cleanliness across areas

Purchase/Stores

• Reduce Inventory surplus
• Cost Benefit Analysis between cost of inventory and cost of storage of products where prices vary seasonally
• Standardise the operating procedure of issuance to various departments
• Reduce the turnaround time of issuance to various departments

Human Resources/ Personnel

• Accuracy of payroll
• Documentation management
• Reduce the turnaround time of recruitment
• Reduce the turnaround time of relieving
• Increase the employee satisfaction rate

Read more…

Source:
Express Hospitality

*Photo from CottonBay of Starwood Hotels and Resorts

Filed under: Deployment, DMAIC, Hotels

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OpenSource Six Sigma™ Releases New Products

OpenSource Six Sigma™ is adding six new products to its successful first release, the DMAIC v8.1. The new products will include the individual Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control phases as stand alone products.

Open Source Six Sigma™ will introduce DMAIC by phases for $29.99 ea. and Process management v6.0 for $49.99. All other rates will remain the same until our introductory rate of $34.95 expires July 16, 2007, when DMAIC v8.1 will increase to $99.99.

Source:
Finance Visor, a Six Sigma Zone featured link

Filed under: Software/Technology, Deployment, Six Sigma References, DMAIC, Six Sigma Zone, OpenSource Six Sigma™

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Six Sigma and Software Development

Like any other processes, software development cannot be without defects. In fact, since I’m exposed to it, I think finding and avoiding software defects are far more difficult to do. That is because with software development, the output is always vulnerable to bugs, and you won’t know it until the software is run. One more thing, even if the software is running well already, it is still prone to bugs.

So, it’s good to hear that Six Sigma can actually help reduce software defects and improve quality. According to an article on SearchCIO.com, Six Sigma when employed to software development can do the following: 

• Six Sigma can be used as an analytical engine for process improvement.
• For software issues such as availability and quality of data, and the frequency in which projects go through the lifecycle, Six Sigma’s analysis methods can help uncover the root cause of different issues and procvide solutions.
• Six Sigma can be used strategically to enable the implementation of what I call domain-specific improvement techniques.
• Implement Motorola’s SDFSS or Software Design for Six Sigma.

Read more…

Source:
SearchCIO.com, iSixSigma featured link

Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Software/Technology, Deployment, Processes, iSixSigma, DMAIC, DFSS

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