Lean Six Sigma Training Programs
June 9th, 2009 Posted in Lean Six Sigma | No Comments »With so much pressure on costs these days, it’s not surprising that most companies are looking hard at the duration of their Lean Six Sigma training programs and asking if they could be shortened. I think this is a worthwhile exercise, so long as it is entered into in the spirit of reducing non-value-adding training rather than setting some arbitrary target for how long the course should be. We have been offering courses of any length from one day to three weeks for many years, and the trick is, of course, to match the depth of training to the needs of the organization. Here are some factors to consider when asking yourself if your courses are too long:
* Are you studying machine processes or people/computer processes? In factories and laboratories where much of the improvement activity focuses on the equipment, techniques such as Gauge R&R, Process Capability, Setup Reduction, total Productive Maintenance and perhaps even Design of Experiments are invaluable for squeezing out another percentage of yields. But in transactional businesses, they are usually an irrelevance.
* Are you dealing with high-volume repetitive processes? Much of the Lean training can be simplified and reduced if you are not: Value Stream Mapping and the key questions that enable you to develop flow and pull systems, for example, can be covered with a light touch.
* What are you trying to achieve? If the answer is mainly to remove errors (as is often the case in Financial Services or IT environments) then you are rarely going to need much statistical analysis to find these – it tends to be a job for process analysis, Pareto Charts, Run Charts and the like – which are quick and easy to teach. But if you are trying to improve your performance – increase Sales Force Effectiveness for example – then you may well need the dreaded statistics to be brought to bear to enable you to sort out what works best. Even relatively sophisticated techniques such as Multiple Regression can have a huge impact here – for example in figuring our which factors has the greatest effect on sales or customer satisfaction.
For most manufacturing applications, a 2-3 week course remains the norm because they usually need the more sophisticated options from my list above. But if you’re looking at a people process without a high volume of repetitive tasks and your goal is to reduce errors, you’re in luck! You may be able to deliver a perfectly respectable Green Belt course in 5 or 6 days, without the need for sophisticated software. I’d still strongly advise you to run the course in two separate sessions though, to enable you to include status reports from each participant in the second week – these do wonders for people’s effort levels in the important early phases of the project.
I’ll just leave you with one note of caution: when people cut courses (Lean Six Sigma training ) too aggressively, the consequences take a while to emerge: projects taking too long, excessive coaching demand, Green Belts not confident enough to tackle follow-on projects and a general loss of confidence in the whole process. By the time you discover your mistake, in other words, people will already be whispering that the program has ‘run its course’, and you run the risk that management support ebbs away. That can set you back years. So cut with care!
David Hampton
Vice President, Rath & Strong