third and final benefit review follows the Control phase, enabling you to confirm the actual costs and benefits and whether any unexpected debits or credits have occurred. And you should know the answers to these questions:
Do our customers feel an improvement has occurred? How do we know?
Can we take any of the ideas or “best practices” and apply them elsewhere in the business?
This review is the formal post-implementation phase involving the project sponsor or champion. In some organizations, you may find a wider team of managers forming a “project board” or “steering committee,” which provides overall guidance for improvement teams and helps prevent duplication of effort with different teams tackling the same or similar problems. This review is likely to involve your team presenting their storyboard, as described in the “Defining your project” section earlier in this chapter.
Taking a Pragmatic Approach
Six Sigma and DMAIC have been criticized by some for being too complex, and for projects taking too long. Be pragmatic. Projects need to take as long as is appropriate and often only a few simple tools and techniques are needed to secure quick and successful improvements.
Some say that “pure” Lean doesn’t always ensure a systematic and controlled approach to achieving and holding on to improvement gains. This is where the Control phase of DMAIC is so important. For relatively straightforward problems, rapid improvement events can be used, and they can be run in one-week sessions. The implementation of the improvement may take a further month or so, and some pre-event planning and data collection is necessary.
These events bring together the powerful concepts of Continuous Improvement, or Kaizen, to involve people in continuously seeking to improve performance within the framework of DMAIC. That improvement comes from focusing on how the work gets done and how well. Kaizen is the Japanese word for Continuous Improvement, where “Kai” means “change” and “zen” means “good.” Put together, Kaizen means “change for the better.”
Rapid improvement events can also be run as a series of half or one-day workshops, over a period of five or six weeks, or less. They follow the DMAIC framework, and particular emphasis is placed on the Define and Control phases. So, for example, the first workshop focuses on getting a clear definition of the problem to be tackled (Define), and so on. The aim is to tackle a closely scoped bite-sized problem using the expertise of the people actually involved in that process to solve it. They’ll need someone with Lean Six Sigma experience as a facilitator, because they may need help using some of the tools and techniques required (for example, Value Stream Maps — see Chapter 5). So often, the people doing the job know what’s needed to put things right. You may well find that the solution is already known by the team, but historically they haven’t been listened to. Implementation of the solution can thus be actioned quickly, much of it during the actual event. Rapid improvement events can provide the people doing the job with the opportunity to use their skills and knowledge.
In terms of time, the short duration of rapid improvement events compares to perhaps four months part time in a traditional DMAIC project, though the actual team hours may be similar.
WAX ON, WAX OFF: LEAN SIX SIGMA AND MARTIAL ARTS
The different levels of training in Lean Six Sigma are often referred to in terms of the colored belts acquired in martial arts. Think about the qualities of a martial arts Black Belt: highly trained, experienced, disciplined, decisive, controlled and responsive, and you can see how well this metaphor translates into the world of making change happen in organizations. (Thankfully, no bricks need to be broken in half by hand.)
Some organizations develop a pool of Yellow Belts, who typically receive two days of practical training to a basic level on the most commonly used tools in Lean Six Sigma projects. They work either as project team members or carry out mini-projects themselves in their local work environment under the guidance of a Black Belt.
Green Belts are trained on the basic tools and lead fairly straightforward projects. The extent of training varies somewhat. In the USA, for example, it’s typically 10 days, whereas in the UK, some organizations break the training along the following lines:
Foundation Green Belt level (four to six days of training) covers Lean tools, process mapping techniques and measurement, as well as a firm grounding in the DMAIC methodology and the basic set of statistical tools.
Advanced Green Belts (an additional six days of training) receive further instruction on more analytical statistical tools and start to use statistical software. This helps ensure the training is delivered “just in time,” since early projects can be relatively simple, often involving an assessment of how the work gets done, enabling the identification and elimination of non-value-added steps, without the need for detailed statistical analysis.
Green Belts typically devote the equivalent of about a day a week (20 per cent of their time) to Lean Six Sigma projects, usually mentored by a Black Belt.
An expert Lean Six Sigma practitioner is trained to Black Belt level, which means attending several modules of training over a period of months. Most Black Belt courses involve around 20 days of full-time training as well as working on projects in practice under the guidance of a Master Black Belt. The role of the Black Belt is to lead complex projects and give expert help with the tools and techniques to the project teams.
Black Belts are often from different operational functions across the company, coming into the Black Belt team from customer service, finance, marketing or HR, for example. The Black Belt role is usually full time, often for a term of two to three years, after which they return to operations. In effect, they become internal consultants working on improving the way the organization works, changing the organizational systems and processes for the better.
The Master Black Belt (MBB) receives the highest level of training and becomes a full-time professional Lean Six Sigma expert. The MBB will have extensive project management experience and should be fully familiar with the importance of the soft skills needed to manage change. An experienced MBB is likely to want to take on this role as a long-term career path, becoming a trainer, coach or deployment advisor, and working with senior executives to ensure the overall Lean Six Sigma program is aligned to the strategic direction of the business. MBBs tend to move around from one major business to another after typically three or four years in one organization. MBBs are likely to have been a Black Belt for at least two years before moving into this role.
Where people are provided with an introduction to the topic — an Awareness program — the term White Belt has been adopted. No certification process is involved, and these programs vary in length from an hour or two through to a full day.
In addition to the classic belts, we have seen some new colors and levels appearing out in the sigmaverse. For example, some organizations have developed Orange Belts with a skillset between Yellow Belt and Green Belt level, and a Lemon Belt exists between white and yellow. A new Business Black Belt qualification has emerged, developed by Catalyst Consulting, in recognition of the fact that not all organizations require the degree of statistical analysis that the traditional Black Belt is trained for. Business Black Belts are equipped with the tools and skills required to become a “transformation maestro or maestra.”