Six Sigma Headcount

BB’s 1% +/-
GB’s -the other 99% +/-

I know of one large company trying to stay at 3% Black, and it’s a bit of a struggle.  Heeb’s right, though, everyone else should be a GB.  In this same company, the CEO and his staff all certified as GB’s early on in the program, and yes, they did have to do a project to get certified.  Of course, that meant the next layer down got the message quickly, too.
–McD
 

Except that I wasn’t kidding…

Ideally everyone in the company shall be a black belt. Why not?

Wow, the new mental telepathy machine is working.  I was able to post while at dinner.  I wish I was smart enough to have thought of that witty response.  Thanks to whomever has posted on my behalf.

In my chemical / plastics manufacturing company, the roll-out target were 2.5% BB, 12.5% GB.  This worked for a year.  After three years the numbers are 0.8% active BB.  The GB trained population is 12% of the company but very few are actively supported, maybe 1-2%.

Mike
That was my reaction, too, but he is talking about Yellow Belt training for everyone else, so at least they are getting everyone to drink the Kool-Aid.
–McD
 

John,
I understand you can’t move straight to the 30% number and Yellow Belt is a good way to work on the inertia. My current deployment has 25,000 employees. If I needed to train 7,500 GB’s right away I would have a problem and my customer a bigger problem because they would be looking at implementing 15,000 projects and my BB’;s would need to mentor 300 GB’s each.
My point was that regardless of the benchmark data the number of 10-12% will be to low, making the jump to 30% in a year is fatal. They need to understand what the targets need to be and how to get there.
Another issue that seems to have slipped off the table with regards to the numbers is demographics. When we design a deployment locations make a huge amount of difference in how many – particularly BB’s.
Regards

I used to work for Raytheon, I don’t mind telling you the company name, they have always been very serious about their six sigma deployment and have even done work to devise an integration assessment(how well six sigma is integrating into the culture).
When they started 1999, they had a goal of .5%BB; they call them Experts and 25% of the salaried workforce GB; they call them Specialists (industry equivelant of a yellow belt, but still required to complete a project for qualification).  As they moved forward the second year goal was 1% BB and still 25% GB but at an overall level to include hourly, but then it began to increase on the GB side every year after.  Today the BB is still at 1% and the GB qualification shows up on their performance screens for their annual review.  There is usually a financial savings, soft or hard that is tied to that as well.  As for having too many projects, Raytheon Six Sigma is actualy Lean Sigma and therefore the scope of the project of the GB/Specialist can be somewhat less than that of a traditional GB.  In a group of 500 it was not uncommon to have as many as 50 projects going at once at varying levels of complexity.
If you are interested in more information I can give you a point of contact.  Raytheon is very interested in sharing knowledge especially when it comes to Six Sigma and I am sure someone would be glad to talk to you.

Are you serious in this  statement?  thanks

Read my response to myself.  I didn’t post the slam against GBs.  Somebody highjacked my posting name.  Done often in this Forum.

Whoaa! Easy boy……For clarities sake, the intent is not to dumb it down.  They don’t claim that their “Greenbelts” are the equivelant to industry standard, the intent is culture change and an understanding of the basic concepts “Yellow Belt”, additional advanced training is there for the taking if the employee and manager so desire.  Their “Blackbelts” undergo extensive training and have a substantial certification process.  So they renamed the steps…..And there is more then one company that remapped the model.  There is no Silver Bullet to continuous improvement and it takes more then a few “annointed” ones to make the improvements stick.

I am currently with an organization that is a leader in six sigma.  Until this past year, all employees in the organization were required to become GB certified within 1 year of employment.  GB Certification merely means that you can think on the same road path as those that are BBs and MBBs.  GB Certified employees help the BBs achieve the goals that they are striving for, although their main career is operational. That is why the percentages are so skewed.  You can say that a BB usually works with 3-4 GBs during a project and the number of BBs are dependant on the company size and growth/optimization efforts. 
Hope that helps
SigmaLayer
 
Posted by: RonPosted on: Thursday, 17th March 2005, 1:11 PM

I am looking for benchmark data on companies utilizing the six sigma methodology.
What are companies experience regarding the number of greenbelts and blackbelts as a percentage of total employee population?

Fake Darth, please stop posting under my name.  Your comments do not reflect what I would have posted.  Webmaster, please track down this person’s ISP and ban him/her.

Hi there,
My name is Jonathan Richards and I’m a journalist with The Times of London.
I noticed you made a posting on a message board recently about the experience of working at Raytheon.
I’m doing a piece at the moment which touches on Raytheon at the moment and was hoping to speak to some former employees of the company.
Do you have any idea how I might get in touch with any? Ideally they would have worked there pretty recently – certainly in the last 2-3 years – and know a little about its operations in Iraq.
I’d be most grateful for any help.
Kind Regards,
Jonathan Richards
Reporter, The Times
+44 207 782 5303