In an ongoing effort to improve the quality of product and service delivery, the premier tool for the job was and continues to be “Six Sigma”. This tool was created by Motorola for its own internal error reduction and quality improvement efforts. Due to its amazingly successful track record of saving tens of billions of dollars to industry annually, the service sector has adopted the “constant improvement” philosophy of Six Sigma.
Simply put, Six Sigma is defined as only allowing a maximum of three errors for every one million repetitions of a service, output of a process or manufacture of a product that you provide to your internal and external customers. The philosophy and methodology lends itself to simple and easy adoption by the service industry.
For your company, this means dramatically reduced occurrences of customer complaints, improved communications, increased efficiency, less paper work, fewer errors, increased employee moral and improved levels of customer service.
Besides improving the way you run your business, the other attractive element of Six Sigma is that it is focused on improving your bottom line right from the start. Reducing waste, simplifying complex operations and eliminating the causes of errors, all save time and money while simultaneously improving the customer experience, which very quickly translates into free word-of-mouth marketing, customer loyalty and increased revenues for your organization. Six Sigma’s profit centric methodology also makes the distinction that while a particular improvement may be an excellent idea, it may be cost prohibitive to implement. In such cases, an alternative solution would be selected.
Ultimately, Six Sigma is a way of thinking about how your business adds value to your customers. It forces you to ask “Is this the best service that I could possibly provide to my customers?” More often that not, there are many areas within your organization that could use improvements.
The steps to performing a Six Sigma quality improvement initiative progress through the following steps: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control – DMAIC.
“Define” asks you to state who the customer is, what their requirements for your services are, and what your patient expectations from you are. Define your process boundaries when does your service start and stop? Define the process to be improved by mapping the process flow. Define by what percent you wish to improve or how much money you desire to save. Finally, ask “What is the problem I’m trying to fix or process I’m trying to improve?”
Before you can improve any aspect of your business, you have to know how it performs in its current state. To do this you have to “Measure” it. Collect data from many sources and from both your employees and customers. Data collection does not have to be complicated, but it does have to be accurate and unbiased.
Once an acceptable period of data collection has taken place, the next step is to “Analyze” the data. Identify the gaps between your current performance and the performance goal you desire to meet. Identify the sources of this performance gap.
Prioritize what areas you should improve first.
“Improve” your processes by using common sense, simplicity and creativity. Some of the improvements will require investments in technology and others will not. After you modify and improve your process, conduct another round of “Measuring” to make sure the process really has been fixed to your customer’s satisfaction and to your expectations.
If you were successful in improving the delivery of your service, you must take steps to prevent anyone from sliding back to the “old way” of doing business. The “Control” phase handles this step. Training, documentation, positive incentives and new policies and procedures may be needed to ensure that the solution you’ve implemented stays implemented.
Throughout the entire Six Sigma improvement process, involve your customers as much as possible, since their satisfaction is the primary reason to initiate a Six Sigma improvement project.
Six Sigma sounds complicated, but in reality it’s a simple, logical, scientific and customer focused way to improve a product or service, which will create loyal clients and increased profits to your bottom line. As a word of caution, select small and easily managed areas of your practice to apply the Six Sigma methodology to. Once several small and medium sized initiatives have been successfully completed, you can progress to larger, longer term improvement endeavor. In the end, you’ll help your customers get what they want and allowing you to improving the bottom line of your business.
Copyright 2006 Christopher A. Gayle & Capital Genesis LLC ©. All Rights Reserved.
