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Lean Sigma - building a healthy program
A Healthy Lean Six Sigma Program: Lean Six Sigma programs can be found in a range of industries, countries and corporate cultures. Good programs
are healthy, effective, and continue to deliver financial benefit to the company with measurable impact on customer process. We find about 80
p.c. of implementations don’t deliver any results. For an insight into a successful program, look at how Six Sigma was integrated into GE. GE
has a rigorous business model with a yearly cycle and well-defined tollgates. New initiatives are launched in January at the all company meeting
in Boca Raton, Florida. When Six Sigma was launched in 1996, each project had four phases, Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (MAIC). Since Six
Sigma was a new initiative like any other at GE, in late April its early adoption and success was evaluated using an annual survey given to
over 10,000 employees throughout the company. If the results of any new initiative are less than anticipated, GE will reevaluate it. The survey
showed that individual projects were done well, but the program required a more direct link with important customer issues. GE already had existing
improvement programs; CAP was a Change Acceleration Process and addressed resistance, communication, team alignment, while WorkOut was a structured
approach for bringing large problems to management, getting buy-in and planning rapid process improvement. The relevant sections from CAP and
WorkOut were bundled into a new phase called Define. This is where project identification, champion sponsorship, change management, p roject
reporting and review, resistance identification, and financial benefit tracking were addressed – key elements of a successful program. The result
was the now familiar DMAIC project structure. The lesson was that while tactical business process improvement is always a good thing, strategic
direction from customers and management is essential for a program with maximum impact.
Alistair Muir. Published with kind permission of McGraw Hill www.muir-and-associates.com