What is the Future of Process Excellence?

The Future of Process Excellence:The service sector is now likely the most prolific user of the Lean toolkit, with Financial Services and Insurance and the public sector embracing Lean with greater relish now than at any other time. Are we in for an era of rapid process improvement? Why has Lean come to such prowess? The benefits of Lean deployment can be seen far quicker than Six Sigma and it is the breadth of tools combined with the quick and results that satisfies managers across the business from Finance to HR and operations. Lean has had its heyday on the shop-floor and is now equally, if not more loved by the service industries. Lean also offers what is for most people a more digestible form of process improvement - something they can easily get their heads round - less clouded in mystery than Six Sigma. Six Sigma however is by no means dead and buried and for those in larger corps with both time and data to spare the financial rewards of a successful Six Sigma project can be infinitely as if not more exciting to the board room heavyweights.Where will the process excellence community go next as the BPR experts look to push the boundaries of quality and change management and seek out ever bigger wins rewards? New proposition development and embracing the gamut of Web 2.0 technologies and social networking could hold the key…the future looks exciting and could hold real promise if better and better best practice is sought!Ripe4 are experts in delivery and execution of OE and Process Improvement and Six Sigma Recruitment assignments

Is the need for Six Sigma professionals dying out?

Is the need for Six Sigma professionals dying out? As a specialist time served (5+ years) Six Sigma recruiter I would certainly say over the last 12 – 24 months I have seen a dramatic decrease in the amount of companies looking to hire permanent & contracted Six Sigma resource. This is not to say that process improvement professionals are not still in demand! Lean Sigma has long been tagged on the market for logical progression for any strictly DMAIC black belts, it seems that view has filtered down to many companies not only with well established BPI programs but green field sites at the beginning of there CI journey. If we look to offers from management consultancies these days there are plenty or ‘FRESH’ sells on the market to be gobbled up for businesses hungry for process excellence. Its no surprise ‘Lean Sigma’ is the new ‘Six Sigma’. So we don’t see as many assignments for strictly DMAIC BB’s but BB’s with a good lean grounding do now seem to be much more valued.
Lean Six Sigma recruitment and jobs in lean six sigma seem the flavor of the month.

Does Six Sigma stifle creativity? What is it about Six Sigma, everyone seems to hate these days? Having delivered famous results for most of the Fortune 500 and beyond over the past decade it seems to have become the victim of increasing numbers of slights and accusations in recent times. Six Sigma's heavy reliance on data massaged the minds of many a statistician however frustrated and annoyed those who were far more hands on, focused on the act of doing. The stats at the heart of the successful application of six sigma may seem a pain Six Sigma has often been shrouded in mystery and the language of black belts and green belts along with the carrying out tough acts such as headcount reduction and embedding a change mindset have often ruffled the feathers of those preferring the status quo. Successful Six Sigma deployments however have always had voice of customer (VOC) at their heart. At the heart of this practice of Six Sigma is the opportunity to listen to the voices of both end-users and your internal customers. Whilst a heavy reliance on data at one end of the spectrum may be seen as stifling to creativity surely the act of extracting ideas and methods of countering problems and issues combined with interacting with focus groups and customers can generate means by which we can harness both internally generated ideas from the ‘shop-floor’ and from the external customers – listening and changing our business to more of an outside in model – absorbing ideas from the customer whomever this may be and using those to harness creativity be that in problem solving or product or service innovation..
Six Sigma roles and six sigma jobs are still very much a part of modern business life as companies seek to keep costs down to a minimum and drive out waste.

Six Sigma Consultancies: Do they add any value?

Enquiring about any subject matter often arises from curiosity and/or news that "the Jones's" have started something that brings with it certain benefits you'd be foolish to miss, a smoother ride, more economic mileage in the shape of a new motor, or quite simply that it turns heads! Learning of the cost saving benefits of successful Six Sigma deployment, you'd be none too shocked to learn that many firms go weak at the knee's at the news of the millions being saved annually in time and monetary terms and in their misguided giddiness they can easily be taken for a very expensive ride by instigating the help of the wrong consultancy.

With Six Sigma and change management per se it is important a company has an end goal, an aim and clarity in the reason they have initiated a change program in the first place. Keeping up with the Jones's is simply not enough of a reason for kick starting a change program. Change won't necessarily happen overnight, whilst quick fixes in the shape of kaizen blitz events may appear to be of immediate benefit, it is sustainable change that any decent six sigma consultancy should be guiding you towards. If you are left taking your first few steps alone it is all too easy to fall on your face and end up crawling whilst never truly learning to walk or run. Six Sigma Consultancies are often the first port of call for any company thinking of starting it's journey on the road to change.

Impartial help is on hand and speaking to a six sigma recruitment firm with experience of assisting in building an array of highly successful deployments is one port of call we would be happy to assist with. Success built through the application of the right people and personalities.

Six Sigma Fighting For Change....

Six Sigma professionals frequently hear the reverberations of generations of contented and discontented workers: "Nobody likes change", "I've done it this way, my father did it this way and I see know reason to change" Bringing about change is never and easy task and in business you can often be bombarded by objections and reasons for people 'avoiding change'.

Living in an era of unsurpassable levels of change, brought about by the tidal wave of new technology we now live in an age where new ideas constantly shift and reshape the world around us, where things never really remain the same for long. Rewind 100 years and this level of rapid change would have been unthinkable. With change comes stress and inevitably people try to hold onto what they know, after all familiarity appears to hold a little security in an ever changing world. For a successful Six Sigma program to take hold and streamline processes a change culture needs to develop and embed itself in a company.

Looking through the smoke screen however will take you closer to the truth, people fear change as they feel it will inevitably make their lives more difficult, raise issues that may show their function "their reason for being" to be unnecessary or defunct.

Through the application of Lean Six Sigma you have the ability to make people see that change doesn't have to be feared but can instead be embraced. If you can capture the heart and minds of the shopfloor, then you will have one of the most powerful weapons in your fight for change. If you can show the "shopfloor workers" the benefits of change and actually make their lives easier bring about self respect and a perceived shift in power then the shopfloor person will be a key voice in the success of your deployment.

Breaking down the 'them and us' attitude and getting ideas to come forth from the shopfloor will give you the voice of reason to gain buy in from the bottom up and leave common sense and the bottom line to appeal to the top.

We all like a voice of reason and when change is seen as causing no harm, it is easier to digest and embrace. One a momentum gathers amongst the shopfloor and we can open our ears and listen to the workers a fledgling change program is given a great start in life.

The boxing gloves may not be laid down at this point as sure there will be work to be done, obstacles to overcome, but your chances of going all 15 rounds will increase with a key chant of supporters in favour of change.

Filling Six Sigma Jobs In Germany

Recruiting Six Sigma professionals in a busy market is never the easiest of tasks, recruiting Six Sigma Master Black Belts and Black Belts when people are loathe to move about is equally as difficult, add an extra twist and a scenario where you aren't blessed with speaking the candidates native language. Luckily for us Brits, most Europeans and to that extent most of the planet are skilled in speaking English which fortunately allows us to apply our recruiting skills and assist in Europe wide aswell as global Six Sigma deployments.

Having worked on a vast number of Six Sigma, Lean Sigma aka BPR deployments over the past few years it is always good to get your teeth into both established and new Six Sigma deployments. Our experience has shown us however that capturing six sigma candidates from Germany and filling Six Sigma jobs in Germany has in the past been especially tough. Resources that have really helped in recent years have however come forth in the shape of specialist Lean Sigma, Six Sigma job boards and a plethora of contacts we have gathered together over the past decade.

Six Sigma - What's in a name?

Six Sigma nowadays has come to not only mean six sigma but to also encompass all walks of lean - there are still six sigma purists out there who would disagree but the application of both lean and six sigma in both the operational and transactional environments has given way to a new hybrid six sigma and a new hybrid six sigma professional.

It is possible to go a fair way with only one set of tools but why deny yourself the full arsenal of business change weaponry? With Lean one can only real achieve a defect level of 6 or 7 parts per million opportunities however by incorporating six sigma, further defects can be eliminated to a level closer to perfection (3.4 parts per million opportunities) the level known as six sigma.

If you are looking to find the wheat rather than the chaff and want the opportunity of working with the best professionals out there, start by talking to those who understand the six sigma marketplace, like a skilled six sigma consultancy or by finding consulting talent through an accomplished six sigma recruitment agency.