Deploying Six Sigma at Small Companies

Having mentioned the considerations for implementing Six Sigma, we see that large and small companies will be facing the same issues differently.

We’ve already established that all companies big or small can benefit from Six Sigma. A small company with less than 100 employees however may have few resources available to complete projects. They may also have problems with the number of employees who can work on the project at the same time carry on with their tasks.

The main consideration for small companies will be how (and how many) to train employees in the tools and techniques of Six Sigma. The short term costs for training and the length of time to complete projects may take longer because small companies cannot free up too many individuals in a short period of time to make the improvements.

Since Six Sigma initiative is bound by its traditional focus on training people, small companies must refine the deployment model to meet their needs.

We can learn how European companies do it. European companies are relatively small. The average number of employees is six. Obviously, they cannot afford to be undermanned and wait for six to nine months for their three employees to be away and train for Six Sigma Black Belt. In a less complex environment, it is easier to check if a particular idea making a significant difference in the the bottom line. Small companies, therefore can focus more on results than on training.

Therefore a project-based learning is recommended. Small businesses will have Black Belts candidates learn the tools through direct application to a project. Candidates pick a project and learn the tools through a series of workshops that focus only on those tools that can be applied immediately. No more three-day modules on design of experiments when the problem does not require it.

What this kind of learning needs are consultants with practical experience who can consult and coach. Another good thing about this method is that the whole Six Sigma team, not only the Black Belt candidates, will learn from the experience. This reduces the length of the project as everyone is involved in it. Consequently, the organization achieves the desired results faster.

The benefits of this approach are:

* Increases the probability of success dramatically
* Reduces time to complete the project
* Focuses on learning just-in-time instead of all-at-once
* Limits training to what is needed
* Allows adapting to the pace of the team and the needs of the business

Small business may make an initial high investment on Six Sigma projects or they may not. As Forrest Breyfogle says, “It is all about an investment upon which organization and personal existence/excellence depends.”

Sources:
Six Sigma Deployment At Large And Small Companies
Faster Deployment for Europe’s Small/Medium Businesses

Filed under: Deployment

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Some Considerations for a Six Sigma Deployment

I’ve cited the big companies that I would be interviewing for my Six Sigma project. Some of you may have wondered, and one of them is my colleague Mr. Reden Rodriguez, if smaller companies would benefit from Six Sigma or could even afford it.

Yes to both questions. Six Sigma can help any company to grow, especially if Management is committed to support the initiative 100 percent.

Most functions in business can be seen as processes. Six Sigma comes in as the methodology to understand, analyze, and improve processes via projects. The projects take on one process at a time with the goal of improving the results of the process. The approach includes understanding a problem, collecting and analyzing data, identifying the root cause, implementing the corrective action/solution, and making sure the process sustains the improvements. More importantly, decisions are based on facts and data, not gut feelings or how it is done somewhere else. Ultimately, the whole organization improves customer satisfaction, product and service quality and on-time delivery, and saves on product or service development cost.

Despite these promised benefits, most organizations hesitate to take on the Six Sigma challenge not because they fear they may not afford it but because they do not know how to get it started. Initially, what a company needs is the decision to go for Six Sigma. Once the commitment is there, everything will follow.

Some of the many things that must be considered when developing a Six Sigma deployment plan include:

• Number of Champions to be trained, when and by whom.
• Method and criteria for selecting and assigning Champions.
• Number of Black Belt candidates to be trained, certified, by whom and when.
• Selection criteria for identifying Black Belt candidates.
• Assigned or voluntary Black Belts.
• Part-time or full-time Black Belts.
• Number of projects Black Belt trainees will work on at a time (typically one).
• Permanent Black Belts or rotation back into the business role they came from.
• Number of projects a Black Belt works on during a 12-month period.
• Method for identifying, prioritizing, selecting, assigning, tracking, monitoring and reporting Six Sigma projects.
• When or if the business needs a Master Black Belt.
• Content for project scorecards/dashboards.
• Frequency of executive reviews.
• Ownership of each project outcome.
• Finance department’s role in verifying project costs and savings.
• Process for recognizing, rewarding and celebrating project successes.

Read more: What Small Business CEOs Must Know to Start Six Sigma

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My Six Sigma Research: Part 1

I’ve mentioned that I am going to write about Six Sigma deployments of Philippine-based manufacturing and service companies. For the most part of this study, I will be doing interviews. I have the questions ready and I’ve been trying to make appointments with the companies. I hope by end of this week, I can start my interviews.

Meanwhile, I am researching the background of the companies that I’m going to study. First on the list is Read-Rite Philippines. Read-Rite is one of the world’s largest independent suppliers of magnetic recording heads for hard disk drives. The company has headquarters in the U.S., but has manufacturing plants in various countries, including one in Laguna, Philippines.

I guess among the many Six Sigma projects of Read-Rite, the one done in the Philippine facility made a good impact. The case study was in fact featured in isixsigma.com.

Read-Rite’s manufacturing plant in the Phillippines is the Tape Head Business Unit, specifically handling assembly and testing. It manufactures magnetoresistive tape heads to the entry level through mid-range tape drive markets, with products such as Travan, DLT (Digital Linear Tape), SLR (Scalable Linear Recording) and SDLT (Super DLT).

The project was aimed at improving First Pass Yield of the plants’ Dynamic Electrical Test activity from 61% to 90%. The Elite Six Sigma team began its work in December 2002 and finished its DMAIC project in February 2003. The team achieved its goal, resulting in a cost savings of 41 cents per unit.

This is quite interesting, don’t you think?

Now, two years later, we will find out how the facility is doing. We will find out the answers to the following questions:

1. How was your company performing before Six Sigma?
2. What made you decide to deploy Six Sigma?
3. Who/What started it?
4. How did you get started?
5. What was Management’s role?
6. What were the obstacles/limitations?
7. How did you overcome them?
8. What was the cost?
9. What was the most significant component of the project? Was it training?
10. What percent of the organization are into the project?
11. How many worked full time on the project?
12. What did you achieve?
13. What are the tangible benefits?
14. Have you sustained the methodology? Why? Why not?
15. What is your next step?

Source:
Read-Rite Low Tape Head FPY Manufacturing Case Study

Filed under: Six Sigma Organizations

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Six Sigma in the Philippines

Six Sigma is a quality management program applying statistical methods to business processes. It can improve operating efficiency, reduced variation, defects, and waste. It started in the United States with Motorola then adopted by GE, Allied Signal, Texas Instruments, Inc., and many other American-based successful companies.

Already becoming widespread in the US, the strongest economy in the world, can Europe and UK be far behind? There are already successful Six Sigma deployments within UK operations. GDA (which is admittedly co-owned by GE and Marconi), Black & Decker, and Raytheon Marine have proved the methodology to be a valid approach for UK industry Smallpiece Enterprises.

Despite the many well-documented improvements, the last government white paper on competitiveness shows that UK industry is still failing to match the performance of major overseas competition, in terms of productivity, efficiency and quality. Productivity is 20-40 per cent behind the US and the other leading European nations and the gap with France and Germany is not closing.

I am sure Six Sigma deployments in every country face challenges. I’v read that in the Asia-Pacific area, Indian companies are slowly going into Six Sigma. This brought me to my own country, the Philippines. As multinationals came and started competing with locals, many organizations have looked for that one thing that will make them more competitive. They have probably tried all the quality management strategies, from ISO, Five S, Kaizen, and Six Sigma, in the hope that these methodologies will improve key processes areas such as high scrap rates and costly waste, under-utilized capacity, and slow cycle times due to high-process variation.

My succeeding entries will explore the deployment of Six Sigma in Philippine-based service and manufacturing companies. I will gather all the information through interviews and research. Among the companies that I will be studying are:

Citibank, a recognized leader in arranging financing and providing financial services for the sovereign and the public utility sector as well as top tier corporates, multinationals and other financial institutions.
Unionbank, among the industry’s best in key performance measures: absolute profit, cost-to-income ratio, return on equity, return on assets, revenue/expense ratios, market capitalization, and earnings per share.
Cemex, Inc., a leading global producer and marketer of quality cement and ready-mix concrete products.
Samsung, a global consumer electronics powerhouse
The Coca-Cola Export Corporation, manufacturer of concentrate for soft drinks.
Toshiba, Information Equipment, Inc., manufacturer of hard disk drives, optical disk drives, printed circuit boards and full assembly of notebook PCs.
Monark Equipment, seller of earthmoving and construction equipment.
Sykes Asia, Inc., a global leader in providing outsourced customer contact management solutions and services in the business process outsourcing (BPO) arena.
Read-Rite Philippines, Inc., one of the world’s leading independent manufacturers of recording heads and related assemblies for computer disk and tape drives and other data storage products.

Filed under: Six Sigma Organizations

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A Six Sigma Black Belt’s Batting Average

Batting average is baseball right? Right. And maybe you’re as surprised as I am to know that Six Sigma can figure in a baseball game. Yes, it can. Thomas Pyzdek, a leading consultant in Six Sigma and an Arizona Diamondbacks fan, shows how.

He related a story about an employee who played in his company’s baseball team. The team had not been performing well as expected. And Bill, the lead character in the story, felt he was partly responsible for it. He stunk at the plate. He strongly felt he had to do something about it and quick. Good thing, Bill is a Six Sigma Black Belt. He could solve his batting problem just like he would solve any process problem at work—by conducting a designed experiment.

Bill determined which factors are important. He wrote down a lengthy list of possible factors and narrowed his list down to four experimental variables for hitting: foot position, choke on bat, position in box, and speed of pitch. He then examined each variable. For foot position, he considered its square angle at 45 degrees. For the choke on bat, he set it at 2 inches. For position in box, he could go forward and backward. For the speed of pitch, he could go as fast as 60 to 80 miles per hour. (See Tables for details.)

To improve on these, Bill spent a few evenings and weekends to practice his pitches. The experiment finished after two weeks. The results showed that the interaction of the four variables definitely had an impact on Bill’s overall pitching performance, but the foot positioning and his position in the box did not have a significant effect on his batting average.

The analysis is that when Bill is facing a pitcher with real heat (say 80mph), he can improve his batting average from 8 percent to 28.75 percent by standing near the back of the batter’s box. Conversely, when Bill is up against a 60-mph hurler, he’s better off in the front of the batter’s box (38.75 percent in front hits vs. 15 percent in back).

Combining all of these results, Bill’s strategy is to always choke up on the bat and position himself in the batter’s box depending on the expected speed of the pitch.

This is definitely an interesting way to improve one’s game. Can you do the same for your chosen sport?

Source:
Batter up!

Filed under: Training

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Having a (Six Sigma) Black Belt Take Your Photos

Did you ever experience taking photos and out of the 24 shots you did, only 10 were clear? Well, I did. Worse, I spoiled the entire roll of film!

Well, thanks to technology. We are now at the age of digicams and webcams. We can take photos and then check if they are good. If we find the shots maybe blurred or crooked, or we simply don’t like any of them, we can just push a button or two and voila(!) the ugly photos are gone forever. And click again.

Sadly, all our photography woes, if we can call them that, are not solved at the onset of digital cameras. These cameras, despite boasting of hi-technology, foul up, too. Sometimes, they consume the batteries after only five photos. Or if you have the misfortune of setting your photo size to the maximum, you end up out of memory after taking one or three photographs.

Still we painstakingly take photos because we want to capture the moments. Hearing these words, one product brand comes to mind—Kodak. Kodak has been capturing moments for decades now. They’ve been there and at the forefront but they still continuously improve their processes.

In 1982, Kodak became an active participant and a charter member of the Motorola Six Sigma Consortium. Through they years, it has examined the Six Sigma Black Belt programs of several major companies (including Motorola, Texas Instruments, GE and AlliedSignal), and have taken the best of these programs to form its own.

The company’s training start by selecting employees to receive special leadership training. After passing through initial levels of training, these employees become eligible for the Black Belt Practitioner program. This intensive program takes five full weeks of classroom training, spread out over fourteen weeks. Training weeks often exceed 40 hours. After completing weeks 2–4 of training, Black Belt candidates spend 3–4 weeks working full-time on improvement projects, while relieved of their usual duties, in which they practice the skills they have learned.

Kodak Black Belt candidates devote at least 50% of their week to this project work. Certification as Black Belt Practitioners comes after having successfully completed this training program and their improvement projects.

At Kodak, Six Sigma Black Belts are expected to:

• Influence change
• Provide leadership in applying quantitative methods
• Facilitate teamwork
• Consult with management
• Transfer knowledge and skills to others
• Discover new leveraging opportunities
• Continuously improve their skills
• Participate in the Kodak Black Belt network

Candidates for Kodak Six Sigma Black Belt training must be good at functional disciplines, must have strong “people skills” and change-agent skills, must be proficient in applying continuous improvement and statistical methods and tools. Most importantly, they must have the respect of their managers and peers.

A Six Sigma Black Belt speaks the language of management (money, time, organizational dynamics, etc.), as well as the language of other members of the Kodak team (implementation details, quality tools, statistical techniques, problem-solving methods, etc.). Black Belts carry a high level of peer respect and are obvious leaders.

Read more: Kodak Six Sigma “Black Belt”

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Training of the (Six Sigma) Black Belts

Black Belts (BBs) are change agents. Along with that role is a myriad of challenging tasks one after the other. They lead projects, train team members in Six Sigma methods, and mentor Green Belts to raise their level of expertise. Competent BBs are the key to every successful Six Sigma implementation.

As change agents, perhaps their most challenging task is guiding and motivating others in the organization to embrace change. I guess only a few brave souls welcome change. That is why I think, dealing with people who are going through some change should make up a large bulk of time during BB trainings.

Initially, a BB needs to understand the process of change. Developing a framework of understanding may be helpful. In the framework, he plots the process of change.

The change starts at multiple levels as the entire organization is going through the Six Sigma deployment. It will happen with the senior management or “C” (refer to my previous post, Six Sigma Training) and “VP” level employees. It will also happen in the work place, and within each individual member of the team. To be effective, a BB must be aware of the effect on the various levels and at what stage of the process they are operating, and should be able to manage any incongruency.

As a change agent, a BB must be able to manage change well. He starts by breaking down the pie into a problem statement, an objective, a baseline metric, and the secondary metrics for a project. At about the same time, he leads, trains, and mentors the Six Sigma team. More importantly, he prepares them for the crucial turning point that is called the Valley of Despair. This is an expected turn as people adjust to the new way of doing things. They fumble their way yet. A very important consideration here is that while the team is going through the change, so is the BB himself.

A very competent BB will overcome this. He will be able to guide the team to another turning point, the Pity City. Here, people will vent out their frustrations or otherwise about any uncertainty and confusion of the new rules. One important point is that the Black Belt should be able to shorten the duration of the change, or the time at Pity City, and minimize the severity of the drop into the Valley of Despair.

However, not everyone in the organization will be at Valley of Despair or Pity City at the same time, and most often they do not know about this. Confusion sets in, which can lead to conflict. This is the time that the BB will summon all the training tools he has to resolve this empasse. What complicates matters is that it has a cost associated with every delay.

Agility helps improve the situation. BBs must be quick in decision making and taking action to resolve whatever is there to resolve. As Val Larson and Mike Carnell put it, “The more efficiently we learn to deal with change, the more profitably we can operate. Changes can be instituted more quickly and with greater ease, but the larger advantage is the company’s increased agility. That agility is the company’s ability to respond to changes in technology and changes the marketplace.”

Sources:
Developing Black Belt Agents
Black Belt Certification

Filed under: Training

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Ample Training is the Key to Project Teams’ Success

Six Sigma deployment means change. Change in the way things are done, in the way people should behave, and in the way processes should run. Simply put, it requires some sort of an overhaul. In doing so, everyone in the organization must be involved. Each needs to understand what the organization will be going through and what value it will have on them.

While it is true that all Six Sigma projects are rigorously evaluated for financial impact, people who will be working on it should also be vigorously trained. This is not to give equal importance to training metrics over the financial measures, but I believe that they should be given at least equal consideration. If an organization wants to see large financial rewards from their Six Sigma projects, then it’s only fair that they should invest a reasonable amount for training.

The rule of thumb in the number of people to be trained is one Black Belt (BB) per 100 employees and one Master Black Belt (MBB) per 100 BBs. Recent implementation experience suggests the BB to MBB ratio should be closer to 10 to 1.11. By rigorously evaluating projects, you will get a reasonable number of BBs to be chosen rationally. As long as the projects have large returns, there can’t be too many projects. Besides, having too many projects has not yet been linked to diminishing returns.

It is important however to determine carefully the number of people that you will train for BB or MBB. The reason for this is that you need to consider the cost of backfilling for the employees who will become BBs.

The Black Belt (BB) is the key change agent for the Six Sigma process. Typically the “best of the best,” BBs lead teams working on chronic issues highly affecting the company’s performance. Their training usually includes four weeks of classroom training, a week per month over four months. The remaining time is spent working on projects while being mentored by a MBB. The training may run for three weeks, focusing on statistical tools: a week of basic statistics, including data analysis and the seven tools, a week of design of experiments and a week of quality control. This statistical training is combined with a week of softer skills including project selection, project management and project evaluation, team selection and team building. Each week of training may include topics from every area.

The kind of training that they get is more on lectures than interactive. It is effective because trainees get to apply what they’ve learned right away. They get many opportunities for project reviews on many days, and their work on projects still continues even when they are not in training.

Members of the management team certify a BB after he has led two successful project teams—one under the guidance of a MBB, another on his own. The MBB also gets certified. Certification as a MBB usually requires 20 successful projects—about half while a BB and the remainder while mentoring BBs.

I guess it is safe to say that improved performance does not and will not happen automatically. You need a high-caliber training to achieve a Six Sigma.

Sources:
The Essential Six Sigma: Project Evaluation and Training Issues
Six Sigma Training and Implementation

Filed under: Team Dynamics, Training

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Taking Six Sigma Project Teams Higher

We’ve seen the potential value of a well-formed Six Sigma project teams and the harmony of roles of each team member. From this we’ve learned that team composition has a direct impact on the success of the team itself as well as that of the project.

Selecting the right people to be in the team is tops, and how to choose the right ones is a measure of good leadership. You need good leaders to guide the organization to a new way of thinking and doing business, which is an inevitable consequence of Six Sigma deployment. Your goal is a breakthrough improvement. Therefore everyone involved—from corporate leadership to unit leadership to project Champions, Black Belts, Master Black Belts, Green Belts down to functional support groups—in it should be a leader. A tabular information on Six Sigma roles can be found here.

I think this is the first time I’ve mentioned the unit leadership team. This team takes care of identifying the improvement opportunities and chartering the Six Sigma projects. It can be a division, a facility, or a function. The unit leadership team, often called the Six Sigma Council, leads the overall effort within the unit.

The next critical question would be how to fill the team with people who can work with the Black Belt or the Green Belt? A good size for the team is about four to six people. They must be familiar with the process, can contribute to identifying the solution, and will be involved in its implementation. The best way to achieve this is to have regular meetings between the Black Belt and the Project Champion. The process might look like this.

• Black Belt and Champion discuss potential team members.
• Black Belt or Champion gets the approval of the team members’ management for them to be on the team.
• Champion addresses any barriers identified, getting higher management involved as needed.
• Black Belt and the team work on the project.

Included in this activity is for the BB and the Champion to indicate each member’s specific task. Also, it is always better to involve everyone in the initial stages of the project. People are more likely to cooperate and appreciate their value if they see and understand their role in the undertaking.

Deploying a Six Sigma project will definitely shake up the organization’s structure. Some employees may need to have to work in the project and at the same time work on their job. And this may not pose a positive result all the time. Tension and stress will be part of the daily grind. This is something organizations cannot afford to have—an overworked workforce.

The solution for some companies is that they hire consultants to do the job for them. For others, they get new people and tap the good employees in the organization to be in the team. In any case, based on testimonies, training your own people to work for the Six Sigma project is always the best option. You just need a good system for delegating tasks, rewards, and training to make it work.

Sources:
Leading Six Sigma: Launching the Initiative
Leading Six Sigma: A Step-by-Step Guide Based on Experience with GE and Other Six Sigma Companies

Filed under: Team Dynamics

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Getting the Belts to Run the Six Sigma Project Teams

In yesterday’s entry, I mentioned the key players who run the Six Sigma initiative and the composition of project teams. The Black Belts are fully trained to lead the project teams. You must therefore choose your Black Belt (BB) well.

According to James S. Lucas, the Black Belt must have a varied experience levels and pay grades because of the wide-ranging projects—projects coming from different business areas—he will handle. All BB candidates should have a history of accomplishment, and those selected for BB training should be on the fast track.

A whitepaper published by Six Sigma Qualtec cites four reasons why BBs are valuable:

1) They deliver significant bottom-line results using the Six Sigma method.
2) They coach others in the use of Six Sigma tools.
3) They set an example for others in the organization to emulate.
4) They are expected to move on to leadership positions, from which they will practice Six Sigma methods themselves and champion use of these methods in others.

Green Belts (GBs) are the project team members. They receive training similar to that of BBs, but possibly for less time. Because of their training, both BBs and GBs can be called agents of change. They thrive in the climate of constant change and are open to new ideas and to rigorously evaluating new ideas. Green Belts take on the functional role of applying Six Sigma tools related to their positions.

Another team members are Yellow Belts. Often regarded as assistants to BBs, YBs control and manage processes using metrics and data and solve problems using basic quality tools. They are directly linked to daily, often critical, processes. Their values lies on the fact that they can come from any level of the organization.

The great balancing act is described this way.

The relationship between Yellow Belts and Black Belts is symbiotic: Yellow Belts request the help of Black Belts and Black Belts utilize Yellow Belts on project teams. Yellow Belts are good at process management and Green Belts at Six Sigma tools.

The Black Belt position, because it is dedicated to project work full-time, does not permit advanced statistical tools to be used regularly within the daily management of the processes. Yellow Belt training doesn’t allow this either as it only briefly covers very basic problem-solving tools. Green Belts fill the gap.

Sources:
The Great Balancing Act: How Black Belts, Green Belts and Yellow Belts Interact in Six Sigma Deployment
Essential Six Sigma

The illustration goes to show a harmony of roles of each Six Sigma project team member. The weakness of one member is complemented by the strength of the other.

Filed under: Team Dynamics

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