Yesterday, I finished a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt class for a local company. The company made a huge commitment and had 20 people participate in the training. They identified 5 projects that the participants (4 per team) worked on during the training that was spread out over a 4 month period. Participants were from operations, project management, and the quality department. In our wrap up meeting and project reviews yesterday, all the teams have made significant progress and are now in the control phase and very close to completing their projects. The company has selected a deployment champion and is now in the process of setting up a steering committee of upper managers to oversee the process.
As part of the discussion yesterday, we talked about what went right during their first project and what they would do differently on their next project. I’d like to share their feedback with you.
What went right on your project?
- Good interaction between departments
- A lot got accomplished in a short time
- Right folks, common terminology, all on the same page
- How we look at problems now vs before
- Better able to identify projects
- DMAIC process and the need to control
- Elimination of problems
- Identified systems that needed SOPs and Work Instructions
- More focus on upfront activities
- Team work and better communication
- Realizing the Hawthorne effect
- Good methodology that is common
- Now understand the need to document requirements
- Seeing results and buy-in on solutions
- Training required and expectations of shop employees
What would you do differently next project?
- Better project and time management
- Stay more focused
- Simpler projects
- Approach collecting data in measure differently
- Too many projects going on at one time
- Get more shop employee involvement
- Change timing of training
- More thought given to data collection system
- Look at data collected and make any necessary corrections sooner