Every organization has problems no matter how rosy the future may look. Lean Six Sigma can help you make a good assessment of where you are today. The more you can use hard data to answer the following questions, the better:
- What are our current overall business results? Are we meeting our targets and goals? Are there areas that are underperforming (specific products, business units, plants, departments, etc.)? What is our yield, sigma level, based on real data? Is there a lot of variation in our outputs and processes?
- How effectively do we focus on and meet our customer requirements? Do we really understand our customers needs? How would we describe our relationships with our key customers? What would they say to us, if we asked them?
- How efficiently are we operating? How much rework and waste exists in our processes? Do our support processes — finance, HR, engineering, IT, purchasing, etc. — aid in our ability to add value to our customers?
The harder you found to answer these three questions, the more seriously you should consider adopting Lean Six Sigma methods to help you strengthen your Voice of the Customer and measurement capabilities.