Qualtec's Business Performance Improvement Blog

The last few years have witnessed big changes in the business climate, and continuous improvement (CI) efforts have certainly seen their share of change.   I talk with companies every day and, without a doubt, there has been a fundamental shift in thought on how to best make meaningful process improvement happen.

Prior to 2008, there was significant interest and buy-in for large-scale, top-down initiatives. There was a willingness to set aside large budgets and free up significant resources for the CI initiative.   Training increasingly large segments of the workforce was front and center.  Detailed, multi-year plans were put in place.   The CI initiative was heavily promoted, internally and externally, and employees were strongly urged to participate.

But, did those big initiatives deliver results?   Undoubtedly some did.  But, many more, when you really check the numbers, did not.  There are many distinct causes why they didn’t work, and I won’t try to dive into that here.    But, with the meltdown in the business climate, many leaders took a look in the rear view mirror and didn’t like what they saw …. big dollars and resources consumed with little evidence of concrete results.

Now, does this mean that CI and process improvement is useless and should be abandoned?  Of course not.  Businesses live and die today based on the strength and adaptiveness of their processes, as compared to their competitors.  Does it mean that the tools and methodologies used (Lean, Six Sigma, BPM, etc) are not good and should be replaced with something new?   I think not.  The tools and methodologies can certainly be improved and expanded (and are), but they are proven to work.

So what’s happened?  I believe that, for a lot of companies, there was too much focus on the initiative and not nearly enough focus on results. And based on conversations I have with business leaders every day, I think many have drawn the same conclusion.

So, when smart people see the error in their ways, it typically leads to change.  The change that I’ve seen happen for CI is a move back to the basics, and a focus on bottomline, business results.  It may return, but for now I see very little interest in big change initiatives whose results are measured over the very long term, if ever truly measured.  I see a much more tactical view of CI, focusing on solving specific business problems quickly,  as opposed to general quality improvement.  CI programs are more likely to be looked at from a bottom-up or grass-roots perspective.

Smart leaders are now letting the specific needs of their business drive what the CI program looks like, what methodologies and tools are applied, how results get measured, what technology platforms are deployed, etc.  To borrow from Lean, the business is pulling CI capability, as opposed to it being pushed into the business.  In the real world, what does this mean?

a short executive brief that provides a good overview of the basics of lean

Well, I can only give you my perspective from talking with leaders at companies of all sizes and in many different domains, but what I see is a clear move back to the basics of business and process improvement.  Basic quality and process tools as employed in Business Process Management (BPM), Lean, and basic quality tools (Yellow Belt) are getting a second look.

Why?  Because, for many businesses, the basics will help solve 95% of the real business problems, get results fast, and they can be introduced into the organization for a very low cost and very low risk.  The basics also build a solid foundation on which advanced capabilities like Six Sigma and DFSS can be effectively built and deployed to deliver even more dramatic business results, with much less risk.

So, what do you think?  Is this just a reaction to circumstances and will large-scale, top down change initiatives return.   OR,   is this the new normal for companies when it comes to business and process improvement? Feel free to  Contact me if you’d like to discuss.

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.

A core commandment of my philosophy toward Quality Management Systems is that the QMS is not separate from the business environment, but rather just another facet of the business. This leads us to the idea that there is no room in the QMS for non-value added activities, however due to the segregation of the systems, much of the time Quality Auditing is seen as just that… non-value added. Historically this is not an untrue view, as previous quality systems relied on a complex checklist that only scratched the surface of a process, and provided little or no value to the organization.  For this reason my next few posts will deal more specifically with how Six Sigma and other Continuous Improvement  techniques and methods can be used to achieve the GOAL of certification while actually adding value to the business.

Our Complimenary Executive Brief on how Yellow Belts can play a key role in Quality and CI programs

                To re-affirm my stance, certification is the GOAL, how you get there is up to you; coincidentally what you have to work with at the end is your choice as well (for good or bad). This week we will focus on the application of Six Sigma Yellow belts as the foundation of an Internal Audit Program, a requirement of ISO 9001. This applies to all of the System and process audits that ISO9001 requires, product audits are a whole other animal.   In his post “What can Yellow Belts do…really” Eric Harris hit on a few key roles for Yellow Belts in a Six Sigma organization, these were:

1. Characterization of processes
2. Establish/ Validate Measurement Systems
3. Establish process Control Systems
4. Perform Small Scope  projects

                 In ISO 9001:2008 the requirement is to have an internal audit program with qualified auditors. Now if you are looking to add value to your organization doesn’t it seem most advantageous to have an auditor with the skills listed above. Training an “internal auditor” traditionally revolves around a lengthy class of standards exploration, leaving them competent to fill out their checklist and audit to the “shalls” in the standard, but what value are you really getting from these “checklist jockeys”? Wouldn’t it make sense to have your auditor explore the process map, improve the process and continually push the process to new levels? Yellow Belts can do this, and this is more powerful than you realize due to the fact that you are actually performing Continual Improvement (a requirement of the ISO standard) and at the same time knocking out the requirements for ISO 9001:2008 relating to internal auditing….. This is a multiple win when coupled with the below suggestions:

1. Use your Yellow Belts as your Internal Audit staff, the standard is easy to learn and application is simple.
2. Use your auditors to follow the process through using a process map highlighting the non-value added steps and constraints to feed into your CI activities
3. In the event of an audit NC to the standard the Yellow Belt can assist the auditees in performing true systemic correction with adequate measurement systems, their mentoring can provide sustainable change in an organization, and this is a huge cultural change win!

             This in the end comes down to a fundamental decision as management: Do I have a Yellow Belt that knows the standard, or someone that knows the standard more completely but cannot help me along my way? In my humble view I feel there is more value derived from an individual familiar with process improvement that knows what the process must do, rather than someone that can recite the standard but cannot improve process and metric. As mentioned above, the GOAL is ISO certification… how you get there is up to you. What you do to meet the requirement for internal auditing can very well make the difference between having to add overhead and cost to meet the requirement, or multiplying the power of your CI activities in a way that happens to meet the requirement. In the end the results you end up with are exactly what you have set yourself up for ….. Which will it be?   If you wish to discuss 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 ….

Business Process Management (BPM) is a fundamental aspect of effective improvement activities, and is covered to some degree at nearly every level process improvement capability, including Six Sigma Yellow Belt.  The future holds more for business process management (BPM) than just being a linkage between the business side of an organization and the “process modeling” team. 

Currently, activity around BPM and foundation process improvement training like Six Sigma yellow belt is focused on describing and measuring how organizations perform activities that generate value for the enterprise. It can be used as a stable foundation for improvement and optimization that translates directly into operations.

Many (if not most) organizations realize that if they wish to adopt industry best practice or plan to differentiate themselves through innovative processes that business process management techniques will increase the likelihood of success. Through the use of modeling tools and standards to describe the end-to-end processes of an enterprise, a new view of how the enterprise should work can be developed.

The future will have standard business models codified into reusable frameworks that can be used as a foundation for customization. Corporations will be able to look at the model/framework and say “That’s not the way we do things!” and make an active decision about if the current way is better and worth the additional support costs. Today, most organizations passively decide to have custom solutions, because they will not take the time or have the expertise to understand what is already in the market.

BPM tools changes the perception of the situation, by allowing us to integrate existing components and models, leveraging industry best practice, enabling us to build on proven techniques that have a veneer of customization to fit our needs, significantly lowering the maintenance costs and increasing our flexibility over the long term. Organizations will realize that their time is best spent on understanding how the organization generates value, not just in how to move data from point A to point B.

Models will also allow for real time change in how an organization operates. The model will be the application, the process will be the data of tomorrow.

If you’d like to talk about the core concepts of BPM and/or Yellow Belt, contact me.  You’re also welcome to go to SSQ’s Yellow Belt webpage  where you can download complimentary Yellow Belt training materials or to SSQ’s presentation for BPM implementation.

A recent BusinessWeek article made the argument that Six Sigma is staging a “comeback” right now, specifically in retail.  The idea put forward is that sales growth will remain sluggish for some time and companies are trying to squeeze out more costs to maintain/improve margins.  The article went so far as to say that a “jobless recovery” may be the RESULT of more and more companies embracing Six Sigma. 

While I think that may be taking things a bit far, it’s hard to argue that many companies have leaned out their workforces to bare bones levels.  Even with improvements in the global economy starting to show up, I think companies will indeed remain reluctant to add headcount for the foreseeable future. And, this is the new state of affairs all the way up the value stream, creating a trickle back effect. Companies have fewer resources to get work done, so what do they do?   They push work (value) back to their suppliers and partners. It’s really a pretty simple reality for most companies … do more, do it faster, do it with fewer resources, and do it at a lower cost.

Enter Six Sigma.  Except, it isn’t Six Sigma that is necessarily the answer; it’s Process Improvement and Optimization (PI).  There are many proven business tools and methodologies to do PI (e.g. BPM, Six Sigma, Lean, Lean Six Sigma, DFSS, etc).  Structured PI has been around for 25+ years. It’s never really gone away, hence I have a problem with the notion of a “comeback”. 

However, I think PI is and will continue to be looked at in a very different way.  I don’t see a return any time soon to large, top-down, training-focused initiatives that are often associated with a Six Sigma deployment. Big training-focused initiatives that require a big up-front investment and take many months, if not years, to deliver any quantifiable results may be gone for good. 

But, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  I think it’s just the next evolution to something better.  PI is going to be more results-focused, as opposed to training-focused.  The needs of the business will pull training, as opposed to one-size fits all training being pushed down to the organization.  There will be a focus on breaking boil-the-ocean initiatives down to more manageable, tighter scoped things that can yield incremental results in a very short timeframe.  Green Belts, Yellow Belts, and Lean Practitioners will execute more projects that yield incremental improvements, as opposed to massive breakthroughs.  PI will be tightly tied to real business operations, as opposed to being that big on-the-side initiative.  Successful PI will use very tactical wins to create strategic advantage and sustainability.  

So, let’s summarize.  What are some likely characteristics of post-meltdown PI ?

• Lower upfront investment required
• Focuses on things that can have an immediate positive impact on the business.  Squeaky wheel, project-for-the-sake-of-a-projects need not apply
• Gets measurable results fast, incremental quick wins
• Results-focused, not training-focuses.  Training is a means to an end and pulled based on the needs of the business
• Sustains itself through results.  Pay-as-you-go.  Size and scope of PI efforts are in direct proportion to the bottom line results being delivered for the business

A brave new world, but one where a well executed PI effort just might be the difference between the winners and the losers.