Fast Track Green Belt Six Sigma Seminar

(PSQ) is inviting all quality managers and partners to the Fast Track Green Belt Six Sigma Seminar on October 11 to 12, 2006 at Hotel InterContinental, Manila.

The resource speaker is Mr. Jay Chiew, practicing consultant and business trainer in several Management Practices. He also keeps a business consultant blog titled, “Jay Chiew Break Thru Six Sigma.”

The two-day seminar has the following objectives:

• Provide overview of SIX SIGMA and the critical success factors for its roll out within the organization.
• Bring out synergies between SIX SIGMA goals and the strategic business objectives of the organization.
• Guide managers and quality professionals in the application of the concept and methodology in a specific project.
• Hands-on application of trainee on a specific project to attain SIX SIGMA LEVELS of improvement even after the seminar.

Seats are limited to 15 persons only. For reservations, please contact PSQ office not later than September 20, 2006 at 896-6246, or 899-5925 and ask for either Ms. Elizabeth Aurin or Alma Alvario, or email at psq@csi.com.ph.

PSQ Seminar Registration Form

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Dr. Spong on Baldrige

I’m sure you’ve heard about the Malcolm Baldrige Award. Motorola is among its first recipients.

In the U.S., the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award has been signed into law in August 20, 1987. Named for Malcolm Baldrige, the award aims to help American companies improve quality and productivity, and recognize their achievements among others.Last month, Dr. David Spong, Vice-Chair of the Foundation, was in the country. He shared his experience in using the Baldrige framework in leading turnaround and sustaining improvements in a complex organization.

Dr. Spong, as he is called, likened Baldrige to a physical exam for the organization. An organization must have this exam regularly to ensure that it’s a healthy one. It lets the organization see specific spots where it needs to improve or work on, whle providing an overall picture of the progress.

When asked, “Would there be any particular initiative that you would recommend in starting off Baldrige?” Dr. Spong replied:

“ISO, Lean, Six Sigma and CMMI are tools… However, if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Baldrige on the other hand is a bunch of questions that tells you where you have gaps, where you have opportunities for improvements. Then you will pull out the tools…to address those gaps. So if you need to be ISO-certified, then get yourself ISO-certified. If your production is not efficient, then use Lean. Baldrige helps you decide whether it is a nail or a screw that you will need. Baldrige allows you to look at your organization holistically.

Source: Lopez Link, a monthly publication of the Lopez Group of Companies

Related story: Journey toward award can be path to excellence

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Six Sigma in Education

Last night, I saw my husband reviewing a college syllabus. He said, he was getting ready for yet another part-time teaching job at the University of the Philippine-Los Banos (UP-LB). He taught TQM Special Studies to senior chemical engineering students. As he prepares for the following semester, he will be incorporating Six Sigma. It’s good to start them young, he says.

Central Michigan University seems to think the same way, too. Their College of Business Administration will be incorporating Six Sigma in their syllabus. The new associate dean, Monica Holmes will be seeing to it that their students will be successful. Central Michigan Life quoted Holmes:

“The skills that students would learn from being involved with SAP and Six Sigma would be very marketable, especially in Michigan. I believe that SAP and Six Sigma are two initiatives that would strengthen our MBA program.”

Holmes, who will begin pushing graduate students to become more acquainted with SAP business software and Six Sigma, a process of implementing qualities, tools and techniques with statistical analysis to make processes more efficient.

Photo credit: MorgueFile.com

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Applying Six Sigma to Sales

SellingPower.com shares how to apply Six Sigma to Sales. The article quoted Michael J. Webb, founder of Sales Performance Consultants, Inc., and author of Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way, who said that sales is a process thinking that measures activities and results and analyzes them for causes and effects. The same process is also the foundation for Six Sigma. Thus, Webb believes that Six Sigma can improve sales as well.

Webb outlines the five steps of Six Sigma (called DMAIC) and shows how they apply to sales:

Define the problem and the process precisely, whether you are examining the entire process (i.e., the complete sales process) or only one part of it (i.e., the cold calling process). By doing so, you ensure the problem is real, solvable, important to the right people (i.e., your customers and stakeholders want it solved), that the data needed to solve the problem exists or can be developed, and that the resources to do the job exist.

Measure the activities and the results to understand the process. For instance, say your sales process relies heavily on cold calling, but you aren’t getting the results you need. In this step, you would document everything relating to your reps’ calls – the times they’re being made, the number of calls, the results of each call, the scripts being used, the type of contact being reached, and so on.

Analyze the data for variations in the results and in the activities that produced them and search for cause-and-effect relationships. You’ll often need to move back and forth between the measure and analyze steps. An example is the story of the private banking division of a major financial institution that wanted to bring in more business. It examined its sales process and discovered a bottleneck at the account-opening stage. So the division measured and analyzed the way it opened accounts – the procedure, the number of employees involved, the number of touches a customer required, and the time involved. It also examined the results – customer satisfaction, customer complaints, instances of troubleshooting by salespeople, and deals lost at this stage. The bank’s conclusion: the procedure for opening accounts caused customers to drop out at that point.

Improve the process by constructing an experiment or pilot project to test your hypothesis. If your hypothesis is correct, you should see a measurable change. For instance, when the bank redesigned its account-opening procedure, more customers completed the account-opening process and the division increased its revenue by 18% in one year with no increase in staff.

Control the process to make the change permanent. In the case of the bank, the change was relatively simple to make permanent – a change in forms and the information those forms required. In other cases, institutionalizing the change might involve “new management reports or financial incentives as well as a control plan to ensure that the inputs and outputs remain within the targeted ranges.

I know the sales process is more complex than we think. A lot transpires in every transaction and it will be best for sales reps or sales department to put up a system to monitor everything. For those of you who have put up some kind of a method such as Six Sigma, please share your experience!

Related story:

Senior Executives: Are Your Sales and Marketing Teams Missing Their Numbers? (Yet Working Harder Than Ever?)

Filed under: Tools/Toolkits, Six Sigma References, Sales

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Six Sigma for Growth

The promise of Six Sigma always translates to the company’s bottomline through improved processes and hopefully satisfied customers. However, not all Six Sigma deployments turn out this way. That’s why many companies are now refocusing.

Over at Six Sigma for Growth, they’re pushing for a new direction of Six Sigma. This time, Six Sigma is getting customer-centric.

According to Edward Abramowich, author of the book Six Sigma for Growth: Driving Profitable Top-Line Results, this new approach delivers increased revenue and business growth by paying close attention to what customers need.

The Six Sigma strategy has always had the customers in mind. However, there’s no harm in checking out the book and see what Abramowich is trying to drive at.

Incidentally, I also wrote about the effect of going lean on the organization on Global Business Watch.

Filed under: Six Sigma Organizations, Six Sigma References

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Six Sigma Marketing at Cummins

Very few companies are implementing a wholistic approach to Six Sigma, that is adopting the methodology to its entire operations. Among the few is Cummins, a leading power that design, manufacture, distribute and service engines and related technologies, including fuel systems, controls, air handling, filtration, emission solutions and electrical power generation systems.

To deploy Six Sigma in its entire operations is no mean feat for Cummins. The company keep clients in more than 160 countries through its network of 550 company-owned and independent distributor facilities and more than 5,000 dealer locations.

Operating a huge business such as this, Cummins really needs a methodology that will allow them to monitor their activities, particularly their marketing tasks. This led Cummins to adopt a software package to manage its marketing campaigns, called Aprimo.

Manufacturing Business Technology describes:

The Enterprise Marketing Management suite from Aprimo is a set of Web-based, hosted applications that allow tracking the status of all material associated with a marketing campaign from beginning to end. It also provides important benchmarks for the marketing group’s Six Sigma initiative.

The results include a 61% reduction in production cycle time, a drop in revisions by 78%, and creative development costs cut by 23%. Now the group averages about two revisions per piece, which is below its 2.5-revisions benchmark. Keeping copies of graphics and other marketing assets offsite is no longer necessary, resulting in an annual 75% savings on management fees paid to outside vendors.

Knowing the bloody work of making marketing campaigns from conceptualization phase to the execution, I think Aprimo is another technology that really works well with Six Sigma.

Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Manufacturing, Marketing

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Six Sigma at Mercury Marine

Three years into its Six Sigma journey and Mercury Marine completes its 1,000^th project through the Lean Six Sigma methodology.

For more than 60 years, Mercury has retained its top position as the inventor, designer and manufacturer of marine propulsion systems—outboards, sterndrives, inboards and propellers. Today, the company also offers a full line of boating accessories such as trailers and fishing accessories. The company’s promise is: all your needs for boats or boating, Mercury can supply.

In a press release, Mercury Marine President Patrick C. Mackey said: “I am most proud that Lean Six Sigma has become a way of doing business for Mercury Marine, providing the foundation for the continuous improvement which will drive our customer satisfaction.”

Mackey also said that they were successful in their Six Sigma journey because their OptiMax and MerCruiser customers ranked them highest in customer satisfaction in this year’s J.D. Power surveys.

Filed under: Manufacturing, Lean Six Sigma

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Six Sigma at the CII

India is among the more active emerging markets today. The country is at the forefront of BPO and IT/ITES, and slowly but surely growing and expanding its reach around the globe. To achieve this goal, the country and Indian companies are adopting quality management strategies.

Already, the QAI India Ltd. Consulting is guiding some companies in their Six Sigma implementation.

Recently, the Madurai Zone of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) hosted a state level executive awareness programme on Six Sigma in Tamil Nadu. The speaker was Siva Lakshmanan, consultant of Satyam Computer Services.

Lakshmanan said that as a metric that does not allow defects to go over 3.4 defects per million opportunities, Six Sigma has become an imperative for most Indian companies. It would help raise the quality of Indian products and at the same time reduce costs. He cited the Electricity Board as an example. When the Board achieved Six Sigma levels, the customers had 99.99966 percent quality service, which meant that power cuts would last only for one hour every 34 years. This may sound impossible, but with Six Sigma, it can be done.

Lakshmanan was quoted as saying:

“…the benefits of implementing Six Sigma levels in Indian business would reduce variation in the quality of the products, reduce cycle time and defects, which would ultimately lead to improved customer satisfaction and net profit for the company.”

Filed under: Benefits and Savings, Services, Six Sigma Organizations, Deployment

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