Six Sigma certifications and knowledge are highly prized in a wide variety of organizations across many industries because of their impact in reducing defects. Companies that implement Six Sigma can receive huge dividends, including:
Increased Efficiency – Six Sigma’s single-minded focus on reducing defects increases an organization’s productivity. With fewer defects and less material waste, companies are able to produce more with the same amount of resources.
Decreased Costs – How much time and how many materials is your process throwing away because of the defects it produces? When a Six Sigma project team reduces the number of defects a process creates it also reduces costs by reducing wasted material and time.
Increased Revenue – Six Sigma makes a process more efficient by reducing defects. Processes that have been streamlined by Six Sigma produce more output with less rework at the same cost. This increased productivity typically leads to higher revenue.
A Good Methodology Deployed Badly
Six Sigma can transform the quality of an organization’s end product and increase its financial performance. However, even though Six Sigma principles are proven to work, mileage will vary depending on how well or how poorly it is deployed.
Project teams that seek to realize Six Sigma’s full potential not only need to follow the DMAIC process carefully, but also avoid the mistakes that can diminish the benefits of using Six Sigma.
If your team has made, or is in the process of making, any of the following errors in using Six Sigma, don’t despair. There are solutions to put the processes back on course.
How Six Sigma Projects Can Go Wrong
Pursuing Projects Outside of Scope – It may be that management has unrealistic expectations of what Six Sigma can accomplish; it could be that they overestimate the capability of the project team. But sometimes in a rush to experience the benefits of Six Sigma, leadership assigns a Six Sigma team a project that is outside its scope of control or expertise.
Solution: Educate and request that management provide Six Sigma teams with the resources they need to tackle the projects assigned to them, and that teams not be asked to work outside their scope of expertise and ability.
Six Sigma projects are more likely to stay on course when they are focused on achieving meaningful results such as: increasing customer satisfaction, realizing an organization’s objectives and providing a measurable financial gain.
Playing Politics – Six Sigma is designed to improve processes by reducing defects. It is not a tool to promote a hidden agenda or a quest for power, so when it is used this way the improvement efforts often suffer because of politics.
Solution: Make sure that projects are assigned to advance commonly-agreed-upon organizational goals, and not the narrow interests of a few individuals.
Losing Sight of Business Goals – When a Six Sigma project is not directly connected to the company’s goals, it is doomed to irrelevance. No matter how well the team performs, if the project does not matter to the business, their efforts will have little impact.
Solution: Select and assign Six Sigma projects that support business objectives.
Strategic mistakes are just one aspect of the job that can wreck a Six Sigma project. Part two of this article tackles problems with stakeholders, the team dynamic and leadership that can cast a Six Sigma project on the rocks.
