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KEY WORDS: Management, Project, Six Sigma
SUMMARY
The Six Sigma Management Process Project used a DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control) approach to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a company's management of its Six Sigma effort. By looking at the "lives" of numerous Six Sigma projects from a process perspective, the project team was able to identify "defects" in the process, isolate root causes for these defects, and improve the process to eliminate them. This presentation includes real data on the causes of Six Sigma project failures (cancelled and late projects) from a company with a two-year-old deployment. Attendees from companies with existing Six Sigma systems will discover some opportunities to improve their process; those from companies just starting their deployment will see a roadmap for success as well as some pitfalls to avoid.
INTRODUCTION
When a multi-billion dollar, Fortune 50 company implemented its Six Sigma strategy a few years ago, it had great expectations. Sold on the success of General Electric (GE) and others, their leaders simply expected the results to start flowing in, and to some extent they did. They measured their Six Sigma system in terms of "deployment" - how many people they had trained, how many projects they had started, etc. They thought they were doing really well. And one day, they realized that their "deployment" metrics were missing something; they weren't measuring "efficiency" or "effectiveness" of their Six Sigma system. When they did that, they soon realized (1) how inefficiently and ineffectively they were managing their Six Sigma "process" and (2) how much opportunity there was to make even more money and achieve even greater results. So, they chartered a DMAIC project to "improve the efficiency and effectiveness" of Six Sigma. This is the real Executive Summary of that project.
As a strategic change effort, the project scope was vast - it included team members from a corporate headquarters and nine operating companies spread throughout the United States, with European and South American affiliates. The timeline spanned six months. The major activities involved were: a Voice of the Customer (VOC) process with key stakeholders and each operating company's leadership team, a process mapping session, a team meeting to derive key "metrics for success", internal and external benchmarking trips, and a...