Blog | Six Sigma Development Solutions, Inc.

Superpowers for Superman Almost daily we receive inquiries about our Public Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Courses. These courses are 5-day trainings that teach the foundation of Lean and Six Sigma. Anyone, even those with no Lean or Six Sigma background, can attend our Public Classes. Because certain aspects of Lean and Six Sigma can be rather broad, we always ask one question. “What is your current infrastructure for process improvement?” Most of the time, they do not have one. They want an employee to be trained to head the Continuous Improvement Department to tackle projects almost always on their own. With almost 50 host locations, we are constantly teaching Lean Six Sigma Green Belt and Black Belt Courses across the country, and several internationally. At the beginning of class, we always ask one question. “Who was sent to this training with the expectation of returning to work as a superhero?” Our intention of this question is to gauge company expectations for our indi...

Being “too busy” is a myth! “If our leadership supports continuous improvement, should we even go through training?” I often go to organizations to discuss the logistics of instituting a Lean Six Sigma Deployment on their site. When I hear this, I can’t help but sigh. Statements like these are red flags that most likely lead to the company’s continuous improvements efforts failing. Other examples of these red flags would be: ·        “We already have one Black Belt onsite so we don’t think it is necessary to train all of the other execs.” ·        “Leadership wants me to champion the continuous improvement efforts and communicate with them so they do not have to pursue Executive Training.” ·        “Our leadership team has already had a short introduction to Lean Six Sigma so they can skip formal training.” Six Sigma Development Solutions, Inc. uses one metric to asses how ...

One of the most important tools in a Lean Six Sigma Practitioner’s toolbox is the Payoff Matrix. When completing your Lean Six Sigma Projects, it is important to understand how to arrange the potential improvements based on their level of importance, what benefits they would bring, and what kind of resources they would need to be implemented. The Payoff Matrix is used during the Improve Phase of your project. Check out this example below: First things first; you need to write out a complete list of possible improvements. The requirement of these improvements is that they need to be ready to go straight into action to alleviate the root cause of the problems you discovered in your Analyze Phase. These “actionable items” are problems that have real tangible solutions. Your list of improvements should be similar to the example below. Your next step is to draw the outline of your Payoff Matrix. Doing so on something large, like a whiteboard or a flip chart, will...