Customer Complaints, appropriately captured and analyzed, can provide useful insight about process defects. Although complaints are not the preferred method of obtaining the Voice of the Customer (VOC), you should not miss the opportunity to learn from them. But to do this, proper reporting and segmentation of customer complaints is needed. This requires that good operational definitions be established. Often times, this first step is where we fail to capture the granularity of information needed to provide future meaningful analysis. For example, once a complaint is received and recorded, obtaining more specific information for further analysis will be difficult if not impossible. Categorizing complaints about a product or service as "doesn’t work" or "too hard to use" won’t be much help in identifying the root cause of the problem.

Identifying a good list of complaint "cause codes" for your particular business will take some work but will be worth while in providing information that drives a solution that not only fixes this customer’s complaint but can be used to prevent other customers from experiencing the same type of problem. It is all too easy to put a band-aid on the customer’s boo-boo and walk away. After all - this solves the immediate customer’s problem. But without capturing detailed aspects about the customer complaint, even the best six sigma black belt will be hard pressed to help you understand the rest of the story.

I have heard people say that once you have experienced the power of Lean Six Sigma that you will never be the same. I can vouch for that. Process thinking and waste elimination will begin to infiltrate every part of your life - including how you do laundry. I never thought of laundry as a ’process’ but after watching my husband do laundry, I realized that batch processing was prevalent in our house. Some of it I can deal with - at least the part where you collect laundry, put it through a wash cycle and load it in the dryer. It’s the batch processing of laundry after it has dried that needed to be addressed.

Here’s how my husband does it. Once the laundry is dry, he first hangs up the shirts. Next he unloads the remaining clean laundry in a basket and takes it upstairs where he places the basket on the floor next to the bed. It can sit here for hours or sometimes days. Next he picks things out of the basket and sorts them into piles on the bed (kid’s clothes, towels, etc). Next he goes to each pile and folds the pile and stacks it on the bed. Finally he takes the stack to the final location and either puts it away or leaves it sitting on the kid’s bed for them to put away (right - like that ever happens). Taa-daa, the laundry is finally done. From dry to final location the laundry was batched up to four times and could take up to three days.

Being the process excellence zealot that I am, I advised him that changing his process to incorporate the concept of "one-piece-flow" would be much more efficient. For example, here’s my process. Get an item out of the dryer fold it and put it in the basket organized by where it needs to go. When complete, walk the basket up the back stairs making stops along the way - putting things in their place. I have cut the process down to one batch and have achieved a cycle time of 12 minutes.

After my husband told me what I could do with my ’one-piece-flow’, he proceeded to batch the laundry. So what are the lessons learned?

1. One-piece-flow can drastically reduce cycle time

2. Cultural change is at the root of all efficiency gains

3. Batch processing is still better than having dirty socks!

Deploy - Integrate - Sustain - Institutionalize. Although each phase has distinct qualities, the lines between them are blurred or almost seamless - as it should be. I’m often asked what I think "institutionalization" looks like. My response: "Unconscious application". By that, I don’t mean asleep at the wheel. When addressing an audience I typically use the following example to describe the state of "Unconscious Application."

Let’s say that you are working in an office and need to send some information across town. How do you do it? Immediately I get responses like "e-mail" or "fax." Exactly, I reply. I then ask the audience "How many of you thought about printing the document, stuffing it in an envelope, adding a stamp and putting it in the US mail?" People look at me like I’m nuts. And so the point is made. No one even thinks in those terms anymore. Even when a signature is required, we sign, scan and move the document along electronically. That’s Unconscious Application and that’s what it means to make Six Sigma "the way you work" or have it in "your DNA". It means that when you have a tough problem to solve, you wouldn’t think of using anything besides Six Sigma to find the answer.

Getting there is not an overnight journey. But knowing when you’ve personally made the hyper-leap to "institutionalize" from "sustain" may occur in an instant. It is when you get a report with bar charts and ask the author to present your data in box-plot charts so that you can better understand the variance. Once you get there you will never go back . . . and that’s the "Real Deal!"

I recently got a text message from my son. "Mom . . . Pick me up ATEOTD." Unable to decipher the text message abbreviation I’m forced to do what any mom what do . . text back . . . What? "At The End Of The Day" comes the reply with a big UGH! It’s like a foreign language. I’m sure the kids are doing it to drive me mad. But then, maybe it’s just their new language.

I started thinking about how the whole text abbreviation thing is sort of like what Six Sigma must sound like to those who have not had the chance to participate in training. "After identifying the CTs and completing a SIPOC, you should start on your FMEA". I can see how that might sound like gobble-de-gook to an untrained ear.

When we use Six Sigma tools and methods on a daily basis, it’s easy to get so wrapped up in our own world that we forget that everyone may not be as proficient in the new vocabulary as we are. I’m trying to keep this in mind when I address a group of people who are new to Six Sigma and have started saying "high level process map" instead of SIPOC and "risk analysis" instead of FMEA. I think people appreciate the effort. Over time, the Six Sigma jargon will become second nature. Until then, you will probably hear them say "Six Sigma. . . IAGTM."

What could be tougher than binary logistic regression? How about facilitating a team? Team inputs vary in type, personality, knowledge level, background, etc., but the choice for team output is pretty discrete - success or not.

So what does a good facilitator look like? Here’s what Wikipedia says:

• "An individual who enables groups and organizations to work more effectively, to collaborate and achieve synergy"
• "One who contributes structure and process to interactions so groups are able to function effectively and make high-quality decisions"
• "The facilitator’s job is to support everyone to do their best thinking. To do this, the facilitator encourages full participation, promotes mutual understanding and cultivates shared responsibility"

For some belts, being a good facilitator may come naturally. Others may need training and practice to sharpen their skills. In either case, one thing is for sure - don’t underestimate the need or value of this key skill. It could make a big difference in whether the team finds success . . . or not.

Magic Mirror on the Wall - Why did my deployment stall?

When companies deploy Six Sigma, most have a vision of what that will mean to the organization. It might be improved customer satisfaction, or shorter cycle time or better quality products, cost reduction, revenue growth or maybe achieving an overall culture of excellence. Whatever the vision, there is nothing more disappointing than finding out that after years of doing everything on the "deployment to-do list," the benefits did not materialize.

Eventually the finger pointing will start. Were the projects not the right ones? Were the black belts not working fast enough? What about the metrics? Why have other companies been successful? Leaders will want to know the answer to these and numerous other questions all leading to them to the same ultimate question which is "What is the secret to success?"

The answer is not a secret at all but only requires that the leader take a long hard look in the mirror. Yes, the mirror will show them who is ultimately responsible. It is them. Whether they like it not, the success of any Six Sigma deployment is a direct reflection of the leader’s passion and engagement. Why have they not seen this before now? Maybe they are vampires? I think I’ll save that thought for a Halloween blog.

Last week I spent an evening at the local emergency center with my mom. The experience reminded me of the old saying "You are only as good as your weakest link." And here’s why. . .

When I walked into the emergency center I was immediately accosted by a huge poster focused on customer service which promised that we would been seen in thirty minutes or less:) Hmmm I thought, this may be interesting to watch. After a brief check-in we waited about ten minutes before being screened and were immediately shown to a room in the back. (Wow - I thought to myself. I wonder if these folks are doing Six Sigma.) Within the next hour, the doctor stopped by, a knee x-ray was taken and a very nice lady came by to officially "log us in." Things slowed down a bit and we were advised that nothing was broken but that a steroid shot was needed and that it had been ordered from the pharmacy. OK - bring it on. . . OK - bring it on . . . Hello - is anyone out there?

Two hours later I stepped up to the front desk to inquire about the prescription. The front desk was very quick to tell me that it was the pharmacy’s fault; "they were the hold up." The pharmacy - in this case also known as the weakest link - had successfully turned this WOW experience into an OW experience. After a total visit time of five hours and ten minutes, we were finally on our way home.

The experience reminded me that the customer doesn’t really care whose ’fault’ it is. Suck it up and take responsibility for your process. If you are part of the process then you are part of the process. No matter how good you think your piece of the process performs, the customer feels the whole process and in the end - you are only as good as your weakest link.

Although great improvement in parts of the overall process had been made, it still needs more work. My suggestion for immediate action would be to take down the customer service poster flaunting quick and excellent service. You wouldn’t want any of your patients to die laughing on their way out.

What the heck is SigmaLeanZenOut? It is what a lot of people are doing in the world of continuous improvement. No matter where you got started, most companies gradually evolve to SigmaLeanZenOut. Six Sigma deployments add Lean, Kaizen, and then Workout (not necessarily in that order). Lean Deployments add Kaizen, Workout then Six Sigma. You get the picture. So why is this happening? It is because people are discovering that the combination of all these methodologies opens the door to applying continuous improvement methods to almost any situation. Your starting point (which methodology) will depend on your initial bias but most likely, you will eventually end up incorporating or integrating many methodologies.

So what are companies calling their ’thing’. Most likely, it is whatever they started with. Most companies don’t seem to go through the effort of renaming their continuous improvement approach as they add methodologies for fear that it might make the organization feel like whatever they started with was the "flavor of the day" and the organization must now move on to the next thing. Nothing would be more fun for a naysayer than to jump up and shout "See, Six Sigma didn’t work so we now have to do Lean Six Sigma or Six Sigma Plus". Some companies initially "brand" their approach by calling it "Customer First" or "Process Excellence" and incorporate Six Sigma, Lean, Kaizen and Workout as they deploy.

If you are just starting a deployment (whether it is Lean, Six Sigma, Workout, Kaizen, whatever), think about calling it something that is robust enough to handle the integration of other methodologies. If you feel like you need to use the right ’name’ to get the industry credibility then incorporate an adder like ’plus’ to the name. I sort of like naming your continuous improvement approach something that has the word ’excellence’ in it. Who can argue with wanting to be excellent?

No matter what you name it or how you get started, the important part is that your foundation include the proper integration of your approach(es) with your company strategy, goals, and leadership development and that you keep adding to your continuous improvement toolkit. Eventually you too will be doing SigmaLeanZenOut. (and it is almost as much fun to say as "Farfegnugen"!)

How has your company integrated the methodologies and what do you call it? Please feel free to post & share.

Oh no - not a label! Too bad. Whether you like it or not, you are being labeled - or branded - every day. Regardless of whether your company brands themselves and markets this brand or does nothing, your customers have already put a brand on you. Think about it. What comes to mind when you think about Lexus, WalMart, or Bank of America? Sometimes it’s the commercials but most likely that image will get trumped by your experience as a customer.

So what does all this have to do with Six Sigma? Everything. Six Sigma provides the tools, methods and approach to boost your brand. If you want to be known for excellent customer service . . . Six Sigma can help. If you want to be known for low cost . . . Six Sigma can help. If you want to be known for reliability . . Six Sigma can help. Establishing the brand you desire will require excellence in execution - first time - every time. And keeping pace with constantly rising customer demands will require continuously improving your product or service. Can’t keep up? You’ll still get branded and your customers won’t mind letting you know about it.

So next time you are looking to boost your brand, don’t just look to advertising and marketing. Look to Six Sigma to make the lasting difference in your product or service and let your positive customer experience boost your brand.

I recently spoke at a Lean Six Sigma Conference for Services hosted by the American Strategic Management Institute (ASMI). One of the morning speakers started her presentation by taking a quick survey. She went around the room and asked everyone three questions . . . What industry are you from? How long has your company been involved in Lean Six Sigma? What is your personal level of Lean Six Sigma knowledge? She charted each person’s answer as they spoke. Although it took a few moments to work through the crowd of about fifty plus people, it was a marvelous way to demonstrate the value and power of Voice of the Customer and here’s why.

• The activity engaged everyone in the audience. They were now "part" of something - not just a "spectator".
• The information helped each delegate with their own networking activities. Immediately following the session you could see people from like industries converging and trading business cards. You could also see some of the ’newbies’ seek out the more experienced delegates.
• And as a subsequent speaker I could now customize my approach to more closely fit the customer’s profile - speaking in terms that helped me better connect with the audience/customer.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the number of companies that were just starting their Lean Six Sigma journey. For me, this was just another affirmation of its staying power. After all these years, Lean Six Sigma continues to be the method of choice for driving excellence throughout the business world, No matter what type of business - from health-care to soft-ware to house-ware - Lean Six Sigma is making a difference every-where.