Making a Difference (Big or Small) with Lean Six Sigma
By Dr. Rick Murrow
CEO, Air Academy Associates

I attended the IQPC Lean Six Sigma Summit 2008 at the end of January.  Like most, I made sure I witnessed the keynote, as it was Mr. Jack Welch.  Those of us who have been involved in Six Sigma for a period of time know that he has credibility as a true leader.  He has the vision and is not afraid to go after it.  As the CEO of GE, when Mr. Welch spoke everyone listened, and the direction he gave the company quickly became strategy.  Because of Mr. Welch, Six Sigma within GE was top-down driven and was successful by any measure.  

 After his brief remarks the session was opened to Q & A.  One of the questions asked concerned the possibility of a company being successful if the Lean Six Sigma deployment were not top-down driven.  Paraphrased, Mr. Welch responded that the deployment would not be successful and that a Lean Six Sigma Belt would probably be better off leaving the company and going in search of a company in which the rollout was more ideal.  Although I truly respect Mr Welch and credit him with leading the Six Sigma charge and being its spokesman for many years, I have to say I somewhat disagree with him on this issue. 

Based upon my last fourteen years of being involved in Lean Six Sigma I have seen many success stories that were not top-down driven.    My difference of opinion with Mr. Welch may be dictated by my definition of success:  first, the customer is satisfied, and second, the company (or business entity) increases its profit and achieves a ROI that exceeds other returns that could have been achieved with the same amount of investment.    

Mr. Welch IS correct.  The best deployments are those that start with executive commitment and have alignment down through the organization.  The deployment is enhanced when senior management is engaged and when there are champions for the deployment as well as for the process improvement projects.  Projects that are strategically linked to the business will drive top level indicators.  Projects that are prioritized with Champion involvement are most often successful in terms of ROI and timely completion.  When success stories are rewarded by leadership and propagated throughout the organization the pace of “realizing” Lean Six Sigma is accelerated. 

Yes, it’s great when a company elects to deploy in accordance with “best practice.”  For those companies that don’t embrace Lean Six Sigma in the same fashion, does that mean they should just “hang it up”?  I will give a qualified “no.”   There ARE other avenues that can lead to success
as I previously defined it.     Over the years I have seen companies, from small to large, customize and successfully deploy Lean Six Sigma in a variety of ways.  Deviations from the “ideal” include companies that first started with a department or function being trained in the tools; they integrated the tools as part of how they accomplished their tasks; propagated the success stories; and spread similar activities to other areas within the business.  Some companies had a preponderance of Green Belts and few Black Belts and still they generated an impressive ROI and totally pleased the customers.  We have witnessed companies create only a few Black Belts and after several very successful projects bubble up LSS to the point where it became a company-wide deployment.  The achievements of one business unit within a company propagating success stories can lead to other units embracing the methodology.  We have seen companies start with DFSS with knowledge workers and then work backwards to embrace Lean Six Sigma. 

The point worth noting is that many companies do it differently from the “ideal” top-down driven deployment and still they meet with success.  When all is said and done there have to be several elements present in every deployment in order to achieve success according to my definition.  First, there must be ownership at a level which can provide vision as well as resources.  So, plant managers, business unit leaders, functional leaders, department heads, etc., are all possible candidates for leading the charge.  The training received must be viable, comprehensive, sound in the principles, and strong in the tools and methodology as the goal is to develop problem-solving practitioners.  The people trained must have a desire to use the acquired skill set.  The projects selected must have business impact.  The need for Lean Six Sigma must be real and must be articulated within that part of the business in which it is deployed.  And the gains must be real!
 
So, to the Deployment Leader, the Six Sigma Director, the Master Black Belt, the Black Belt, etc., who right now does not feel they have a top-down driven deployment that has the support of everyone in the organization, I say “hang in there.”  Give it your best effort and remember, there are very few “ideal” deployments.   It will not be easy, but you can still make a difference, and in the end, your leadership may even appreciate your efforts.    


"Make Yourself Useful"
By Dr. Mark Kiemele
President, Air Academy Associates

In spite of occasional road warrior weariness, our on-the-road experiences provide us an opportunity to meet some very interesting and outstanding people.   At a recent conference, we had one such experience as we interacted with current and potentially new customers.

The headlining speaker for the event was Jim Collins, co-author and author respectively of the bestselling books Built to Last (1994) and Good to Great (2001) and longtime researcher and educator in the topic of enduring companies and how they achieve and sustain greatness.   I found myself intrigued by his comments as they were based on observations and data drawn from his support of over a hundred corporations.   Many of his points are in sync with what we at Air Academy have learned in our 18 years supporting clients in their quest for process and product excellence and with our philosophy that each person in an organization can contribute to that excellence. 

In 1994, Jim was fortunate to have the opportunity to spend an entire day with Peter Drucker.  His take-away from that day was Drucker's mandate to Jim to "go out and make yourself useful."  Below are some of my key take-aways from Jim’s presentation in the hope that you find them a springboard for action or at least stimulating enough to "go out and make yourself useful" in your business.

• Better needs no justification. 

• Greatness is not a function of circumstance.  Greatness is a cumulative process, not a single event.  It is a conscious choice and discipline applied over a long period of time.

• The moment you think you are there, by definition, you are not.

•  Many think that innovation is this moment of inexplicable discovery.  Consider the chicken hatching from the egg.  There was a lot going on before the chicken appeared. 
 
• People are not our most important asset.  The RIGHT people are.

• In a turbulent disruptive environment, those who prevail are slightly LESS innovative than the norm.

• 90% of successful companies have leaders who came from inside their own company.

• The signature of mediocrity is NOT the inability to change, but chronic inconsistency.

• Don’t accept goodness.  Go for great.

• Can you build a mandate that will continually make you better?

• How do you know when to change?  As soon as you start asking the question.

Product News 

Design for Reliability Course Now Available

Air Academy Associates now has available a 5-day Design for Reliability course targeted toward engineers who have successfully completed the course topics covered in our DFSS Green Belt program. (See:  DFSS Foundations and DFSS course descriptions.)  The course includes the following topics:

    Management overview of reliability
    Establishing reliability requirements and standard work 
    Defining the scope of projects
    Measuring the physics of failure
    Analyzing test results
    Manufacturing control
    Field service control and warranty

The Design for Reliability course may be arranged for client-site training by contacting Debbi Radke, Director of Business Development, at dradke@airacad.com.  The class is also offered on our Colorado Springs Open Enrollment schedule. Those interested in the public forum may register on the Air Academy website under the Air Academy University tab or may contact Customer Support at aaauniversity@airacad.com.

Launching this summer - new Air Academy elearning program with introduction by Dr. Mark Kiemele

Coming this fall -  a Design for Six Sigma Tools book structured similarly to our highly popular Lean Six Sigma:  A Tools Guide

 Questions Corner

                                     

Question:  If I take the Air Academy Six Sigma or Lean Six Sigma curriculum, will I be able to pass the ASQ exam? 

 Answer:  The short answer to that is, “we cannot say for sure one way or the other.”   We have had many students who have passed the exam and no doubt some who did not, just like with our own knowledge assessments that we give that are based on our own curriculum.

Following are some critical points:

(1) There is at least 95% overlap in the topical coverage of the ASQ and Air Academy Bodies of Knowledge.  And of the remaining 5%, AAA covers the same material as the ASQ BOK but in slightly different terminology.   However, even though the BOKs are almost the same, it is important to note that ASQ and AAA differ in the depth of coverage on some of the concepts or topics.  By that, we mean that Bloom’s Taxonomy level of learning may be different for some of the topics.  For example, AAA requires much more depth of understanding in the DOE area than ASQ does.   Conversely, ASQ requires more depth in Theory of Constraints than does AAA.  And this leads to the next point of philosophical underpinnings.

(2) When any organization constructs an exam or knowledge assessment, that exam is ultimately linked to its philosophical approach to Six Sigma or Lean Six Sigma.  Perhaps the best example of that is in the area of numerical calculations required in the exam.  While ASQ will not allow the use of a computer or any kind of software when completing its exam and will allow only the use of a simple add/subtract/multiply/divide-capable hand-held calculator, we at AAA believe that one should be able to make use of the tools available in the practitioner’s workplace.  Thus, we allow the use of any software or any computer while taking our exam.  The ASQ approach forces the test-taker to plug values into a formula for calculating confidence limits or sample size, for example.   Their philosophy is one that says in order to understand the concept one must be able to use the formula directly.   Our philosophy is such that one must certainly understand the underlying concept of a calculation before using the computer/software, but after doing it once by hand in the classroom on easy-to-use data, it is no longer necessary to use hand-calculations directly.  This is part of our overall “lean” philosophy. 

(3) A counter-argument to our approach might be that our graduates do not know the underlying theory because they are allowed to use the computer and software on an exam and that they will become computer robots, applying methods without thinking through the problem first.   That cannot be further from the truth.  When it comes to theory, there are once again different depths of philosophy underlying the approach.   While we do not want our students proving the Central Limit Theorem, we do want our students to understand the assumptions underlying a particular method and to do an analysis of whether the computer results “make sense.”   And this is the approach they receive in our classroom.

(4) In today’s marketplace, I don’t think any CEO would want their people wasting time on hand calculations after they know the concepts well—even on an exam.  Our approach is reflected in our exams which test a student’s understanding of the concepts but still allow them to use any computer/software combination needed for application of the methods and calculations.  In this way we believe that we are able to test at a deeper level of understanding, since much of the time will not be spent in brute-force calculations.  Thus, if one were to go through our curriculum and then want to take the ASQ Exam, one would have to know where to find the formulas in the text book and then practice the calculations in order to do well on the ASQ exam.  Whether a student will do that after completing our curriculum in preparation for an ASQ exam is not something we can control.   Hence, it is difficult for us to predict the success on an ASQ exam.

Meet Our Consultants - Kevin Johnson

Kevin Johnson has been involved in process improvement initiatives for over 25 years.  He is a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt and a Senior Member of the American Society for Quality, holding designations of Certified Quality Engineer, Certified Reliability Engineer, Certified Software Quality Engineer, Certified Quality Manager, and Certified Quality Auditor.  Kevin was also on the team which developed ASQ's Certified Six Sigma Black Belt exam.  

Kevin, who was the first Black Belt and Master Black Belt certified within Sony worldwide, was also a Senior Six Sigma Trainer with Sony where he trained and coached hundreds of Champions, Green Belts, Black Belts, Master Black Belts and others.  Prior to his involvement with Six Sigma, Kevin was Quality Engineering Manager at the Sony Magnetic Products of America facility where he was project team leader for ISO 9000 implementation and was a facilitator for Self-Directed Work Teams, training and coaching problem solving methods and teamwork skills. 

Prior to joining Sony, Kevin was Senior Software Engineer with TRW Information  Systems Group where he developed computer system diagnostic software used in large computers and servers.  He also was a Field Engineer for the Link Flight Simulation Division of the Singer Corporation, working primarily with the installation of helicopter flight simulators.  

Most recently, Kevin has been heavily involved in the integration of Design for Lean Six Sigma, TRIZ (the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving), Systems Engineering, and Axiomatic Design.

Kevin, who has a Bachelor of Liberal Studies degree in Mathematics from Mary Washington College, has been a consultant for Air Academy since  late 2005.