Six Sigma and Quick Wins

Rodrigo,,
As you progress through your project/s you will certainly come across sub-projects/actions that fall into different categories such as:
– “quick win” (0 to 30 days),  
– regular projects (30 to 90 days)
– strategic projects (90 to 180 days)
This is normal – your challenge in creating a culture that will drive rapid change.  One method you might consider is the “Kaizen methodology” – not just to drive in Lean but use it as a tool to drive focussed change in less than 1 week.
Regards,
Adam

Rodrigo,
I understand now – you as a leader in this area must own the short term and longer term actions – and not loose focus on any of these in achieving your goal.  If you have set up you project right you will have perhaps one or more primary metrics (perhaps a counter ballancing one like Speed & Quality) that you are monitoring.  Regardless of the short and long term actions you have you must be watching the metrics – the actions you drive will, or should, be directly impacting the metric.  It may be that you implement the quick wins and thus achieve your goal.  You should, I suggest, review the progress of the project/s monthly and determine the appropriate time to sunset the project and move onto other more important ones.  There is a point of diminishing returns for all projects – you just need to work out for each project where that is in relation to the metrics.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Adam

Adam nailed it right on the head.  (as usual!)
-Heebee

Rodrigo,
I am not second-guessing Adam because he gave you good advice. It sounds like your management team is manageing at the project level which is very short sighted. Management should be interested in the Six Sigma deployment and leave the project details to a Program Manager or a MBB. If they are getting quick wins in Define and Measure it is more of an indication that they are not selecting projects correctly.
Depending on the availability of data you can classify projects before they begin and get a faily good estimate of how long they will take. Not all projects have the same level of technology requirements and you need to manage the project pipeline and the portfolio of active projects so you can deliver predictable results. There are way to many people that Six Sigma is about delivering a project. It is not. It is a process and managing that process effectively means you need to learn to run it on data.
Mixing fast hit optimization and control projects with technology or worst case technology and control type projects can give you the results you need.
If you want to discuss how to do that classification I will be glad to do it off line at [email protected].
Just my opinion.
Good luck

Hi, I`m am currently undergoing black belt training in the UK.
I do not necessarily think it`s bad project selection if you come across quick wins in define and measure. After all, the project sponsor in his research as to the whether the project is undertaken or not bases his decision on metrics, opportunity, business case, estimated length of project etc. The Steering committee will then agree that the project be undertaken based on their own strategic filtering criteria. At this point is it reasonable to expect them to know that the project will come up with quick wins? 
I therefore tend to agree with Adams comments that if you get quick wins and you satisfy your projected project savings with these quick wins then pull the plug on the project and pat yourself on the back, take the applause and move onto the next project.
Ask yourself the question also.. Would the quick win have been addressed and ‘put to bed’ had it not been a six sigma project?
Chris