By Joyce Kryszak
Buffalo, NY – Erie County Executive Chris Collins swept into office as a champion of efficient government. He preached and continues to preach Lean Six Sigma as the way to save money. A business approach sounded pretty good to taxpayers who remembered only too well the red and green budget meltdown. But for many people Six Sigma remains an enigma. It sounds a little like a frat club or a secret society. It's cloaked in its own membership rituals - with yellow belts, green belts and master black belts. In the first of a two-part series, WBFO's Joyce Kryszak attempts to demystify Lean Six Sigma.
Then on Friday, Joyce concludes the series with a closer look at how Lean Six Sigma is being used to save money in Erie County. And she asks some hard questions to find out if it's working.
Click the audio player above to hear Joyce Kryszak's full story now or use your podcasting software to download it to your computer or iPod.
If you took statistics or calculus in high school or college, Thom Marra's black belt class probably wouldn't sound too intimidating. But most of the students who come here aren't mathematicians. But Marra said they do have something in common. "Private companies, public companies...it's all about problem solving. It's all about contiuous improvement," said Marra.
Marra teaches those Six Sigma tools at UB's Center for Industrial Effectiveness in Amherst. The advanced black belt classes meet for one week each month for five months. That's 200 hours of intensive training. And they'll need every minute. Six Sigma melds inferential statistics with mathematical formulas and graphical analysis. The first thing Marra does is get everyone speaking the language of Six Sigma.
Every eye is fixed on Marra's charts and numbers. They listen intensely - but nobody really looks confused. That could be, in part, because by the time they get to Marra they have all had a minimum of about one hundred hours of instruction as yellow and then green belts. Black belt candidate Angela Nelson is a project manager for the Hebler Corporation. She says the training can be a bit daunting at first.
Then again, instructor Thom Marra does use some creative methods to help make it click. Next to his very serious roughly 1,000 page statistics book is a cartoon guide to statistics. And on this day, students learned how to identify defects by playing with M&Ms. Marra said he likes to keep it fun.
He said learning how to analyze and measure defects is crucial to identifying the best process for resolving those defects or problems. Proponents claim Six Sigma has helped a myriad of companies and organizations solve those problems since it was developed by Motorola in the mid 80's.
There are similar programs, to name a few: Total Quality Management, Continuous Process Improvement and Lean which UB combines with Six Sigma for the university's program.
UB's Center for Industrial Effectiveness has churned out about 1,500 people trained in Lean Six Sigma over the last five years. About 400 are certified, many at companies all over Western New York, such as Rich Products, Moog and local hospitals. Tim Leyh is executive director for the center. He said Lean Six Sigma helps cut costs and boost the bottom line for many organizations.
But experts caution that Six Sigma should not be seen as a silver bullet.
Robert Kluttz is a vice president and process manager for a national financial services company. He also is a Six Sigma black belt who has successfully used the process in a variety of industries. Kluttz said that Six Sigma started as a cottage industry, and now everyone from colleges to online courses have jumped on the band wagon.
He said a market flooded with sometimes poorly skilled, inexperienced black belts can be disastrous. "We can go down the list of Fortune 500 companies that have had unsuccessful implementations and have gone through a Six Sigma program only to fail and have set-backs," said Kluttz.
Klutz said having the right people in place and enough resources to deploy the program - and manage it long term - is crucial. He added that Six Sigma should never be the only tool in an organization's tool box.