Organizations are increasingly adding tried and true Lean principles, tools and techniques to their continuous improvement initiatives to eliminate waste, improve customer satisfaction and reduce unnecessary costs.  And rightly so.  Successful Lean routinely reduce operating costs 20% – 40% and cycle time by even greater margins, and those cost reductions often go straight to the bottom line.

Traditionally, in applying Lean, trained teams identify then eliminate or significantly reduce the non-value added activities and related costs for specific processes within their operation.  But what if there are no “trained teams”?  What if process boundaries are unclear in a functionally silo’d organization?  Does this mean you can’t do anything to get results until significant infrastructure is in place?  I think not.

a short overview of our approach to applying lean at an operations level to internal service functions

We’ve found that Lean concepts and tools can be leveraged at a higher, function or operation level  very effectively.  The good news is that this approach delivers impressive business results on its own in the short term AND sets the stage for even more impactful process level improvements.  This is especially true for back office / internal service operations like HR, finance, IT, sales and marketing, supply chain management, etc.

Lean applied at an Operation Level for internal service and back office functions like HR, Finance, Procurement, IT, Marketing and Sales, and Supply Chain Management can make an immediate business impact …

The idea is to identify a complete business operation‘s most impactful cost drivers, BEFORE tightening focus to any process/subprocess in the value stream.  For those of you that have done Lean at the process level, I know this sounds a bit strange and your first thought may be that the scope will be too big and nothing will get done. But, our experience is that this can work very well and be very impactful:

• It can serve as a front-end audit function, greatly helping to identify next tier focus areas.
• It recognizes and works within functional boundaries that exist in the enterprise, as opposed to attempting to force artificial process boundaries that, while may be desirable, do not exist
• It maps and costs all key value streams of a targeted business function or sub-function, a necessary prerequisite for lower level improvements
• Attacks waste organization wide,  in both the supply-side (internal function itself) and demand-side (customer, consumer of the output).
• It consistently identifies low hanging fruit opportunities that can be realized immediately
• It can be used to jumpstart a new lean initiative or address unrealized opportunities from earlier lean events.

Lean Operations (lean applied at an high-level operations level) can definitely be a powerful tool for enterprises that are looking for immediate cost savings and/or performance improvements in internal service operations, but don’t have the desire/bandwidth/budget to start up a formal Continuous Improvement program.   It can be applied to an entire operation (e.g. HR, finance, Legal, IT, etc)  in a relatively short time period, and it does not require a big investment in training and infrastructure.  For those organizations that do want to move to a more structured Continuous Improvement program, it can be an excellent way to jumpstart a BPM, Lean, Six Sigma, etc. program

Need to improve performance or lower costs in internal service functions like Human Resources (HR), Finance, Procurement, Supply Chain, IT, Marketing and Sales, or any other back office type function?   Contact me to learn more about our approach to applying lean at an operations level.

Over the past 20 years of experience, we’ve learned the key to sustaining performance improvement gains rests on process management.  This role is entrusted to a broad group of employees who are often the process owners and, when not the process owners, are still the most affected by large scale improvements.  Providing them the proper skills forms a critical component of a robust quality management system.

Some have dubbed this person and the required skills Yellow Belt but that term hasn’t done the role justice.  Yellow Belts are often thought of as data collectors or Black Belt assistants.  But a Yellow Belt’s ability to control and manage processes using metrics and data as well as solve problems using basic quality tools gives them far more impact.  Their power doesn’t come from their place in a tiered pecking order of Master Black Belt, Black Belt and Green Belt but in their numbers, demographics, foundational skills and role.

our executive brief that discusses how Yellow Belts play a crucial role in sustaining process improvement efforts

Yellow Belt training introduces the majority of individual contributors to the concepts of process improvement and management and their position in their organizations make a direct connection to improvement efforts.  Yellow Belt training can be fit to how people will be expected to operate.  If positioned to assist Black Belts, they have little need for project selection or analytical tools.  However, if Yellow Belts are expected to sustain gains long after Black Belts have left, a more complete set of tools is required.

Many organizations have active Operational Excellence programs that consistently execute projects through to implementation successfully.  But to make it stick, drive it wide and take care of low hanging fruit, they should look at process management which forms the core of Yellow Belt capability.  If you’d like to see the core concepts covered in Yellow Belt training, contact us or go to our website’s Yellow Belt webpage where you can download complimentary Yellow Belt training materials.

For many companies, CI has has moved from a top-down strategic initiative to tactical activities focused on specific business problems

I’ve written several articles that talked about how views on business process and performance improvement have changed over the last 3 years.   In the personal development world, there is a mantra that basically says that meaningful change comes only when the pain of not changing becomes greater than the pain associated with change. 

The economic downturn definitely created the pain that caused a lot of companies to change the way they look at their business, and at process and continuous improvement.  I see very few companies saying they want to launch a top-down, enterprise wide Six Sigma (or Lean or BPM) initiative, especially ones that focuses on investing big $’s on training and infrastructure up front.   Those days, for the most part, seem to be over and gone.  Certainly a big change from years past, but is it a bad thing?  

Some purists might argue that it is a bad thing, that top-down, large scale change management and process improvement initiatives should be a fundamental part of any enterprise.  Theoretically, yes, but how many large-scale Six Sigma (or Lean or BPM) initiatives basically collapsed under their own weight in years past, after a great deal of money, time, and intellectual capital was spent?   A great many, I can assure you.  Why?   Well, I might argue that it’s because they took on a front-and-center life of their own, as initiatives, growing unbounded for the sake of the initiative when their place should have been in supporting the core value-generating processes of the business. 

a short guide to project selection and definition.

I would argue that the change is not a bad thing, and was necessary to survive in this new normal.  Let’s think about where are we now?   Companies are lean and mean, operating in very much of a do-more-with-less mindset.  For many, big Six Sigma (or Lean or BPM) organizations have been disbanded.  Productivity is at record levels.  60 hour + work weeks are the norm for many.  But, you can only ask so much of your people for so long.   Sooner or later the business processes have to be looked at, right?  

But, now, what I see is that many organizations are taking a very pragmatic and tactical approach to CI.  The competitive environment, the regulatory environment, or maybe even a very important customer is telling them EXACTLY where process problems are, and they are listening.  They then focus like a laser beam by identifying and rigorously defining good projects (see a recent article I wrote on the elements of good project definition) that solve real, specific business problems.  They then develop the process improvement skills in-house or work with a specialist partner to execute what are, by definition, high-impact improvement projects. No guesswork, no unnecessary overhead, no unnecessary infrastructure.   

In essence, what I see is a fundamental shift from CI initiatives that are pushed into the enterprise to an environment where CI and process improvement are pulled in, as specifically needed by the business.  Of course, the pendulum has swung very far from the strategic to the tactical and the optimum is probably somewhere in the middle.  But, was this change a bad thing?   I think not.  I think it will serve to refocus CI on what really matters …. making the business more competitive and profitable in an ever-changing marketplace.

Feel free to contact me directly.  I’d like to hear your thoughts ….

It was more than 15 years ago that our firm was first engaged to help a client implement Six Sigma. Along the way, Lean was integrated and the term of art became Lean Six Sigma.  Yet even today, we still begin many conversations with prospective clients who say “we want to do Six Sigma?”   We try to determine what Six Sigma means to them and why they want to do Six Sigma.  Definitions and motivations vary.  None are wrong.  They are individual to the person, the company and the situation. 

But to determine the appropriateness of their conclusion, we ask about the nature of their business challenges and the state of their management system.  And at the end of that portion of the conversation we invariably begin to wonder whether the prospective client can benefit greatly by first paving the way with Lean.  And that is really most apparent in Service Organizations where so much of the waste is invisible and Lean’s visual tools brings the waste to light before introducing Six Sigma. 

our latest whitepaper, which discusses how Lean Six Sigma is different in a services environment, as compared to a traditional manufacturing environment.

Lean can be of great benefit before introducing Six Sigma for the following reasons:

1. Lean makes the implementation of Six Sigma easier by eliminating non-value added activities.  Six Sigma, while robust, like any program that aims to drive change can be a challenge to implement.  You can make Six Sigma’s implementation simpler and more cost effective by first applying Lean.  This is for two reasons. First, you will enhance the effectiveness of the Six sigma tools by enhancing the rate at which information is fed into the Six Sigma problem solving exercises.  Secondly, you may discover after applying Lean, there is insufficient improvement available to merit a Six Sigma project.
2. Lean develops a culture of improvement which makes implementing Six Sigma easier.  Lean can be implemented more quickly and easily than Six Sigma.  We facilitate workshops that by the end of a week introduce improvements.  People come out energized and feeling they made an impact.  Managers see an ROI on the improvement investment.  The result is a willingness by all levels of the organization to increase their commitment.
3. Sometimes the problem isn’t going to be solved with Six Sigma tools…or at least not quickly.  When you prioritize problems, you try to separate them into buckets by their fundamental nature so as to gain some economies and structure to any allocation of resources.  Part of the reason is that Six Sigma efforts require more time and effort.  Failing optimize the problem to the applied tools, you may end up trying to apply Six Sigma to problems that can be easily addressed with a Lean exercise.  Even worse, you can work at reducing variation when all you need is to reduce your cycle time to capture the available gain.

We have written a great deal about both Lean and Six Sigma.  We don’t favor one methodology over the other nor do we see them as an “either or” decision.  In the long run, we encourage all our clients to gain proficiency and apply both Lean and Six Sigma.  However, to help our clients succeed in driving ROI and organizational change, we believe that there are advantages to Lean paving the way for Six Sigma, especially in companies just starting out as well as Service Organizations. 

Now there is always an exception to a rule such as when prioritized projects clearly require Six Sigma tools.  The business should always “pull” the improvement efforts as outlined in “Let Your Business Define Your Improvement Program”.  But in the case of launching or re-launching a general program, allowing Lean to pave the way for Six Sigma increases the ROI of the continuous improvement effort by using the simplest and most applicable tools first while increasing the effectiveness of subsequent Six Sigma activities. 

 If you wish to discuss these points, contact me.

The dramatic changes of the Great Recession have left many starting over.  Continuous Improvement programs are being rebuilt, reconstituted and revitalized.  The people, knowledge and leadership are critical elements but an important lesson we learned over the last 15 years of helping our clients is that the success of a Continuous Improvement program is highly dependent on its infrastructure.   So whether you are staring over or just starting, very early in the deployment, you must implement the following:

1. Launch Planning; Establish the schedules and activity tracking/reporting techniques
2. Human Resource Guidelines; Establish competency models and participant selection, position and role descriptions, compensation, reporting relationships, career planning.
3. Communication Plan; Create an overall message for the implementation.  Provide clear reason why the adoption of the program makes business sense by explaining how it aligns to the Company’s strategic vision and each individual’s success.
4. Financial Guidelines and Responsibilities; Agree upon financial definitions, project forecasting requirements, methods of evaluation, realization tracking and reporting process. Agree how the financial arm of the organization will be involved.
5. Project Selection and Prioritization Guidelines; Recognize and define criteria, project type categorizations, problem statement and objective criteria, targeted savings values, approval process, completion requirements that collectively are to be used to rank and rate projects. 
6. Establish a Project Pipeline; Go beyond selection, ranking and rating criteria to outline how ideas for new projects will be gathered, converted to projects, ranked, rated and assigned.  A pipeline of worthwhile projects is imperative to maintaining a program’s momentum.
7. Project Tracking and Reporting; Organize report requirements, systems and initial reports.
8. Information Technology Support; Software installations, computer needs, Intranet development, databases for final reports.
9. Management Review; Ensure constant measurement, feedback, and reporting on key deployment metrics to all stakeholders to ensure deployment objectives are met.
10. Commence and Maintain Executive Training; Whether you want to think of it as part of infrastructure or as a separate item for organizations that are ready, upfront executive training is imperative.  You can’t allow the CI program to be something to which leaders aren’t aware, engaged and committed.  The training should go beyond “overview” training.  It should layout executive’s responsibilities and how they are to engage.  It should also explain what benefits the executives will accrue – what is in it for them.  Make sure the training emphasizes the benefits of aligning improvement activities to their business goals – the things that really matter to the business.

 our latest executive brief, 10 Essential Do’s and Don’ts for a Six Sigma Deployment

To date, we have discussed many things important to a CI initiative from good knowledge transfer methodology to project alignment.  But to attain real long term success, make sure you have a good infrastructure.  Think of it like the barrel of a gun.  It will ensure the program takes a straight line to its target.  If you would like to discuss how to build your infrastructure and ensure your program’s success, contact me.

It is often said “free training is not always good, and good training is not always free”, and for the most part this holds true time and time again. But I have also heard the expression “Win-Win” and I firmly believe there is always a win-win out there, so how do we use our creative imagination to combine the two and help our organizations?

I’m talking about finding a partner that has as much to gain through the development of a skilled workforce as you do, but has deeper pockets and can achieve economies of scale far beyond what a company can- I am talking specifically about the state and federal government grants available for training.

You want productivity gains for your business without the expense of overhead or additional manpower, and the states want companies to remain committed to thier communities and viable going concerns that pay taxes and create jobs – I see a Win-Win. Take a look around and ask what is out there for your organization, Continual Improvement and Lean Six Sigma are designed to support bottom line activities with direct and measurable payback that can be easily translated those metrics that are important to those writing the grants and awarding the dollars at the local and state level.

I’ll let you in on a secret…. behind these grants are good people actively looking for a good investment.  Behind the money is an individual not unlike you or I that would love to find a viable company, give them grant money and show the success through job retention or promotion of participants.  It allows them to stride proudly into their place of work and say “ I found that company… I gave a grant to that company”.  These people are out there and they are looking for the same things in a client that you look for in your best clients. And when they find it they want to fund it.

Fundamentally it is simple to do, define what you want…seek out a grant that matches your needs. Some are competitive, some are bound in a certain dollar amount and some have very precise stipulations about what the money can and cannot be used for… but just as there are cars for every driver, there are grants for every business. Grants do not always have to be about promotion, hiring or overhead, they sometimes can be simply job retention or more often than not they can be about marketability of the workforce in the event of an economic downturn…define how the grant will judge success and then make sure you meet your mark.  Use the same concepts discussed in Pay-as-You-Go to build a case just like you would for your management team.

Here is another secret… shoot for what seems impossible. If you are playing on the edge there is less competition, there is a saying that after $500K it gets easier. This is because companies do not think the grants are out there, or their needs for the deployment do not come close to the amount. Don’t let this dissuade you as a company from seeking the win-win and using someone else’s money to train your employees and kick off your Six Sigma or Lean initiatives. States are just as competitive for business bids as individual business is for customers and if you reach out the response will be overwhelming, just begin with the end in mind and know what you are looking for and what you are willing to give in return.  Finally talk to your service provider, if they know what you are attempting to do they can tailor a training plan to meet your grant requirements and define the metrics to make sure you appease the ones that funded the grant.

our Lean Quickstart Presentation for an overview of Lean and Six Sigma, now they work together, and how they may be deployed.

In conclusion lean and Six Sigma address all of the key indicators grant requirements look for  profitability, waste reduction, labor retention, job promotion…etc.etc. Use this to your advantage and seek  win-win with the local governments, as an alternative you may be able to create a co-op of similar non-competitive businesses to fund the match  on the training and collaborate in the projects to off-set the costs, all of this is possible and has been done before,  it is only limited by your organization’s creative imagination and commitment.  If you’d like to know how we did this successfully for my company, contact me.

I remember all too well when companies would be told they needed to “be a Six Sigma company” and to do so they had to subscribe to a formula requiring strict percentages of their employee population be trained as Master Black Belts, Black Belts, Green Belts and Yellow Belts.  In addition, the definitions of the knowledge those people required was equally strictly enforced.  Companies were told achieving these goals would make them a Six Sigma company and being a Six Sigma company would make them successful with their customers and shareholders. 

Anyone that lived through the last 15 years of evolution in the field of Operational Excellence can recognize the folly of this prescription.  With the benefit of hindsight, it is obvious the program can’t dictate to the business.  And in all honesty, I don’t wish to pick on any singular subject area.  We’ve seen the same sin from many other philosophies and disciplines.  In the excitement generated by a successful new tool or compilation of tools, we tend to pursue the expertise ahead of resolution of our problems.

As we enter a new business cycle, let’s bring all our knowledge together and recalibrate how we choose to apply it by putting the problem or portfolio of problems first.  To avoid having a snazzy tool take over what we do each day, we recommend the following path;

• Understand where you want to go.
• Understand where you are…which has two aspects; (i) your level of performance and (ii) your ability to improve performance
• Let the comparison between where you want to go and where you are currently performing define what you need to accomplish
• Let the comparison between what you need to accomplish and your ability to improve dictate what new capability you need to acquire.

 Our BPM Overview Presentation.

When you are finished outlining the steps above, you will see something quite different than formulaic curriculum and percentages of your population to be trained.  In fact, the solution will not appear simple or fast.  And therefore it will not be as appealing as the aforementioned formula or any other formula from the array of philosophies available in the profession.  The plan that emerges is a function of applying a series of decision rules more than simply measuring the ingredients of a recipe. 

But think about the obvious logic of the outcome.  Your business isn’t simple.  If it were, everyone would do it.  If your business isn’t simple, how can a solution to your challenges be simple.  The complexity of the solution will match the complexity of the problem.

So how and where do you start?  How do you bring order to the chaos?  The answer lies in the definition of your projects, the identification of their root causes and in grouping them together by root cause so as to build a roadmap forward.  The complexity is in the selection and prioritization of projects. The simplification comes in executing on the projects.

I spoke to an executive at a company yesterday that described the old process as creating angst.   The word itself gives you heartburn.  When I asked him what gave rise to the angst, he responded that the discipline had been forced fit.  What can you say to such powerful words as those?

If those are the feelings the prior model drove, what do we strive for today?  We strive to “PULL” the required knowledge.  We believe anyone pursuing the path above should one day describe it using words such as choice and flexible.  The emotion we hope to see at the end is relief.  That is the new paradigm. 

If participants should one day replace the words “Forced Fit” with “Choice” and “Flexibility” and the word “Angst” with “Relief”, what should we see at a business level?  Well, here are some key results that should be witnessed.

• Faster returns.  While the long path is more complex, the milestones become simpler so measured returns should be faster. The simple formula of ten years ago is monolithic and so the returns can’t be measured for a long time.  In fact, the fallacy of the monolithic argument is partly hidden by the time spectrum as you are asked not to measure for months if not years.   (A key aspect of this is discussed in our recent article “Pay as you Go”).  Armada v. Drake’s English fleet.
• Organizational Traction.  Creating a ladder of success ensures Organizational Traction by producing “wins” and establishing a foundation of knowledge and capability to tackle tougher problems.  So many Performance Improvement strategies talk about resolving the big chronic problems.  But pursuing them right from the beginning is fraught with risk. And pursuing resolution to smaller problems with the tools you need to solve big problems takes too much time and effort which is wasteful for individuals and the organization.
• Alignment.  If you adopt a Pull strategy, you can’t help but be aligned.  Your business defines your problems which in turn define your program.  As a result, your activities are ensured to be aligned to your business.  Leadership needs to see resources dedicated to the problems they are trying to resolve.  We are all living in an environment where we must do more with less.  There is no room for unaligned activities.  Pursuing a philosophy for its own sake is a luxury no company can afford.

We see this happening every day now.  Listening to the organization and being flexible produces more of the right gains faster than talking to the organization and forcing it to fit a prescription.  Individuals get more involved with something that produces relief instead of creating angst.  Pull is significantly more effective than Push.  Let the business needs and ability define the improvement program.

Contact me if you’d like to discuss this in more detail.

My colleagues and I have written about this subject from several angles I want to start bringing it togetter.  In my post On Demand Performance Improvement  and Lynn Monkelien’s, Senior Director of Enterprise Learning at the Apollo Group and SSQ guest blogger, post entitled Pull Learning in Business Process and Performance Improvement we discussed how to break the paradigm of training inefficiencies.  This was further supported in my white paper entitled On Demand Performance Improvemnt – Traditional Training Meets Social Media which is available on our website’s home page in the “spotlight” section.  Then my colleague, Eric Harris wrote Back to Basics where he introduced the various foundation aspects of Yellow Belt, Lean and Business Process Management.   Since then there have been numerous posts on each of these subjects. 

Together we are all describing a new training paradigm that is emerging where with our clients we not only making better use of technology and social media standards but also of a contemporary and robust library of materials and broad capability of personnel to meet the contemporary needs of organizations.  Specifically, with so much pressure on costs and the limited availability of company personnel’s time, it’s not surprising that most companies are looking hard at how and what they delivery to their workforce.  The key is to define what is needed… nothing more and nothing less…in terms of both content and exposure.  And that is done by matching the depth of training to the problems the organization seeks to address and putting the information into the users hands in as many low cost forms as possible as close to the actual application as possible. 

Here are some factors to consider when asking what training and coaching is needed:

* Are you addressing manufacturing, engineering or transactional processes?  In factories and laboratories where much of the improvement activity may focus on equipment, techniques such as Gauge R&R, Process Capability, Setup Reduction, Total Productive Maintenance and perhaps even Design of Experiments are invaluable.  But in transactional businesses, they can be substituted with more impactful subjects.

* Are you dealing with high-volume repetitive processes?  Much of the Lean training can be simplified and reduced if you are not.  Value Stream Mapping, for example, can be covered at a more general level.

* What is the objective and the environment?  Are you attempting to remove defects or reduce cycle time?  If you seek to reduce errors in a financial services company, the focus is on process analysis so Pareto Charts, Run Charts and the like, which are quick and easy to teach, become the focus.

And here are some questions to ask when considering how to get the chosen information to the user:

* What sort of time is available from the targeted personnel? Can they spend a day in a classroom or is thier time limited to hours per day or per week? Will targeted candidates be in different locations or at one facility?

* Do you know exactly what thier problems require or will it evolve over time? 

* Are they comfortable with technology and social media?

 The point is that you have choices.  You can follow a fairly standardized prescription for Lean Six Sigma training as described through the classic belt definitions or you can tailor your training to unique needs.  At the same time, you can perform standard instructor lead training or you can use various communication tools that leverage technologies and social media standards. 

I have one note of caution –if you cut the content or instructor interaction too far, the price for the mistake doesn’t immediately show itself during the training.  Problems evidence themselves once the training is well underway or completed.  And the problems might be that projects get delayed, more coaching is needed to complete high value projects or certified candidates fail in follow-on projects.  The result is a general loss of confidence emerges for the whole process.  By the time you discover your mistake, the effort is deemed a failure.  We don’t say this to scare you into overbuying or overdesigning.  We believe the answer is to monitor the situation closely and maintain flexibility in both the training and support.  It is in this reaction time that modular content and flexible, technology enabled support tools and methods really make a difference.

If you would like to discuss this emerging model, contact me.

As a followup to my recent post titled Trained Yellow Belts Think Differently, I thought I would spend a little time talking about what yellow belts can actually DO.

In a traditional six sigma deployment, yellow belts play a critical role in supporting higher level black belt and green belt projects.  They are trained in the foundation of the DMAIC problem solving process and can speak the language of Six Sigma.  They can handle some of the lower level tasks of process mapping, data collection, setting up measurement systems, establishing and maintaining control systems , and may actually be subject matter experts. Basically, they allow the black belts and green belts to focus on the more complex analytical aspects of the project.  If yellow belts are used effectively, they can improve the productivity of black belts and green belts in a BIG way.

BUT, what can they do outside of supporting higher level belts?   What if you don’t even have higher level belts?  What can a yellow belt trained employee do for the organization? 

Six Sigma purists might argue that Yellow Belts should not be trained, without Black Belts and Green Belts, and that their role is to support higher level belts.  I don’t agree with this at all.   Again, I have to hedge by saying that I’m talking about the level of capability that yellow belts trained by SSQ have (i.e. 4-5 days of training).   So, what can Mr. Yellow Belt do?

• Characterize Processes.  Process mapping and characterization is a skill that should not be taken lightly.  All too often,  improvements are made to processes when we don’t know how the current process really operates, the current state.  These so-called improvements, in many cases, add unnecessary complexity and create more problems than they fixed.  We call this tampering and it is a sure-fire recipe for disaster.  A great example of where process characterization is an invaluable skill is with large-scale enterprise software implementations.   It seems common sense that we should understand exactly how a process works before we try to systemize/automate with software, right?  How often is there really a focused effort to characterize and optimize processes?   I would argue not enough of the time and this is readily apparent in the big $’s spent on configuration, customization, tweaks, etc.
• Establish/validate measurement systems. Yellow belts learn the basics of Six Sigma and its focus on using data to understand problems and get to the root cause.  The learn the basics of what makes a good measurement system, and what does not.    The can certainly help establish measurement and data collection systems that are actionable, and validate (or invalidate) existing ones.
• Establish Process Control Systems.  This is a key yellow belt skillset and its importance should not be overlooked.  Yellow belts learn how to set up process control systems to assure that processes function as expected by the customer.  Spec limits are establish, as are response plans when an indicator goes out of control 
• Execute small scale improvement projects in their own areas.   Will they have the deep statistical analysis skills that well-trained green belts or black belts have?  No, they will not.  But they will have a solid problem solving foundation around DMAIC and they will have a working knowledge of the basic tools in D-M-A-I-C.  They know what a well scoped project looks like, they know the basic measure and analyze graphical tools, they know how to use a structured approach to select improvements, and they definitely know about process control systems.   Let’s not lose site of the fact that these basic tools will likely be sufficient to address a significant portion of the process problems you’ll face.  

Some may think of Yellow Belts as team members, data collectors, or assistants to Black Belts.  I strongly question this view and think, in reality, a Yellow Belt’s role should be much deeper than that.  Yellow Belts practice a Process Management approach (control and manage processes using metrics and data) and can solve real business problems using basic, but proven, quality tools and a systematic approach.  

Yellow belt skills are valuable at any level of the organization, from managers to the lowest level process operators, and the processes they improve are usually the ones they work in day in and day out.  Many years back the term daily process management was in vogue.  The term has certainly faded a bit, but it’s hard to argue against the value of actively managing and improving processes on a daily basis.

Contact me if you’d like to talk about how yellow belts might be able to help your organization.  And, if you haven’t already, download our yellow belt training manual to see for yourself the rich skillset a yellow belt acquires.

We’ve been offering a complimentary download of our Yellow Belt training manuals on our website for a couple of weeks and the response has been extremely positive.   Of course, some people just want to download something that is free.  However, the majority of people are genuinely interested in Six Sigma and process improvement in general, and are looking for ways to bring some foundation capability into their organizations.  From the conversations I have, it is clear that the need for basic process improvement hasn’t gone away, but the way companies are willing to build the capability has certainly changed.  I did a recent post that talks about how companies are moving back to the basics when it comes to CI, basics that are inexpensive and deliver results to a broad base of the organization.

Now, many of the people that are downloading have heard the term yellow belt and are curious about what a yellow belt skillset is.  But I’m seeing that a lot of people don’t have a good feel for exactly what a yellow belt does and how it can benefit the organization.  So, I’m going to provide some thoughts here and on some subsequent posts. 

As a disclaimer, there is really no standard out there for what a yellow belt knows.  I’m talking about our (Qualtec’s) definition of a yellow belt skillset.  For us, yellow belt training is usually delivered as 4-5 days of training.

Yellow Belts really should think and act differently after training so, let’s first talk about what yellow belts should be thinking about after training:

• Analyzing real data to drive business decisions, analyzing root cause to drive implementation of the right solutions, and understanding that CI (Lean, Six Sigma, BPM, etc) is all about improving business performance in terms of voice of the customer.
• Identifying and tracking the right metrics (primary, secondary, etc), really understanding process capability and process performance.
• How to practically get and use data and a scientific approach to solve a problem?
• Understanding what a problem is really costing the business, the real cost-of-poor-quality (COPQ)
• Putting in the proper process control mechanisms to sustain improvements over time …
• The project selection and prioritization process of the company to assure that the right things are being targeted, things that will make an impact.

The Yellow Belt skillset is a foundation set of quality improvement and process control tools.  It is something that can be applied anywhere in the organization and on any process to yield wide-ranging improvements.  It is one approach, and an effective one for many, to building a solid foundation for CI in their organization.

Contact me if you want more info or would like to discuss in more detail ….