Quality, Six Sigma and Operations

Watch out for organisations which have a sudden thirst for Six Sigma Initiatives - while Six Sigma projects improve processes the catch is that the scope has to be relevant to a project that deserves one. Exceptions being low hanging fruit or projects that are 'created' in order to fulfill a goal on the goal sheet. Proper supervision by a qualified Black Belt and thorough scrutiny of the scope of each project that is screened will go a long way in helping which effort merits a Green or Black Belt Project.

I remember a particular team that seemed to suddenly discover projects that had vision statements that were vague or did not seek to understand what is it that the project was improving in the first place.

After a good amount of introspective - it was discovered that the company had a policy that stated that unless you were green belt certified you did not get promoted. Never mind if you had met/exceeded your CTQ's(Critical to Quality), had great attendance, did minor improvements, helped over and beyond and even won a couple of team awards. Want to climb the ladder, get certified.

The ensuing pressure resulted in projects being discovered that would have otherwise qualified for a minor application of Six Sigma methodology to root out errors and significantly acheive success.

Not only did this pressure from leadership lead to dilution in quality projects, in the ensuing rush - a Lean initiative was rolled out - to get employees "upto speed" in lean asap.

The confusion that reined seemed to confuse and stupefy all involved. Did this qualify for Six Sigma or Lean? Was there enough "meat" to ensure that this was "significant" enough for a Green Belt Project? Or a Lean initiative?

And then you had "Kaizen" which advocates continous improvement albeit even a minor effort as long as there was continous improvement.

Where is the starting point? Where is the point at which you segregate every effort. What about leading teams through a consistent policy that sought not to penalise but improve a process rather than link it to survival? Typically the reaction was Darwinian with every one wanting to improve something and "somehow" get "certified"!! That way you could get out of a process and get to demand a role that got you on the fast track to management!

The ambitious ones (and there were many) would ensure that they stretched to way beyond anyone's imagination so that management would "notice" thus setting standards that were not justifiable within normal working hours. Want to work on weekends? OK sure how many weekends...!!

Now once these precedents are set - how do you expect your entire team to be motivated if you notice that they perceive it as the way to go if you needed to complete projects AND do your daily normal routine.

The Quality management team took this as a golden opportunity to enhance their own careers by riding the wave of "enthusiasm to survive and grow" by getting potential associates to piggy back on "black belt projects" thus ensuring that they got all the "leg work" done while they had ample time to sit and study for the black belt certification exams - and after the work was done, and backs were slapped - presented the projects and got promoted themselves. Some of them consequently quit when they realised that their ambitions were not to be fulfilled in the company. Leaving teams completely in the lurch.

It is imperative that the right "Quality Culture" be driven so as to impress upon employees that quality is continous, should be done right the first time and any potential large scale improvements be rightly staffed, planned for and realistic goals set so as NOT to upset a daily productive routine while at the same time dedicate a Quality resource who actually provides the business with their money's worth. Quality support/Audits are an necessary cost but one that any organisation strives to justify and rationalise each and and every day.

It is vital to have a Quality function and initiative. But the basics of good Quality has always been "To do it right the first time, every time"!

The post mortem that may follow as an audit or the random sampling that is taken from a live system provides leadership to understand potential areas of improvement and the costs benefit analysis associated with it so as to justify a 'quality initiated project'.

At this stage one would definitely be able to qualify the project as something that can be done on an ongoing continous basis, in that case you have no "project" as such.

Others could be the tweaking of a process/procedure in order to fine tune it to deliver higher efficiencies and accuracy.

And yet another way would require a complete new approach, which could warrant a major six sigma project that may require a green belt and/or a black belt certified mentor and supervisor or leader to see the project successfully through.

Can you link promotions to being certified as a green belt/black belt?

Personally I have observed that leadership takes the easy way out by demarcating a clear certification as the way to go....the harder/softer stuff like daily effort, initiatives, chipping in above and beyond are often never even recorded let alone that systems are designed to reflect these initiatives.

Call centers may be the exception and so does the manufacturing sector. They typically are set up with a nice set of feedback mechanisms that ensure that leadership spot potential areas of improvement unlike the service sector.

Bottom line if leadership has a set of feedback metrics to measure to the extent possible (and special efforts have to be insisted on by leadership) every single activity and effort that an associate churns out in the course of their work day/week/month/business cycle and have a thorough definition of what those efforts would lead to - associates are always going to be compromised in being recognised for their efforts. Quality teams would do well to ensure that metrics are set up in place and monitored by them, in order to generate data in the first place - without placing any need on the part of the operations team to participate, to the extent possible.

Work with existing management tools to tap into and do a proper first hand analysis of the data on hand so as to weed out low hanging fruit, segregate potential project plans and determine what kind of an effort would rationalise the necessary quality effort. This will ensure a fair system of measurement and the right focus on areas of concern, which may be focused upon to deliver maximum satisfaction to their internal customers.