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Adult learning principles, technology, and agile methods combined to create greater learner engagement in this Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt course redesign while demonstrating that these approaches can revolutionize the way organizations foster professional development.
Lean Six Sigma (LSS) transformations have been a core business imperative in many forward-thinking institutions and organizations that want to maximize profits and develop a fact-based decision mindset. These efforts often are started by providing education and training, but is that sufficient? Does training result in the gains expected from business leaders? Is the time-to-competence fast enough? Does it keep pace with the speed of business? Does training alone support the employee throughout the employee lifecycle? This article shares a case study that describes the UL (formerly Underwriters Laboratories) LSS implementation.
The Journey
UL has been on its LSS journey for more than 13 years, and its program has evolved throughout that period to meet the changing needs of the organization. A decade into its journey, the company began to think about providing additional support to the LSS practitioners that would extend beyond a single training event and certification. The focus shifted to their long-term developmental need. The plan was to deliver a suite of support services to anyone, anywhere, anytime around the world. Furthermore, LSS would be viewed broadly as the basic language of change for the enterprise and a cultural enabler for the organization to achieve worldclass performance.
This approach began with the development of a LSS system of support and suite of services that were intended to generate professional growth for the community of LSS practice within UL on a justin-time basis. Although traditional training and certification is still part of the system, more core elements were included such as creating a community of practice, leveraging social media to enable interaction; sponsoring showcases; and sharing best practices as well as developing a LSS knowledge channel, which contains curated, relevant, and useful materials that are constantly available. Additionally, webinars on select topics requested by the community were delivered, and the training courses offered were broadened. As the community of practitioners grew in numbers and competence, technical consulting services also became available.
The Opportunities for Improvement
UL's LSS Yellow Belt (YB) program provides an excellent example of how...