Corporate Leadership Profile
Call to Duty: Lean Six Sigma in the Army Now By Elaine Schmidt
With more than 1.3 million employees across the globe, the Army's deployment of Lean Six Sigma is one of the largest ever attempted. More than 1,600 projects are active, and more than 1,000 have been completed. The goal is to "make the business side of the Army as efficient as the war-fighting side is effective," said Ronald E. Rezek, special assistant to the acting secretary of the Army.
Research
Six Sigma: A Global Affair By Michael Marx
Six Sigma is being practiced all across the globe. This article looks at aspects of a deployment from a geographical perspective and highlights data from 1,092 respondents in 67 countries. While there are some differences in Six Sigma deployments, there are many similarities as well. Key findings:
83 percent of respondents (excluding those in the United States, Canada and United Kingdom) receive Six Sigma instruction in English.
46 percent of respondents described their company's Six Sigma deployment as top down.
Predominantly, Six Sigma project sucess is rewarded with team recognition over individual recognition and public over private recognition.
"Final Tollgate" Project Example
Customer Identity Verification By Richard Pennington
The credit card division of TD Bank Financial Group receives more than 3.7 million customer calls per year. Research showed that customers were experiencing a high level of dissatisfaction when phoning the call center due to the lengthy and complicated process to verify their identity. A Six Sigma project was chartered to deliver a more comfortable customer experience. The customer identify verification process now accounts for only 3 percent of the group's customer complaints compared to about 11 percent before.
The Final Tollgate features a Six Sigma project as it would be presented to a panel of company executives at the final project review. The objectives of such a presentation are to 1) communicate significant results of the project, 2) share highlights of how results were achieved and 3) gain agreement to close the project. The slides are the Black Belts visual presentation and the accompanying text is the verbal presentation. It is assumed that the project leader has been making regular presentations at each tollgate and that the executives in the audience have a basic understanding of Six Sigma. The content for this project was assembled for illustration purposes. It is based on fabricated data from a fictional company. Any similarities to an actual project are coincidental.
Do you have an exemplary Six Sigma project to share? Would you like to see it here? Submit it to us at www.isixsigma.com/submit/.
Strategy
Maturity Model: From Initial Launch to Culture Transformation By Prasad Raje
As organizations deploy Six Sigma, they move through several levels of maturity. This model outlines the five commonly experienced levels and provides a guideline for implementation. The levels are:
Launch
Early Success
Scale/replication
Institutionalization
Culture Transformation
Methodology
Improving Outsourcing Efforts By Dian Schaffhauser
With Six Sigma, outsourcing service providers can improve the transition process and also the processes being outsourced. Shared services centers, in which such functions as human resources or information technology are consolidated within an organization, can also benefit.
Bonus Section
Faces of Quality: Masaaki Imai By Pam Baker To celebrate 20 years of Six Sigma, in each issue of the magazine this year, we profile an influential figure in the development of Six Sigma. This month's quality guru is Masaaki Imai, who introduced the concept of Kaizen, or continuing improvement, to American businesses.
More Features
The Skinny on Lean: Answers to 9 FAQs of Business Leaders Seven Ways to Get the Most Out of Meetings Involve Finance in Project Selection Accurately Measuring Project Completion Time A Helping Hand
Also In This Issue
Editor's Notes
Best Black Belt
Blog Blurbs
Six Sigma Basics
Tool Spotlight
Shop Talk
Six Sigma News Scan iSixSigma Crossword Puzzle
The Cox-Box Cartoon
Open Mike
Digital edition included free!
With more than 1.3 million employees across the globe, the Army's deployment of Lean Six Sigma is one of the largest ever attempted. More than 1,600 projects are active, and more than 1,000 have been completed. The goal is to "make the business side of the Army as efficient as the war-fighting side is effective," said Ronald E. Rezek, special assistant to the acting secretary of the Army.
