Six Sigma certification - Is it right for smaller companies

The answer for this will be very simple. As an analogy, if some one has asked a question : Is Quality important factor for survival for a small country. You know the answer as to how Japan has surpassed big countries in Leading Quality revolution.

Yes. Six sigma certification in bangalore will certainly help companies irrespective of whether it is small, medium, large or extra large.

However, for successful deployment of Six Sigma in organisation level, there are some pre-requisites.

• The owner of the business supports Six Sigma completely and actively, and is willing to personally invest on it.
• The company has a routine core of work that will benefit from the process rigor of Six Sigma.
• The organization’s culture is open to change.

All businesses, but small businesses especially, must understand that Six Sigma is not a panacea. There are many aspects to business, and only some of them should involve Six Sigma. Business owners should not abandon their instincts, intuition, taste, feel for the market, competitive spirit, empathy with customers and employees, common sense or good judgment.

A business that wants to change must also meet three requirements:

1. Tolerance for variation and the failures that result. Change requires variation; in fact, it is defined by it.
2. Slack," i.e., spare resources that can be diverted to change-related activities.
3. Redundancy built into its systems, so that the areas being changed can still provide essential stakeholder services.

Big companies meet these requirements easily. But such is not the case with all small businesses. Their approach to Six Sigma certification must be modified in the following respects.

Increasing Tolerance for Variation

Small businesses cannot afford too many mistakes. Many are flirting with the line between survival and success. Thus, when choosing Six Sigma projects, the leader should err on the conservative side, especially in the beginning. Follow the rule used by successful professional gamblers: "Do not risk more than you can afford to lose."

Before embarking on the Six Sigma journey, small businesses will want to be sure their customers are shielded from any problems that changes might cause. Prior to deployment, they must be sure that they have installed basic quality systems. ISO 9000 has proven to be useful in this regard. When conducting Six Sigma projects, small businesses must take special care to insulate customers from unintended consequences. Also, they must be prepared to forgive and forget when mistakes are made. The safe path of the status quo may result in fewer mistakes, but it is not viable in the long run.

Creating ‘Slack’ and Redundancy

Slack is the amount of time the change agents (Green Belts and Black Belts) spend on Six Sigma certification project work. Typically, a company’s most scarce resource is human talent. Six Sigma change agents must be a company’s best employees, so slack is the most important category and the most difficult to come by. Likewise, a company must have the ability to cover the important duties of these key individuals (redundancy.) The company leadership team must prepare a plan for creating this redundancy and slack before it launches its Six Sigma effort.

As a rule of thumb, a small business can begin deploying Six Sigma when it reaches a size where one person can devote one day per week to Six Sigma. Assuming an eight-hour day, this threshold is reached when total employment is 20 full-time equivalents (FTEs). This level of commitment is necessary to justify the time and money that must be spent training the change agent, educating the leadership and orienting employees.

This falls in line with what should be a small company’s maximum change agent commitment – 0.5 to 1 percent of its total employee hours (i.e., 20 employees [800 hours a week] means devoting no more than eight hours a week of one employee’s time to Six Sigma projects). The total time spent on change will be much greater than just the change agent’s, and will include time for team meetings and time spent by others implementing the changes. Too much change all at once can be disruptive to normal operations. The 1 percent rule will keep things manageable.

For companies with fewer than 100 employees, Green Belts certification in Bangalore should be added when total employment reaches 20 and 40 employees, rather than increasing the workload on a single individual. This is recommended for several reasons:

• It is usually easier to create small amounts of slack in different areas than it is to replace 40 percent of a key person’s time.
• It will create Six Sigma expertise in more areas of the company, which will help create a culture where Six Sigma can thrive.
• It will be easier to work on cross-functional projects if there are trained people in more areas of the company.
• It will more quickly create a change-agent community where people can learn from one another and share a common bond.

The company should consider rotating people through the Green Belt position, which will require additional training expenditures. Of course, a cost/benefit analysis should be conducted before investing in training additional people, but by then the company should have seen the benefits of Six Sigma certification and be willing to reinvest some of its gains to spread Six Sigma through the organization.

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