Lean Six Sigma for Service

CHAPTER 12First Wave Service Projects

There's a dynamic tension set up whenever a company embarks on a Lean Six Sigma initiative. Naturally, it wants to target resources at significant problems, where improvements will have a noticeable effect on quality, speed, and cost. Yet it's likely the majority of people recruited to make these improvements will be new to Lean Six Sigma: newly minted Black Belts, novice team members, untrained frontline staff. So a company needs to balance its focus on important issues versus not putting people into situations that just set them up for failure.

Fortunately, the opportunities for manageable, meaningful projects abound in the early stages of Lean Six Sigma, especially in organizations with no active program ...