PROBLEM STATEMENT

The large company with more than 30 production Locations was never pushed to try-out additional more data driven problem solving techniques such as Six Sigma or Shainin. Senior management had no phsical experience of the six sigma approach.

There were no specialist problem solving experts available for the more complex problems.

There was a growing need in the organisation to have these skills available to achieve greater levels of efficiency and quality.

Only local needs had driven the quest for adding more statistical problem solving approaches to complement LEAN A3, Customer 8D and basic PDCA Approaches.

There was no commonly shared approach across the business towards problem solving. The alignment of Operations, Engineering, Industrial and quality organisations was missing.

The target for annual savings was set at 2M€.

TASKS and ACTIONS

The growing list of improvement opportunity was to to be used to define the current people talent and current competencies dotted around the business globally. An initial budget had to secured to get the ball rolling in terms of Greenbelt and backbelt training on-site. The objective was to be cost neutral within 2 years by compensating the costs with savings and efficiency improvements.

Some support for an Internal marketing plan to secure initial buy-in and to attract attention was necessary.

The nomination of a potential Master Blackbelt to start coordinating a global (LEAN) Six Sigma initiative has to be made.

A key challenge identified was to align with the Globally expanding Lean and Industrial organization that was self-preoccupied. The goal was to create a common company-wide set of problem solving approaches and tools for all functions.

Critical for success was developing an accurate six sigma Project pipeline of improvement projects based-on complex customer and internal quality issues.

As part of creating interest and support, a generic personal development paths for GreenBelt, Blackbelt and a later possibility for Shainin expertise had to be developed.

RESULTS

Major focus for six sigma activity was on Cost of Non Quality or Cost of Poor Quality.

Created a global forum to focus efforts, tools, Good practices and a regular review of Six sigma project progress.

Within a year created a consolidated six sigma roadmap for the organisation with „living“ quantitied and measurable Project pipeline delivering savings and improvements. Each project had a validated project charter with a SIPOC( Process chart), timing plan, scope and team. A monthly 1 pager 4-blocker report was established.

A Six Sigma external training company was selected for „Greenbelts“ and potential „blackbelts“ all with active projects. After this internal Greenbelt and Blackbelt modules were created and given.

After the first year 22 Greenbelts and 6 Blackbelts were trained and active and about 500K€ savings were achieved on 7 closed Projects.