Lean Six Sigma Service Excellence - A Guide to Green Belt Certification and Bottom Line Improvement Today, the U.S. Economy is dominated by non-manufacturing service oriented profit seeking companies, government agencies, and not-for-profit organizations.Executives, middle managers and individual contributors who work in service industries like healthcare, financial services, telecommunications, and call centers seek a user friendly method for applying Lean Six Sigma successfully.
This book is written to be a source for the basic principles and applications of lean six sigma.It provides the tools and a simple step-by-step method for implementing a lean six sigma performance excellence system in a non-manufacturing environment.It is also an 11 chapter resource and work book that includes illustrations and rigorous practice exercises.It will provide the reader with a solid road map to establish an operational excellence program within a services organization. What makes this book different from other six sigma publications is that it is not only intended for service providers, but it is also written for the average business professional.Many have read about and heard how six sigma is heavily laden with statistics.The truth is that six sigma is not difficult to apply.This book will be a resource to the front-line supervisor as well as the executive who desires a user-friendly guide to service excellence and customer loyalty. How The Book Is Organized Chapter 1 The Quest for Productivity Chapter 1 deals with what is and what should be the quest of all executives and managers ? improved productivity.This chapter defines productivity in measurable terms.It discusses why productivity is so vital to a corporation, and why productivity growth is so important to a national economy.Since this book is dedicated to managers of service organizations, it emphasizes how the concept of productivity can be used as a distinctive competence to bring a competitive advantage for service companies. Chapter 2 Its the Process! Chapter 2 deals with the process!The objective of this chapter is to educate readers about service process design and all of the factors, activities, events and requirements that make service processes work and work well. It defines the properties of a well designed process management system, examines three basic methods for process development, discusses the qualities of a cross functional organization, and outlines some basic process vocabulary and definitions. Chapter 3 The Voice of the Customer It is true that even satisfied customers switch providers.Even though they are satisfied, they switch because they may be better off.This chapter examines the concept of customer loyalty over customer satisfaction.It defines a loyal customer as one who operates with ?extreme prejudice? towards a company?s products and services.The idea behind this chapter is to encourage service companies to not only create value and customer satisfaction, but to acquire and maintain the largest loyal customer base in the market place. Chapter 4 Analyzing Performance Variation An understanding of performance variation is essential to be effective at improving an operation's performance.As an outcome of reading this chapter the reader will be better equipped to use their understanding of performance variation to make good business decisions with numerical facts and demonstrate how to display baseline process performance using run charts. Chapter 5 Your Basic Six Sigma Tool Kit The purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with a reference that explains how to construct and use the basic analytical tool kit employed by six sigma green belts and black belts around the world. The use of these tools and techniques are essential for achieving service excellence because they promote the use of facts and data as the basis for decision making and problem solving. Chapter 6 Performance Metrics and Dashboards Chapter 6 covers the important topic of measuring performance.It defines and discusses the major categories of performance measurement for a service organization. It examines how a six sigma professional can define and structure a performance measurement system, and how to use the tools described in earlier chapters to develop an effective dashboard of key performance indicators. Chapter 7 The Six Sigma Project Team This chapter is dedicated to the vital antecedent of a successful lean six sigma program - the six sigma project team.As a basic building block to a lean six sigma effort, the project team is the essential ingredient for an organization to eliminate those barriers to optimum productivity.This chapter discusses how a project team is structured and what are its key roles and responsibilities. Chapter 8 Six Sigma Soft Skills, Working with and Through Others This chapter focuses on key intra-team dynamics ? how to work within a team to produce effective decisions and solve problems. This chapter also provides an overview of the basic elements for successfully facilitating change Chapter 9 Management by Fact, The DMAIC Approach to Performance Improvement. The practice of six sigma uses the vast experiences of managers, coupled with supporting facts and information to analyze problems at their root cause. This chapter is devoted to defining the practice of six sigma. It discusses the prevailing definitions of six sigma, describes six sigma in terms of what it is and what it is not.It contrasts six sigma with other quality methods, explores key six sigma concepts, and provides an overview of how to manage a DMAIC project. Chapter 10 Deploying your Performance Excellence System Chapter 10 lays out a brief overview and a step by step strategy to establish a performance excellence system in a service environment.The overview defines the attributes of a strong performance excellence system, tells how to focus on an organization?s core processes, how to integrate a measurement system, how to eliminate non-value added tasks, and how to move forward towards six sigma performance. Chapter 11 The Fundamentals of Lean Thinking for Service Excellence This book is not only dedicated to using six sigma as a means to achieve service excellence, but it also to devoted to employing lean thinking to improve an organization?s operating efficiencies.Earlier chapters alluded to the application of lean tools without specific references to the practice of lean.The purpose of this chapter is to, in more explicit ways; define what lean thinking is and how its principles are applied in a service environment.It will be provide the reader with an introduction to certain concepts of lean production and their applicability in a non-manufacturing setting. In Keeping We are very excited about the fact that lean six sigma is becoming very popular with retailers, utility companies, government agencies, finance and insurance companies, health care organizations, call centers, logistic companies, and shared services organizations.As you embark on using lean six sigma, we would be thrilled to hear from you and how this book has helped your efforts. The Performance Management Group LLC
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