By
Charles WaxerAlmost all Quality professionals have heard of the benefits of Six Sigma Quality. How can it be ignored? Companies like GE, Motorola, and AlliedSignal have already saved billions of dollars with their Six Sigma Quality initiatives. According to Jack Welch, GE CEO, "the financial rationale for embarking on this quality journey is clear." But are the results of a Six Sigma implementation as clear for small companies?
The Requirements of Six Sigma
Let's first start with a short list of requirements for successfully implementing Six Sigma quality in any organization. Then we'll discuss the requirement differences in relation to large and small companies.
While many other requirements are applicable, I personally believe that these are the most important:
Management Team Buy-In and Support Education and Training Resource CommittmentLink to CompensationManagement Team Buy-In and Support
If your executive team is not fully supportive and proactive in establishing your Six Sigma Quality initiative, you will be wasting everyone's time. As with any successful initiative implementation, everyone's actions need to be tied to the initiative.
A useful exercise in determining buy-in is to list out all the individuals of the management team on a piece of paper. Then assign a positive, neutral or negative to each person signifying what you believe to be their support for the initiative. Your job, before beginning the implementation, is to move every single person to at least a neutral position, if not positive. Education can help with this goal.
Education and Training
Many educational programs currently exist; most provided by consulting companies. A list of the most reputable consultants can be found in the Six Sigma Consultants category of the iSixSigma library.
What training is necessary? Well, it depends on who is getting trained. Here's a snapshot table identifying the major groups of individuals, the suggested training agenda, approximate cost and duration of the training.
Training Your Business or Organization |
| Group | MajorTopics | ApproximateCost Per Person | Duration |
| Management Team and Champions | * Six Sigma Overview
* Benefits and Case Studies
* How To Implement Six Sigma
* Tools and Resources | $1,000-$2,500 | 1-5days |
| Selected Six Sigma Leaders (Black Belts and Master Black Belts) | * Six Sigma Overview
* Six Sigma Methodology and Tools
* Statistics Training
* Computer Application Training
* ProjectSelection and Execution | $12,000-$50,000 | 4 weeks delivered over a period of 2-6 months |
| All Employees | * Six Sigma Overview
* Benefits
* What To Expect Going Forward
* Simple Case Study and Exercise | Variable, depending on if taught in-house or if consultant (approximately $2,000 per day plus expenses) is used | 0.5-1day |
Resource Committment
As discussed above, Black Belts (BBs) and/or Master Black Belts (MBBs) need to be identified and trained. But more importantly, they need to be assigned to your Six Sigma efforts almost 100%; 50% application yields less than a 50% result. In addition to BBs and MBBs, you should be ready to assign 5-15% of key employees' time to specific projects.
Link to Compensation
We all work and perform responsibilities for a paycheck, right? Just as you expect your factory to produce Y widgets per hour and your bank to process Z deposits per day, you should expect projects to be contributed to and successfully completed in a prescribed time period. And employees executing well should be compensated well. The quickest way to initiative success is to tie results to the business bottom line, create performance goals, and compensate employees appropriately.
Next Page > Applying Six Sigma Requirements to Small Companies
