Building a Six Sigma Framework

Although the quality management programs of the past were widely touted and claimed to be able to bring revolutionary results to the enterprise, they faded out of the "stage" early before the shadow of profit was seen. Simply because they require companies to spend too much time, money or effort to maintain.

Today, Six Sigma is the preferred quality management model. Like its well-known predecessor, Total Quality Management, Six Sigma focuses on identifying, quantifying, and removing errors from business processes. What makes it unique is the way it achieves its goals and achieves results. Rather than simply adding quality checks to production or trading, it completely changes the way business operates. When companies select and evaluate Six Sigma projects, they do not rely on instinct, but use statistical tools to make scientific conclusions.

By implementing Six Sigma, companies identify repetitive business processes that can be continuously improved, and then set criteria for evaluating improvements. If you know how to identify and evaluate Six Sigma projects, you can solve real problems in business operations, and your efforts will pay off.

Mobilize from top to bottom and everyone participates

From the beginning, Six Sigma has drawn a line from other quality management programs because it does not add new tasks to managers who are already overwhelmed, but in the company A position dedicated to Six Sigma has been created. Those selected to be "Black Belts" or Six Sigma Specialists will no longer be in their old jobs, but will fully assume the role of Six Sigma project leaders. They typically undergo intensive training for up to four weeks on fact-based statistical methods for identifying Six Sigma projects, reducing waste and waste, and evaluating the effectiveness of project measures (and most importantly).

But according to Bencini, an assistant vice president at a human resources management consulting firm, a Six Sigma program is much more than training a small team of experts and expecting them to lift the banner of change on their own. "The success of Six Sigma requires the participation of every employee in the company." Six Sigma is a change in corporate culture (cultural change) that requires leaders to change the way they manage. Bencini added, "They have to give up making decisions based on their own experience and qualifications, not hard statistics."

Bencini said employees at all levels must embrace this management philosophy, and Acknowledge that this is how the company's business works. In order to initiate cultural change across the company, the support of senior leaders is essential. They must learn how to communicate Six Sigma with employees and answer questions from other members of the organization through training. Then, the rest of the organization should receive a basic training about the Six Sigma process and its importance.

BMG is a well-known Six Sigma management consulting firm. David Silverstein, CEO and President of BMG, believes that the most important thing is that the human resources team should be involved from the beginning to create a foundation to support the introduction of Six Sigma projects. Architecture. "The human resources department must play an important role in the planning process of the project. Because it is the infrastructure built by the human resources department that promotes the cultural change of Six Sigma."

Silverstein said that at the beginning of the implementation of Six Sigma in the enterprise , there are hundreds of HR-related issues that need to be addressed. For example, you'll write job descriptions for black belts, determine their compensation, set their selection criteria, and career planning methods. You'll also need to create and implement a communications strategy that makes Six Sigma's extraordinary accomplishments known across the company. The training department must plan for Six Sigma training for employees. In the beginning, most companies outsource the development of black belts, but within two years, they usually move to in-house development. This meant that the training department had to identify and support instructors within a short period of time.

So far, there has not been a book or course on how HR functions in a Six Sigma project, but they really need support and guidance. "Human resources control the history and culture of the company, and they are a vital part of the Six Sigma support system," says Silverstein.

Many organizations have used Six Sigma to great success, not only to solve many Human resources problems, also solve real business operation problems, and see the results of their efforts. Some of the most well-known companies include Vanguard Group, McKesson, and Mount Carmel Health. Index fund giant Vanguard uses a Six Sigma program to develop better leaders. The Fortune 500 company McKesson, which specializes in wholesale pharmaceuticals and medical services, has reinvigorated the way it operates. The Ohio-based Mount Carmel Medical Company has reap the rewards of Six Sigma through all-out reforms.

Accelerate cultural change and develop exceptional leaders

Two years ago, Vanguard implemented a Six Sigma program to create a more disciplined and disciplined management style. Rich Luzzi, director of the company's in-house Six Sigma organization, said the company's rapid expansion had made management less accountable in previous years. "Many management moves are made rashly, so we had to add metrics to the management process."

So they decided to implement a Six Sigma program and created an approach called Vanguard Unmatched Performance (VUE). At its core is a computer system tool called a "dashboard" - used to collect and publish important data on customer needs and business performance. All of the company's managers make the "dashboard" their core strategy, and then pass it on to every employee whose performance will affect the "dashboard" measurement, Lucey said. The data on the "Dashboard" reflects the results of the team's work and is always being updated. For example, employees who answer customer calls can monitor their "dashboards" to see how their interactions with customers affect specific areas of the business.

In the beginning, Vanguard only applied the "dashboard" measurement method at the management level, but by the second year, in order to accelerate the process of corporate culture change, they implemented this method throughout the workforce. "When people see the impact they have on the results of a Six Sigma implementation, they know it's not just a management slogan," says Lucey. "They start to appreciate the value of their own performance and that it's all about performance."

To help employees understand the Six Sigma philosophy and understand how their performance affects the measurement data on the "dashboard", Vanguard Group provides employees with various levels of training, which are trained by VUE Masters (also known as Black Belts). Master) internally. Employees, known as "flight attendants," receive a comprehensive training in VUE concepts and terminology. Once they are selected to participate in the VUE program, they are trained as team members. VUE Specialist (Green Belt) training is a training program for anyone who is considered a company leader, change agent or influencer. Trainees learn how to identify and implement projects, how to create "dashboards," and how to leverage the concepts of VUE, Lucey said. Green Belt training also teaches them how to communicate with team members about Six Sigma. It is very important to instill the philosophy of VUE in the lead agency. Finally, those selected as Six Sigma Specialists (Black Belts) undergo a four-week training.

In most other companies that implement Six Sigma, Black Belts are appointed for two years or more, while VUE specialists at Vanguard are only appointed for 12 months. During this time, they must end training, complete two programs, pass qualifying exams, and go back to leadership roles in the company.

By subjecting the brightest employees to rigorous, rapid Six Sigma training to gain experience implementing Six Sigma, Vanguard Group quickly added Six Sigma approach staff at all levels of the company, who infused this culture into the company's culture. A new living management philosophy. "Our goal is to transform the way companies are managed with Six Sigma," says Lucy. "Through the implementation of Six Sigma, we develop better leaders."

Attach great importance to training and reengineer business model

Mike Sonnen sees the implementation of Six Sigma as a major change in the way their business operates. "It's not an add-on, it's not a certification system, it's how we operate," said Jeff Reinke, vice president of Six Sigma programs.

Before, McKesson never thought of implementing Quality management plan. But with the cost of health care soaring, McKesson executives realized that the only way the company could stay competitive was to cut costs down the supply chain. At that time, some companies attracted a lot of attention due to their extraordinary achievements in applying Six Sigma. So McKesson's leadership team began to explore whether the process could be transferred to health care delivery.

McKesson implements Six Sigma "in a traditional way". They select some of their outstanding employees to undergo a four-week Black Belt training course; for the next two years, these Black Belts will leave the business area entirely and only participate in the implementation of the Six Sigma project. The company first developed 15 to 20 Black Belts in departments responsible for medical equipment and pharmaceutical supply, and then reassigned them to their original business units to serve as Six Sigma representatives on the team.

Subsequently, each training targeted a different business team, and slowly, Six Sigma philosophy permeated McKesson's business philosophy. The company has since produced more than 120 black belts, 80% of which are still active today.

At the end of the two-year term, Black Belts are awarded higher positions and return to business. Their role is to disseminate the Six Sigma approach throughout the organization and to ensure that the key leaders of the business buy into the Six Sigma philosophy. "At McKesson, the black belt training program is like a succession plan," Reinke said. The company selects the most capable employees in the business for Six Sigma training and, after training, promotes them accordingly. "Employers know that if they want to advance in the company, they must strive for the opportunity of black belt training."

However, Six Sigma training is not limited to the black belt level. In most departments of the company, all senior vice presidents are required to receive a "basic training", from which to understand the concept of Six Sigma, understand how to identify Six Sigma projects. Managers and supervisors throughout the company participate in basic and green belt training to gain knowledge of the Six Sigma approach to directing high-level work and the importance of following them.

This mandatory training also promotes the company's philosophy of strictly adhering to fact-based work methods. "In the past, company leaders made business decisions based on their seniority or experience; now, decision makers know that a project's implementation depends on whether it's backed by hard data," Reinke said.

In Mike At the company, Six Sigma training never stops. The company now has four Master Black Belts in charge of all Six Sigma training in-house, which Reynke hopes will continue to be an integral part of the employee development process. In the end, he said, every work team will have a black belt with a passion for Six Sigma, and just as every team has a vice president and a partner, everyone in the company will see Six Sigma as a way of doing business.

In the first year and every subsequent year, Six Sigma was profitable for McKesson, but Reinker didn't see it as just a cost-cutting tool, "it helped us improve our core competitiveness." ," he said, "Six Sigma is now our corporate culture."

Core team support, top-down implementation

For Mount Carmel Medical, June 2000 was an extraordinary period. The company was forced to lay off 200 people due to the rising cost of medical services, dampening employee morale, which in turn affected their attitude to patient care. "We knew that the company had to change," said Tammy Weidner, vice president of Six Sigma programs at Mount Carmel Medical.

At the time, both the company's chief quality officer (CQO) and the CEO were reading Books about Six Sigma, although no company in the medical services industry has applied Six Sigma, but the application of this management concept in other industries has been impressive, so the company executives decided to give it a try.

The leadership team including the CEO, CQO, Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) participated in a Six Sigma workshop in June 2000. In July, they signed an agreement with BMG and at the end of the month began receiving senior leadership training provided by BMG.

BMG consultants began teaching these leaders one-on-one with Six Sigma fact-based problem solving, answering a wide variety of questions they asked. "It's critical to get the top-level training first, because they're the initiators of the Six Sigma project, and they have to know how to reassure their employees, and what to do if there's resistance," said Weidner.

The two-day period After the high-level training of the company, the vice presidents of the company begin to receive the training of the Six Sigma process and method, and they will become the "champion" of the implementation of the Six Sigma project. They then select 44 black belts from the company's existing workforce. "These black belt candidates are giving up their current positions and don't have someone else to replace them," Wedner said. This is a big loss for the business units that have lost these go-getters, especially after the layoffs. soon. Therefore, the vice presidents of the company must understand and fully accept the concept of Six Sigma, and must know that in the process of implementing Six Sigma, it will inevitably lead to the resentment of employees.

At the end of October, the first batch of black belts began training. "The speed of action is unprecedented for a health care company," said Weidner, "and it shows employees that there is a strong commitment to change at the top."

Both for the company and for the health care industry as a whole , Six Sigma is a brand new thing, therefore, in the implementation process of early projects, black belts form a united whole, support and encourage each other. They are also supported by the "core team", which consists of the company's vice presidents in charge of human resources, finance, communications and public relations, a senior executive, a representative from the IT department, and key operations personnel from the three affiliated hospitals. , a director of education and a Six Sigma task force of Weidner himself. The task of the working group is to create an infrastructure for the implementation of Six Sigma, including making technical improvements to support the project and training, developing a statement of work, identifying the roles and compensation components of those involved in the project, and creating a common Question answering system to answer any questions from employees about the company's Six Sigma project implementation method and how to participate in it.

Weidner attributes much of the credit for the company's project success to this core team and the infrastructure it has built. At the time, there was no experience in the industry to draw on, so the core team was primarily tasked with making Six Sigma applicable to the healthcare service industry and promoting Six Sigma concepts throughout the organization through newsletters, conference agendas, and informational websites. "Every day, I get calls from people asking about the progress of a company's Six Sigma program, and it's a useful touchstone for the enthusiasm and acceptance of Six Sigma," says Weidner.

There is also a strong The standard can measure the employee's acceptance of Six Sigma, that is, the project's return on investment. In the first year, the company invested $650,000 in start-up capital. Although the training did not end until March 2001, by June 2001, the company had saved $946,000 from the three projects that had been implemented for only two months. In the second year, saving $6.5 million, Weidner estimates the return will be $9 million in the third year. "This shows that as long as you have the courage, energy, and perseverance to do this, the rewards will be very impressive."

Excerpted with permission from the May 2003 issue of Workforce Magazine, Crain Communications, Inc .Register copyright. Translated by Liu Yanqun. Sara Fister Gale is a freelance writer based in Minneapolis.