Guest Post: Six Sigma - A Splendid Waste of Time

Kanishk's Note: One of the foundation of any continuous improvement process is: Feedback. 
So, here is a very honest and direct feedback on Six Sigma from our guest author, James Lawther. 
I will address his points in a separate post.

 

I work in the service industry.  For my sins I am responsible for process improvement.

Six Sigma is widely regarded as the process improvement methodology of choice.  The logic is that as an industry we are data rich, so a process improvement methodology that is data led has to be a good thing.  Consequently there has been a huge investment in Six Sigma training over the past few years.  I have master black belts and black belts and green belts and yellow belts coming out of my ears.  Thousands, if not millions of pounds have been spent on Minitab licences, training manuals, and consultants.

And I guess that 99% of it has been a splendid waste of time, let me be stronger, Six Sigma has precisely no practical application in my industry at all (might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb).  If that sounds a little strong let me explain why.

Six Sigma is a great tool for process improvement.  If you have a multimillion pound production line that makes light bulbs at 1,000 a minute and 1 of them fuses the instant it is plugged into the power there is really only one way to diagnose the problem.  Like it or not, it is going to involve a fishbone diagram and a bit of regression analysis.  When you have a problem like that you need all the surgical precision you can get to find the root cause and fix it.  You need a statistical scalpel.

The service industry doesn't work that way though.  We don't invest millions in dedicated production lines and supply chains.  We invest millions in databases and people.

Now here is the thing: databases and people are flexible, you can add bits, change bits, do extra stuff, provide bespoke outcomes for bespoke customers.  And as a consequence we do.  It sounds great but we end up with the curse of proliferation.

We end up with a production line that produces 1,000 shapes of light bulb in a thousand different colors at one every 3 minutes.  We don’t care how many of them work; we are too busy looking for the one our customer wants.

We don’t need statistical scalpels; we need common sense and a mop to clean up the mess.

James Lawther gets upset by operations that don’t work and apoplectic about poor customer service.  Visit his web site “The Squawk Point” to find out more about service improvement.

About Squawk Point: The Squawk Point is about the way large organizations work. The way in which organizational design, business processes, operational delivery and staff ambition and motivation interact.  It is about the myriad of ways in which clever people make life difficult for themselves, their colleagues and their customers.