Keys to Understanding
Six Sigma is used to solve business problems that are otherwise very difficult to do in a traditional functional organization. Complex and high impact business solutions often require full-time human resources to work on finding solutions covering many months, which can’t be accomplished by people tied to functional responsibilities.
Those organizations who are willing to invest in creating a Six Sigma infrastructure to do the rigorous and disciplined process improvement will capture market leadership and smother the competition who are stuck in traditional silo organization.
Key Benefits of Implementing Six Sigma in Your Organization
When you implement a company-wide Six Sigma program, your organization will reap multiple benefits for all stakeholders (customers, shareholders, employees) by improving your processes to achieve their needs and expectations.
Six Sigma primarily improve product and service quality and process efficiency in order to achieve the following planned outcomes:
1. Delivery time. Optimized processes have fewer defective products and services that stall the process flow. They are more stable and predictable, thus preventing negative impacts to delivery time. By improving process cycle time, the delivery time can be shortened further which can lead to lower cost and better customer satisfaction.
2. Customer satisfaction. Six Sigma requires the identification of the voice of the customer, hence it puts first priority on process improvements that positively impacts customer satisfaction. With employees who are more customer-centric, they are better with responding to customer requests and inquiries.
3. Employee engagement and motivation. Those employees who participate in Six Sigma projects improve their knowledge and skills in identifying and solving workplace issues and problems. Also, process solutions often involve job enrichments and lessening of physical and mental stresses, thus providing better employee well-being and motivation.
4. Strategic deployment and implementation. Six Sigma projects are selected based on its impact on strategic objectives. Once the solutions are implemented on the workplace, the process performs at a higher level, closing the gap with the planned strategic goals and objectives. Hence, Six Sigma directly deploys and implements the corporate business strategy with more success and effectiveness.
5. Operational cost. Six Sigma projects have financial objective, that is to lower the operational costs due to poor quality, low productivity and efficiency, and long process cycle time.
WIIFM?
So, you may ask yourself, "What's In It For Me (WIIFM)? in the next article, you will learn how Six Sigma can help your career.
This article was excerpted from my upcoming book, "Six Sigma Playbook."
