In this chapter, we will discuss Six Sigma projects and some of the important things a yellow belt needs to understand. First of all, the typical duration of a Six Sigma project can vary dramatically. They can be very short, just hours, or a few days in the case of a small quality team effort to make an incremental improvement. Or it could take a year or longer to get to the end result. That said, it’s pretty typical for Six Sigma projects to run four to eight weeks to gather the data and move through all of the stages of the DMAIC cycle. The contributions of yellow belts are very important as a critical team member working to achieve the results. We have master black belts, or black belts, who actually sit on top of the process and manage the projects. We have green belt level skills with heavy involvement in the analytics and information gathering, analysis, and implementation. Yellow belts are really critical as well as team members, and those who are providing inputs and support for ongoing implementation. The purpose of various projects varies dramatically, but generally they’re going to focus on the following things. Reducing the variation of a customer’s experience. Getting things to market quicker. Eliminating errors and mistakes and finding ways to reduce cost in operating processes.
There are some important considerations as you move into implementing Six Sigma. The first and foremost is management buy-in. If you don’t have support, sponsorship, and adequate funding, it’s kind of a no go for any significant project. Another thing to recognize is that Six Sigma is not always suitable for every single problem we face. We don’t want to have that one tool mentality where we treat every problem the same way. Also, don’t overshoot. Start small and then go bigger as we develop confidence and abilities in the organization. And don’t miss the opportunities to innovate and reinvent ways to improve our performance. There are times we don’t use Six Sigma, other methodologies might be in play. They could be business process management projects, business process re-engineering, or maybe Lean types of projects. We want to make sure we understand what’s already going on before we try to introduce Six Sigma. We don’t want to bite off more than we can chew. If the scope is too big and we can’t break it down into specific outcomes, that could be a roadblock. Another thing to watch out for is when the cost to implement actually outweighs the benefits. For example, if we spent 100 hours working on our project, but we’re only going to save ten hours a year of effort, then maybe that’s not something we should be pursuing right now. Another important concept when introducing Six Sigma is the notion of conducting a readiness assessment. You start with defining the outcome that we’re seeking. We also need to define clear success factors for the organization and the people involved. How will success be defined for them? Also, do we have reliable data? Do we have the right participants who support success for this project? Then we have to build a solid business case for using Six Sigma. What is the value of the improvement? What is that worth to us as an organization? Who would see that as valuable? Who might resist it that we need to address as part of the process? And do we know what the return on investment would be for implementing these changes?
Let’s take a deeper dive and assessing organizational readiness. How does the future path compare to the present situation? Are we addressing something the business actually needs now? Are we evaluating current performance? Do we have a strong rationale for applying Six Sigma to our business and to the particular problems that we’re trying to solve? And then finally, is something else going on that we need to recognize that could perhaps solve this problem? Is there an alternative solution? Is Six Sigma actually the right thing to use? Only when you’ve asked all of these questions can you be certain that your organization is ready to implement Six Sigma for a given problem. There are three steps that need to be followed to assess organizational readiness. Step 1 is assessing the outlook and the future path. Ask the question, is change a critical business need now? Step 2 is evaluating current performance. Ask the question, is there a strong strategic rationale for applying Six Sigma to our business? Step 3 is reviewing systems and capacity for the change. Ask the question, can existing improvement systems achieve the degree of change needed to keep us successful and competitive without using Six Sigma?