Is Six Sigma Falling from Grace?

From my recent post, you might think I am an antagonist to Six Sigma.  Actually, I am not.  However, I do believe in the pragmatic use and integration of methods and tools to achieve greater outcomes.  Business Week just published two articles that are very antagonistic towards Six Sigma.  Check out "At 3M, A Struggle Between Efficiency And Creativity" and "Six Sigma: So Yesterday?".  Interesting, a few high profile "failures" and people are willing to put a bullet in it.  So, I find myself asking, is Six Sigma falling from grace, or is it simply maturing and will become one methodology in an arsenal of formal approaches for improving processes?  Will it keep its identity or will it be morphed into something else?

Last April, I took the pulse of BPM and process improvement practitioners at the Shared Insights BPM Conference.  The informal feedback I received was that people are tired of hearing about Six Sigma and think it has probably peaked as the methodology du jour.  The focus is turning toward broader business process management, inclusive of business strategy, technology enablers, and operational efficiency.

In the debate about Six Sigma, what we tend to forget is that it became the "rock star" of process improvement when Jack Welch drove it throughout GE, but what works at GE will not necessarily work at other companies.  Six Sigma is an "easy" choice for business leaders because of its heralded success at GE and other companies.  But errors in judgment occur when leaders think they can simply install Six Sigma in their company - which probably has different customers, different markets, different strategies, different purposes, different cultures, different people, and different processes than GE or Motorola.

Some things for process improvement practitioners to consider:

• Don't get stuck on one methodology - continuously learn and integrate tools, methods, and skills into your portfolio.
• Don't lead with methodology.  First understand the situation and what you are trying to accomplish, then configure an approach that will help you find a solution.
• If you learn new information that alters the problem definition, don't force fit a bad solution simply because you have a project plan and time line.  Do what is right, not what is expeditious.
• Transfer knowledge, help people grow and become self sustaining.

To leaders considering Six Sigma or some other methodology, here are my 2 cents:

• You must find the balance between operational efficiency and innovative growth.  Too much focus on one side of the ship will tip it over and leverage either near-term performance or long-term sustainability.
• Any program legalistically applied will ultimately collapse under its own weight.
• If you are measuring the number of people trained, you are probably measuring the wrong thing.
• Methods and frameworks exist to make the work more efficient.
• People will adopt new ways of doing work, if it delivers perceived incremental value over the way they do it today.
• To create sustainability, any program, method, or framework must become part of the culture of the company.
• Take responsibility and active participation in results.  Don't create a "shadow management" structure to manage the improvement project portfolio.

The bottom line is spend time understanding what your organization needs to accelerate process improvement, and then design, customize, or adopt the right approach.

Comments

[Moncler France Boutique]

It's so nice to have you do all of the research for us. It makes our decision making so much easier!! Thanks.

[Supply Chain]

Creating good corporate culture is also the important point for successful six sigma implementation.

[Victor Howard]

B. West - Great comment! You are absolutely right about experience and passion. The knowledge developed through years of experience can never be duplicated by the application of a tool or a process improvement methodology. Passion is required to deliver excellence in all we do..whether a service, product, relationship, etc...

[B. East]

6-Sigma can never replace the seasoned wisdom of an experienced worker operating under the watchful eye of sage mamagement. 6-Sigma seeks to incorporate all the right build/service decisions into the process without explictly stating the work paradigm.

6-Sigma will always build a cheaper product but seldom a better product. Slap some paint on it, print a snazzy sales brochure and push service to keep it functional.

The best products are produced as a result of passion for ultimate quality. 6-Sigma products are the result of cost cutting procedures and satisfy minimum quality expectations. Cheaper parts do not perform better or last as long.

You want something cheaply made then 6-Sigma is your tool. All your data collections, charts, perspectives, trends and whatnot will lead you straight to cheaply made products.

Which camera would you rather own, the Canon Rebel AOS or the GE brand? You say my argument is incomplete? You say that the choices I've offered are in different classes. One is meant to be inexpensive and yet provide satifying features and performance. The other cost so much more but offers a spectacular performance difference and far more latitude in use. You are right! One camera is purely 6-Sigma and the other camera is about passion.

But hold on, doesn't Canon produce a camera the cost equivalent of the GE camera? Why yes! But which one will you choose over the other? I'll take the Canon everytime.

But let's look at this. What Tom Foolery fool in GE management decided to pit GE against Canon. I'll bet you that manager had to prove his point via 6-Sigma. And everybody in managment bought into it!

Bah 6-Sigma.

[Jerry Wittig]

Is 6-Sigma falling from grace? The question is a bit like asking if statistics is no longer a valid branch of mathematics. However the fact that many companies fail to prepare themselves for a launch into 6-Sigma is a very valid point. As an 18 year veteran of GE, I know first hand how much workforce development went into creating a set of values and behaviors that enabled the science of 6-Sigma to be introduced. Unfortunately this is not the flashy stuff that gets the press. Sure we had our share of zealots that wanted to jump in head first and perform correlation analysis on every piece of data they could get their hands on. But as anyone with experience doing process reengineer knows, that’s a small part of the overall change equation.

Take just the simple task of running an effective team meeting. I continue to be amazed by how few companies have provided employee training on even these most foundational behaviors. Is there an agenda? Was it and the objective sent out well before the meeting? Who is taking notes? All these behaviors are critical to building a high performance culture that can grapple with the technical complexities of 6-Sigma.

Other one that has struck me since leaving GE is the lack of best practice sharing (and searching). I have found this particularly problematic in the technology and financial services sectors. Why would you waste time inventing a solution when you could, with much less energy, adopt and adapt a best practices as a starting point. 6-Sigma at least teaches people to make decisions based on data versus opinions, but it does not magically provide the innovations you need to excel beyond the benchmark standard.

By my best estimate, I recall at least 4 mandatory all-employee training programs in the area of collaborative problem solving before being introduced to 6-Sigma at GE. It was a natural progress from ad-hoc to structured and collaborative. 6-Sigma add the statistical science along with many other operation management strategies such as simulation. I think any company looking to embrace 6-Sigma should first review (and I mean perform audits) of their workforce competencies in the areas of:

• Effective meetings
• Cross-cultural communications
• Basic problem solving methods
• Benchmarking and best practice sharing
• Understanding customer driven value-chains
• Recognizing and rewarding others

Once a company has mastered these, it will be well prepared to embrace what 6-Sigma has to offer at its fullest. Without these foundations, I would predict the outcome would be a small community of Black Belts struggling to promote their cause by keeping track of how much money they have saved the company. Has anyone else seen this?

Lastly, on the topic of complex problems I must disagree that 6-Sigma is a mismatch for “wicked problems” and that DMAIC is a linear methodology. I think this is simply a matter of understanding the context in which DMAIC is applied within the broad corporate setting. One has to keep in mind that the vast majority of process improvements don’t even require 6-Sigma to make significant gains. If the process is at level 0-1 maturity, get your people into a meeting room and document the as-is. The rest is not rocket science. But if the problem truly is complex then the use of systems dynamics to map the non-linear relationship between outcomes is a great place to start. Eventually you will break the problem down to a fixable element and that is where DMAIC comes into play. Most people don’t look at tools like 6-Sigma at an enterprise level and we should not expect them to. But the individuals in the company that are accountable for methodology development and training should be asking themselves:

• Overall, how mature are our business models and processes?
• What percentage could be improved via simple process improvement methods?
• What process areas demand additional rigor of 6-Sigma and systems dynamics?

With these questions answer, workforce training and hiring can proceed with the tools and talents matched to the needs of the company. Assign the heavy guns to the hard problems while empowering the rest of the workforce to begin a journey of continuous improvement.

Is 6-Sigma falling from grace? I don’t think so. It is simply a structured approach that will be called upon when the need arises. Is 6-Sigma falling from grace as a company-wide mantra is perhaps the more appropriate question. This is something only senior management and HR can answer. High performance companies continuously invest in training their people to have the best tools for what ever problem comes along. As a GE manager answered when asked if 6-Sigma was dead he replied: “no, it’s just part of our daily job now. We really don’t feel the need to call it out as something special.”