Six Sigma To Gain Strength in ’07: Study

By Priya Jestin, Staff Writer

A recent survey published in the November/December issue of iSixSigma Magazine shows that most companies using Six Sigma think they are on the right track. Around 50% of the respondents using Six Sigma said they would maintain their current level of training and staffing for 2007, according to Michael Marx, research manager for iSixSigma Magazine.

Nearly 1,500 professionals from a broad range of companies took part in this survey. More than one third of the respondents expected to increase the training investment. Nearly 50 percent of those surveyed said they intend to increase the staffing level. Now contrast this with firms that are already involved in Six Sigma. Only 17 percent of the respondents whose companies are already involved in Six Sigma expected to spend less on training, and just 8 percent expected staffing levels to decrease.

What’s odd is that despite the obvious benefits of using Six Sigma, those who haven’t made the commitment, are still pretty reluctant to do so. Probably, this idea needs some more time to catch on.

 

 

We use LSS. It’s a total fraud for our organization. We do not measure the cost of implementation and overstate our results to upper management so that it looks like a success. I would argue that LSS encourages organizational corruption. It’s like being part of Mao’s government during the Great Leap Forward.

We make money on labor. LSS requires us to take people off of direct projects and put them on overhead to become LSS black belts. If the project was ever to break even, we would have to release a commensurate number of people currently working on overhead. That has not, will not and cannot happen. It is mathematically provable that LSS will always be a money loser for us.

Just thought I’d share.

 

Yes, unfortunately as many as 50% of all Six Sigma efforts will fail due to poor implementation strategy. The often touted top down, train a legion of blackbelts, spend weeks in class while workloads pile up methods of many name brand firms is outdated and worthless.

Successful implementation is easily achieved with grass roots JIT training methods that have no such drain on resources.