Process Improvement for Lean Six Sigma Program Too

Published:

A Lean Six Sigma program – like all change in an organization – is a dynamic process and needs to be systematically and objectively reviewed for opportunities to improve. Continuous process improvement is applicable to the Lean Six Sigma deployment in the same way it is to other processes in the organization. Even companies with several years […]

Read more

Six Sigma, Process Reengineering and Prototyping

Published:

Recently, a large-scale financial services company recently wanted to reengineer the process for its entire customer services organization, including people, process and technology. This company had, during the last two years, trained many Black Belts and Green Belts. It attempted to use Six Sigma methodology as the primary method of introducing customer-focused process improvement to […]

Read more

Three Elements of a Deployment Governance Framework

Published:

The ultimate goal of any Lean Six Sigma program is to achieve operation and execution excellence, which can only come about through a well-thought-out and executed deployment governance framework. A governance framework enables an organization to more rapidly implement positive change by establishing team structure, focusing on knowledge transfer and enabling people. With this framework, […]

Read more

Business Intelligence Adds to Process Reengineering

Published:

Undertaking a process reengineering initiative without a business intelligence team introduces a significant risk to the project’s success. Business intelligence refers to technologies and practices for the collection, integration, analysis and presentation of business information; sometimes, it also refers to the information itself. The purpose of business intelligence is to support better business decision-making, especially […]

Read more

Business Process Reengineering in a Six Sigma World

Published:

Through the years, there have been many different notions about what business process reengineering (BPR) is and how successful it has been as a process improvement approach. In the early 1990s, Michael Hammer and James Champy authored a best-selling book, Reengineering the Corporation, in which they promoted that sometimes radical redesign and reorganization of a […]

Read more

Customer-Centric Risk Management Via Hoshin Planning

Published:

The new millennium brought a great deal of change in the marketplace. As the financial scandals of the 1990s came to light, new regulations were drafted and put into place to avoid such occurrences in the future. U.S. financial institutions must comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which came on the heels of the Enron scandal, […]

Read more

Yellow Belts: Creating a Corporate Sense of Inclusion

Published:

As the Lean and Six Sigma evolution makes its way throughout the financial services industry and organizations make decisions on how to best spend training dollars, an interesting trend is emerging. Many companies looking at ways to more broadly incorporate Lean and Six Sigma into their cultures are finding that a general knowledge across the […]

Read more

Top 10 Questions for Lean Six Sigma Integration Partner

Published:

Many of the attendees at a recent Lean Six Sigma conference were investigating how to start a Lean and Six Sigma program in their organization. Most were very excited about Lean and Six Sigma and how it could help them introduce process improvement and customer focus to their organizational cultures. Of course, some also were […]

Read more
SIPOC

SIPOC Leads to Process Mapping and Project Selection

Published:

Companies new to Six Sigma need an agreed-upon, easily communicated picture of current processes (“as is” state). Building a SIPOC diagram is a good starting point.

Read more

Knowledge Transfer Is the Key to Lean Six Sigma Culture

Updated:

The Lean Six Sigma deployment climate has evolved from one of training internal resources as experts on implementing process improvement projects to a progressive and forward-thinking collective effort facilitating cultural change in an organization. Historically, with a few exceptions in large companies, most financial services organizations are behind in terms of adapting formal, continuous improvement […]

Read more

Integrating Lean Six Sigma into Culture Is Like a Merger

Published:

While it is essential for a company to create familiarity with Lean and Six Sigma disciplines by training employees, it is even more important to integrate Lean Six Sigma into the company change culture. Lean Six Sigma should be a key component of the organization’s change infrastructure supporting all projects and change initiatives from the […]

Read more

Continuous Improvement Should Apply to DMAIC Itself

Published:

All practitioners of Six Sigma – even those new to the methodology – are aware of the basic DMAIC roadmap. The starting point for every Six Sigma program is to explain the acronym and to teach the common principles of DMAIC. “Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control” becomes the mantra for new Green Belts and […]

Read more

It’s Not Common Sense – It’s a Sixth (Sigma) Sense

Published:

Many times when Lean and Six Sigma are introduced to an executive management team, there will be an individual who makes the statement: “This is just common sense. Why do we need to go through all this methodology, training and the statistics stuff to execute a simple project?” A large segment of thought leaders in […]

Read more

Managing the Executives for Lean Six Sigma Success

Published:

Being at the focal point in the cultural migration of executing change using Lean Six Sigma, deployment leaders/deployment Champions have many obstacles and opportunities to deal with. Strange as it might seem, the people who may be pushing the hardest for the results inherent in Lean Six Sigma deployments are the same ones who can […]

Read more

Comparing and Blending ISO9000 and Lean Six Sigma

Published:

During recent decades, a number of different methodologies have evolved to help organizations improve quality, speed and efficiency, and better serve their customers. Manufacturing businesses have concentrated primarily on the ISO system, a series of increasingly tough manufacturing benchmarks and requirements developed by the International Standards Organization, and Lean manufacturing (originally known as the Toyota […]

Read more

Before Deployment: “Minding Your Ps to Get Your Q”

Published:

Answering two fundamental questions can help an organization honestly assess its readiness for adopting a Lean Six Sigma culture.

Read more
Lean Six Sigma and the Art of Integration

Lean Six Sigma and the Art of Integration

Published:

It may seem un-Six Sigma-like to use art concepts in a discussion of Lean Six Sigma and the merger of two large financial institutions. But in fact, any serious approach to integrating two complex organizations can benefit from thinking in terms of art as well as science.

Read more
To top