What Do You Want?

Before you embark on a major campaign to improve your company and the skill levels of your employees, you need to ask what it is that you are trying to accomplish and what is required to get you there.

So, it is best to determine that this is really something that you want to do.
Meet with the senior management team, and decide what you want your culture to be. If you decide that you want a Six Sigma–based culture, you need to be aware of the essence of Six Sigma. A Six Sigma culture is one that focuses on the voice of the customer. Your decisions, programs, and operating systems will be geared to total customer satisfaction. Service, administration, and production operating systems will be designed with the belief that the customer is always right. Compensation and corrective actions for substandard product or unsatisfactory service will be done quickly and in the customers’ favor. Customers asking for satisfaction will not have to hear “no” followed by the that’s-not-our-policy mantra. Six Sigma cultures include teaming and empowerment.

When committing to a Six Sigma culture, you are committing to releasing a great deal of the historically centrally held information and power. Employees at all levels will have access to the information they need to make sound judgments, and they will be trusted to do so.
Time will be made available during working hours for employees to meet and work on continuous improvement programs.
The required training will be identified and funded. You need to determine and communicate the level of empowerment to which you are willing to go.

Before you launch a Six Sigma program, you need to complete your organizational development. Vision, mission, objectives, strategies, and tactical expectations all need to be documented and communicated. It is an excellent idea to complete a cross-functional mapping .

Identify what it is that you do now, the “As Is” situation. Then identify what you would like the system to look like to be a more efficient, user-friendly system, the “Should Be” situation. Then identify all of the actions that must take place to transition from the “As Is” to the “Should Be.” Complete these actions with urgency.
Determine who will be your initial green belts and black belts. As the program grows, every employee within your company should be targeted to become a green belt.
This is the best way to create an environment where everyone is a positive change agent. You need to identify the skill levels and training required to create your army of green belts and your cadre of black belts. Regardless of company size or markets served, green belts need to learn the tools, techniques, and model presented in Section Two.

All enterprises require black belts with interpersonal, teaming, coaching, facilitation, and basic problem-solving skills.
The type of business that you are in determines additional skills required by black belts. If your manufacturing operations are highly technical and controlled mainly by variable data, then you will need black belts that have been trained in experimental design and advanced process control techniques.
You need to identify where you are going to get the resources required to train and facilitate the establishment of your Six Sigma culture. Internal resources need to be identified and developed. External, experienced resources are required during the first year or two.

The program should be designed so that external resources are utilized to develop the internal resources. As the internal resources are developed, the dependency on external resources should be phased out.