Bertrand Duperrin's Library tagged sixsigma → View Popular, Search in Google

May

2012

It's Time to Rethink Continuous Improvement

"Six Sigma, Kaizen, Lean, and other variations on continuous improvement can be hazardous to your organization's health. While it may be heresy to say this, recent evidence from Japan and elsewhere suggests that it's time to question these methods."

blogs.hbr.org/...ime-to-rethink-continuous.html

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sixsigma lean kaizen continuousimprovement

Looking beyond Japan, iconic six sigma companies in the United States, such as Motorola and GE, have struggled in recent years to be innovation leaders. 3M, which invested heavily in continuous improvement, had to loosen its sigma methodology in order to increase the flow of innovation
Customize how and where continuous improvement is applied. One size of continuous improvement doesn't fit all parts of the organization. The kind of rigor required in a manufacturing environment may be unnecessary, or even destructive, in a research or design shop
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- Question whether processes should be improved, eliminated, or disrupted. Too many continuous improvement projects focus so much on gaining efficiencies that they don't challenge the basic assumptions of what's being done
- Assess the impact on company culture. Take a hard look at the cultural implications of continuous improvement. How do they affect day-to-day behaviors?

Sep

2011

Achieving Sustained Cost Reduction

"When companies go through boom times, they quite naturally take their eyes off costs. But to maintain profits when revenue goes downhill, most CEOs call for cost cutting. The scalpel comes out, and while it's necessary, it usually comes at a huge cost to employee morale."

blogs.hbr.org/...ving_sustained_cost_reduc.html

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costs costsavings costreduction costcutting sixsigma businessprocess organization finance

Big rounds of layoffs demoralize employees, drive out critical expertise, and put the organization on a downward spiral. Going through the traumatic experience of seeing friends leave and fearing for their jobs, few remaining employees believe their hard work and strong performance will save them.
More insidiously, right sizing departmental silos usually doesn't affect the cost structure permanently. Because the underlying work hasn't gone away, the fat creeps back. The cost reductions last only until everyone goes back to their old ways in a few years.
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- Companies launch process improvement projects with hard financial targets. These projects get costs out, but a number of people have told me that when the project leaders ("Black Belts") leave and move on to their next project, the costs creep back. The quoted financial savings from Six Sigma projects, while valid, aren't having long-term effects on their cost structure.
- To perennially keep costs down companies need to change the way that work is accomplished — the business processes of the organization. By continually focusing on improving the experiences that customers have with the organization, the quality of offerings, and the time it takes to bring them to market, they will get cost effectiveness as a byproduct
- The financial spreadsheet has become the focal point of top management's attention — so much so that CEOs now view the organization almost entirely through the lens of financial (and other) quantities, nearly oblivious to the concrete operations from which the financial results emerge