“To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often.”
—Winston Churchill
system. Some of the methods discussed in this chapter are shown schemat-ically in Figure 6-1. As you will see, and as should come as no surprise, the key is consistent implementation of periodic reviews, including audits. It is also important to implement a complete training system (as opposed to in-dividual training courses), create a formal Six Sigma organizational struc-ture, and develop Leadership Green Belts. Note from Figure 6-1 that all the other elements are done within the context and direction of the Six Sig-ma organizational structure. This Sig-makes up your defensive effort to Sig- main-tain what you already have.
At this stage, you will also want to play offense and extend the de-ployment into new areas. You can accomplish this primarily by expanding Six Sigma to the whole organization, introducing customers and suppliers to Six Sigma, and using Six Sigma to increase revenue as well as reduce costs. Much of the literature on Six Sigma to date has emphasized cost re-ductions, but, as you will see, it also can have a huge impact on top-line growth, that is, revenue generation. We will first review the key elements of our defensive strategy, and then discuss the offensive elements.
FIGURE 6-1 Sustaining the Gains
Projects Completed
Implement Control
Plans
Process Audits Financial Checks ($$) Project
Hopper NewProjects
Six Sigma System Enhancements
Projects Initiated
Training
Process Team New Employees Leadership GBs
Review System Quarterly
Organizational Structure
Playing Defense—Sustaining Momentum
After a couple of years, Six Sigma may become old news, and more recent issues or problems may divert managerial attention. This phenome-non has been faced by all organizations deploying Six Sigma, so it is lead-ership’s response to it that determines whether or not the deployment will be successful in the long term. In Chapter 3 we noted that implementing the remaining infrastructure elements was the key to successfully making this transition. Recall that these infrastructure elements were identified as part of the overall deployment plan developed in the launching the initia-tive phase (Chapter 4). Some of these infrastructure elements were imple-mented during the managing the effort phase (Chapter 5), such as the systems for selecting projects and Black Belts. You are now going to close the loop and implement the remaining infrastructure elements identified in your deployment plan. These elements will enable you to sustain momen-tum without the same level of personal attention from senior leadership that you have had up until now.
HOLDING PROJECT GAINS
The improvements obtained from Six Sigma projects are held by implementing the project control plans, ensuring that all employees asso-ciated with the process are trained in the new way of operating the process and performing periodic process and financial audits. A control plan (AIAG [1994]) contains the information needed to monitor and control a process and to maintain improvements, and is finalized during the control phase of a DMAIC project. It contains specific activities required to mon-itor and control the process, including answers to the questions who, what, when and how? It also contains the reaction plan that defines what should be done by whom, and who should be informed when something goes wrong.
The control plan is effective when it contains all the information needed to ensure that the process is in a state of control, is in a form easily used by the operators (process workers), and is, in fact, used to operate the process. An evergreen document, it is continually updated to reflect the current methods and measurements used to monitor and control the pro-cess. Clarity, completeness, conciseness, and simplicity are key characteris-tics of effective control plans.
An example of a control plan adapted from the Automotive Indus-try Action Group (AIAG) is shown in Figure 6-2. Control plans are pro-cess-specific, having many different forms and including a variety of types of information such as process steps, FMEA findings, measurement sys-tem indices (such as Gage R&R values) and process capability indices. The right control plan for your process is the one that contains the information needed to monitor and control your process and to maintain the gains of improvements projects.
Part of the control plan and project closure report is a schedule for the process and financial audits. The goal of the process audit is to see whether the process is being operated as directed by the control plan and standard operating procedures, and whether the process performance lev-els are being maintained. An effective way to integrate process audits into the normal work procedures is to make them part of the ISO 9000 audit.
Both control plans and ISO 9000 audits have provisions for changing the standard operating procedures as more effective means to operate the pro-cess are found.
The financial audits determine whether the projected monetary gains are being realized. These audits, typically done by the financial orga-nization, generally follow the financial performance of a project for 12 months after project closure. They help validate the results, build credibil-ity for Six Sigma, and identify opportunities for improvement. Recall that documentation of financial benefits is a key success factor for Six Sigma. It is equally important to maintain the financial gains.
There also needs to be a concerted effort to ensure that all persons connected with the process, whether old hands or recently assigned, are trained in the new way of working. The adequacy of the training can also be checked as part of the ISO 9000 audit. The overall training system will be discussed later in this chapter. Some organizations train all process op-erators as Six Sigma Yellow Belts. Yellow Belt training is usually given by the Black Belt, typically lasts two days, and focuses on the measure and control phases of DMAIC. Although accountabilities vary considerably based on organizational philosophy and structure, in typical organizations the operators’ (process workers’) principal responsibilities are to take pro-cess data and to control the propro-cess.
QUARTERLY AND ANNUAL REVIEWS
Quarterly reviews conducted by the chief executive serve to moni-tor the health and effectiveness of the overall Six Sigma system. In large or-ganizations these reviews should also be held at the business and function
r 6 Sustaining Momentum and Growing 135
Customer Engineering Approval/Date (If Req'd) Supplier/Plant Approval/Date Customer Quality Approval/Date (If Req'd) Other Approval/Date (If Req'd) Other Approval/Date (If Req'd)
Size Freq.
3 Machine
Surface "A" Rotary
Machine 51 Depth of Cut * 2 ± 0.25" Depth Gage 5 per hour
per
Adapted from Automotive Industry Action Group (1994) Advanced Product Quality Planning and Control Plan Special Part Number/Latest Change Level Core Team Part Name/Description
Supplier/Plant Supplier Code
FIGURE 6-2 Control Plan Example
level. The goal is to check on the functioning of the overall Six Sigma infra-structure, including all relevant systems and processes. Table 6-1 is based on the elements of the deployment plan (see Chapter 4), but augmented with some specifics that have been developed since, such as review of selected projects and overall financial results. Table 6-2 shows a typical outline for such a quarterly meeting. The key Six Sigma processes to be reviewed are progress toward financial goals, training progress (particularly in the first two years), and the project selection process including the project hopper.
It is not imperative that all processes be checked in each quarterly review, but certainly all processes should be checked at least once per year.
A good strategy is to formally review the critical processes in each of the first three quarterly reviews. The fourth quarter or annual review should probe in more depth, reviewing all the processes and developing an annual plan and goals for the coming year. Obviously, the annual plan and goals should link tightly to the overall strategic plan and goals from the de-ployment plan.
The annual review is a good time to check the project hopper for sufficient projects to reach the financial goals set for the coming year, and
TABLE 6-1 Elements of Six Sigma System Review
• Goals and strategy
• Budgeting—costs and benefits
• Project selection including financial impact ($$)
• Project hopper review
• Personnel selection
• Training
• Project reviews
• Project reporting
• Project tracking
• Project closure and handoff
• Audits—process and financial
• MBB, BB, GB, and Champion performance management
• MBB, BB, and GB career development including certification
• Communications
• Recognition, reward, and compensation
• Six Sigma system review and enhancement
whether the project portfolio (mix of projects) is sufficient to satisfy the goals of the organization. Do you have the right mix of projects as catego-rized by business unit, functional unit, cost reduction vs. cost avoidance, strategic vs. tactical, revenue enhancement vs. cost reduction, quality im-provement, etc.?
Consider taking an organizational survey of the Six Sigma deploy-ment every 18–24 months to check on deploydeploy-ment progress, and to iden-tify opportunities for improvement (Snee [1995]). This survey should measure the feelings and attitudes of all employees. Honest, unfiltered feedback from employees is difficult information for senior leadership to obtain, but very important. The results of the survey are useful input for the annual planning sessions. Organizations change slowly and the 18–24 month frequency is usually sufficient to detect improvement needs and any trends that have occurred.
THE TRAINING SYSTEM
To sustain Six Sigma long term, organizations will need an overall training system. Portions of this system will already exist by this phase, and Executive, Business Leader, Champion, Black Belt, Master Black Belt
TABLE 6-2 Typical Outline for Six Sigma System Quarterly Review
• Review Format
• Presentation of program status
• Questions for clarification
• Discussion
• Action items
• Review evaluation—went well, do differently at next review
• Materials for Quarterly Review
• Summary status for all projects
• Trends in key process performance metrics
• Financial impact assessment
• Status of communications
• Assessment of other Six Sigma system elements as needed
• Actions needed
• Key learnings
Note: Materials to be discussed at the review should be sent to review team 2-3 days prior to review.
(MBB), and Green Belt training will be under way. It is now time to think holistically about the organization’s overall training needs relative to Six Sigma for years to come.
Key elements of a long-term training system are:
■ Six Sigma Awareness training for new people
■ Ongoing Champion, MBB, BB, and GB training
■ Champion, MBB, BB, and GB refresher training
■ Advanced Black Belt training
■ Initial MBB training
■ Six Sigma training in different languages
■ Six Sigma curricula for operations, administration/trans-actional, and new product development processes
■ Leadership Green Belt training
Advanced Black Belt training is typically needed because some skills specific to certain technical areas are not part of the general Black Belt training. Some examples include mixture experimentation for the chemical, coatings, and foods industries; multidimensional tolerancing for the assem-bly industries; and advanced process control and process variance compo-nent studies for the process industries. There are additional or advanced skills that the Black Belts need that couldn’t be part of their original train-ing because of time limitations. Some examples include advanced regres-sion analysis and modeling techniques, complex multi-vari studies, and advanced design of experiments. Supplemental Black Belt materials and topics from Hoerl (2001) are given in Table 6-3.
Organizations are dynamic and people move in and out for various reasons. The training system must include processes for training new exec-utives, Champions, Black Belts, MBBs, and Green Belts. Some training will be job dependent; for example, engineers and financial personnel will need different kinds of training. In general, we recommend tailored training to the degree feasible. Existing executives, Champions, Black Belts, MBBs, and Green Belts can also benefit from brief refresher courses, particularly when they stay in these roles for an extended period of time. New topics or techniques will likely be added to courses over time, and refreshers pro-vide a convenient means for those previously trained to stay up to date. To sustain Six Sigma momentum, training needs to be a sustained system, not simply a one-time event.
Multinational companies will need to develop training materials and instructors to deliver Six Sigma training in multiple languages. In our experience you can often deliver Executive, Champion, MBB, and Black Belt training in English in most industrialized countries, but Green Belt training needs to be in the native language. Learning Six Sigma is challeng-ing enough without havchalleng-ing to struggle with the nuances of a foreign lan-guage. Accurate translation of technical material is very difficult, and for digital training systems there are often unique challenges translating into double-byte languages such as Chinese or Japanese (for which characters are stored as two bytes instead of one).
A training system is much more extensive than a list of courses. A good system will include processes for developing and presenting new courses, keeping track of who has attended courses and/or passed exams, identifying people in need of specific training, translating materials, quali-fying instructors, and providing managerial reports.
The organization must think carefully about how the training sys-tem will be managed over time. In most situations, a Six Sigma provider manages the training system initially, but what happens when the contract
TABLE 6-3 Supplemental Materials for Black Belts
• Failure Modes and Effects Analysis—Automotive Industry Action Group (1995b)
• Design of Experiments—Box, Hunter, and Hunter (1978);
Montgomery (2000)
• General Statistics—Walpole, Myers, and Myers (1997)
• Measurement Systems Analysis—Wheeler and Lyday (1990); Automotive Industry Action Group (1990)
• Mixture Designs—Cornell (1990)
• Quality Function Deployment (QFD)—Cohen (1995)
• Regression—Draper and Smith (1998); Montgomery, Peck, and Vining (2001)
• Reliability—Meeker and Escobar (1998)
• Response Surface Methodology—Myers and Montgomery (1995)
• Statistical Process Control—Wheeler and Chambers (1992); Automotive Industry Action Group (1995a); Montgomery (2001)
• Statistical Thinking—Hoerl and Snee (2002)
• Time Series—Box, Jenkins, and Reinsel (1994)
Adapted from Hoerl (2001)
expires? Taking over the responsibility for managing the training system from the Six Sigma provider helps make Six Sigma part of the culture—
how things are done around here. Many organizations put MBBs in charge of managing the training system, perhaps through a Training Council, since training is a key role of MBBs.
Leadership Green Belt Training
It takes time before your entire management team has the required Six Sigma skills and experience. GE recognized this and decided to train all its professionals as Green Belts, as well as making Green Belt status a condition of promotion for professionals. Jack Welch said, “with Six Sig-ma permeating much of what you do, it will be unthinkable to hire, pro-mote or tolerate those who cannot, or will not, commit to this way of work” (USA Today, 2/27/98).
When management supports it in this manner, Six Sigma is an ef-fective leadership developmental tool. Leaders learn how to use Six Sigma to improve an organization and its processes in all businesses, all functions, and all cultures. They see how Six Sigma develops personnel, providing breadth of experience by allowing people to work on a variety of processes, empowering people to improve processes, teaching teamwork, and devel-oping leaders. Leadership Green Belt training also results in all leaders hearing a common message that helps create alignment around the objec-tives and goals of Six Sigma. Leaders with such perspective will ensure that the gains of Six Sigma are maintained.
Iomega reported, “Six Sigma is the best people development tool we have ever deployed” (English [2001]). Through its Six Sigma projects Iomega, which provides storage products for digital items, developed a common language and common approach for process design, improve-ment, and management. DuPont, Honeywell, and 3M are also providing Six Sigma training for their leadership.
We focus on Green Belt training as a leadership tool to ensure that all leaders have experienced Six Sigma at the gut level. Green Belt training is needed at the beginning of implementation, because none of the senior leaders will have held MBB or Black Belt positions. The need for Leader-ship Green Belt training will decrease over time as more leaders have Black Belt and MBB experience.
The goal of the Green Belt Leadership training is for the leaders to develop a deeper understanding of Six Sigma, and to learn how to use it to im-prove the organization. Six Sigma training works best when it is project-based, but it can be difficult to find appropriate projects for the leaders to work on.
Training without a project is of less value; it can leave the impression that the leaders are just getting their tickets punched and are not serious about learning the methodology. A similar result can occur if the projects are not viewed as important, or the leaders don’t do a good job and poor results are obtained.
So we have come full circle, finding that project selection is a potential Achil-les heel of Leadership Green Belt training, just as it is for other types of Six Sigma projects. Here are a few suggestions for finding appropriate projects.
Focus on the work the leader actually does. This will ensure that the project is meaningful, not duties added to an already overflowing plate. Re-call from the discussion of non-manufacturing applications that all work can be viewed as a process, but with general business processes it is much harder to actually see the process. Experienced MBBs should be able to help the Leadership Green Belts see the underlying processes in managerial activities such as budgeting, evaluating performance, and allocating resources. Many senior executives feel that they spend too much time in unproductive meet-ings. All would appreciate improvements to the meeting process. Imple-menting and managing the systems and processes that are part of the Six Sigma infrastructure (the focus of Chapters 5 and 6) would make excellent leadership DFSS projects. A senior HR leader could implement a new re-ward and recognition system; an IT leader could design a new tracking and reporting system; finance leaders could work on designing the financial au-diting system for projects. Large projects such as these might need to be split up into several smaller projects, and additional team members will likely be needed to address details (such as writing computer code). Nevertheless, relevant, important project areas like these tend to be much more fruitful than projects that are perceived as “moving the water cooler.” Other exam-ples of topics for Leadership Green Belt projects are given in Table 6-4.
Our recommendation is that every Green Belt, including senior leadership, do at least one formal project. We do not believe you can get a
“gut-level” appreciation for Six Sigma without actually doing it yourself.
Through careful project selection, and mentoring from experienced MBBs, Leadership Green Belts can successfully complete meaningful projects.
While extra mentoring from the MBB can be extremely helpful, the MBB must carefully avoid even the perception that he or she is doing the project
While extra mentoring from the MBB can be extremely helpful, the MBB must carefully avoid even the perception that he or she is doing the project