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.