I have been talking with several of my contacts about what the next new improved version of Six Sigma will look like.  None of us can see the future, of course.  However, based on our current understanding we have generated some ideas about what it might look like or what we think it should look like.

 

My view is that sales departments have not taken advantage of as much of the Six Sigma improvements as it should have.  Some companies are using it now and the trend seems to be growing.  This is not a trend based on accurate statistical information, however.  There are two new books on applications of Six Sigma in sales.  This also supports the idea that it is at least being studied by more people in recent times.  One that is easy to read and has some good practical examples is “Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way” by Michael Webb.

 

I see an even greater potential for integrating sales functions with other functions like R&D.  Integration of customer support with sales or even integrating the marketing department with sales would be useful as well.  This is a goal written in many business school textbooks.  In practice, I have not observed much real interaction.

 

The tools in Six Sigma should be very useful for assisting the integration of sales and other functional areas.  All these functions involve a process and the process oriented approach will certainly help.

 

One of the biggest reasons for failures of Six Sigma projects from the data I have seen is a failure to implement a good control plan.  Here is probably the key to why sales have not been successful in working with some of these other functions.  Without data providing useful feedback on the integration, there is no reason to work on this communication.  It is also just plain difficult to bridge the communication gap between any of an organization’s departments.  Without a process that assists or makes it easy anything difficult will not get done by itself.

 

Sales people by nature and personality tend to be different and look at things from another viewpoint than people in R&D.  R&D people seldom view their job as providing products or processes that are easy to sell and support.  By the same token sales people don't see any value in working with the nerds in R&D.  I have worked in both areas and found myself failing to do both.  So I suspect as Deming would say it is not the people's fault it is the process design.

 

I have great hopes that Six Sigma will help us develop new and improved sales process interfaces to those other functional areas and provide huge synergistic gains in profitability.

Someone recently posted a question on managing the change process.  He stated that he tries to balance the hard actions and goals with the needs of the people.  Anytime you are focused on balancing two things that are potentially opposing forces you are on the right track.  This will generally insure at least short term success.

 

His question reminded me of final Six Sigma step.  This is the control plan.  Poor implementation of this step probably accounts for the majority of project failures.  At least it did in the one firm that kept data on their Six Sigma projects.

 

It makes logical sense that if you don't set up a proper control plan you will not maintain the gain.  People are creatures of habit and tend to drift back to the old ways of doing things without realizing it.  That is part of human nature and based on the way the human brain operates.

 

So for any process improvement always include the key step of designing a control plan.  Deming didn't have a control plan in his steps.  His process was to continually repeat the cycle.  This might catch the drift back to the old ways but only if measurements were in place to show any drift away from the desired new process.  I have seen too many process improvement projects fail over time and nobody inside the firm noticed.

I was recently reading the book "Beyond Selling Value" where they discussed the process of selling to high level executives.  They recommended doing a presentation where you don't talk about your product features.  Instead they suggest you tell them about their problems and goals first.  Then at the end of the presentation talk about how your product should help them with their problems but not in great detail.

 

It makes some sense.  At that level of an organization they are primarily focused on the high level strategy and most are not concerned with details of someone else’s product.

 

This may not be a universal truth and some execs may be interested in some details of some products or services.  Most probably don't have the time.  They have people working for them that can work on the details.

 

So selling at this level goes against the inclination of most sales people and consultants.  There seem to be lots of these types of conflicts in business.  For example, I have heard many people say that focusing on the money or profit is not the right approach.  Instead they say to focus on the customer needs and how you can help.  The money should follow.  Of course it isn't quite that simple, but in general I believe this is correct if balanced properly.

 

Consultants and sales people are natural talkers and the good ones like to help people solve problems.  Telling them how is the fun part.  Listening isn't one of those skills expected from sales people.  I know of one firm that increased the sales significantly by providing the sales people with a check list of questions.  They weren't allowed to offer any product solutions until all the questions were asked and the answers recorded.  Before that they launched into their solution as soon as they heard the first problem that they had an answer for.  They just couldn't wait to find out they could solve several problems and increase the amount of the total sale by many times.

 

Does anyone have any similar experience?  Have you tried a similar approach and found it to work or not work?

 

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While doing some work on a presentation on Design for Six Sigma, the importance of including marketing and sales on the team became a bit more important.  For any product or process that has new features it is critical.  This isn't new and it was stated as an important concept in many rather old business books and articles.  In my previous work in R&D it was stated often during strategy discussions.  It just was never implemented very well.

 

I spent some time in the field as a sales engineer and we had a form with a check box that was supposed to flag the notes so they went to the R&D people.  I never saw any evidence that it actually did get sent to anyone.

 

Developing a new product that has a strong customer focus that Six Sigma claims to implement is not easy.  A customer survey won't work well if the product is relatively new.  If a customer hasn't seen or used the new product they aren't going to be able to know what they want it to do.  It is like selling penny candy to the kids while a block from the store.  They aren't likely to know what kind they want if they can't even see it.

 

So if a survey isn't going to pass the measurement system analysis because it isn't very precise, what can we do?

 

This is where the sales people have to be part of the process.  They are usually in a position to see how the customers react and are in better position to know how it is actually perceived.  Of course if they are commissioned based it may be difficult finding a reward system to pay for the time away from closing sales.

 

There are other ways to get customer feedback and any ideas anyone has on some of the methods I would like to hear from you.

I have been waiting for the next new term to suplant Six Sigma but did not expect Scott Adams' Dilbert cartoon to be the first to proclaim it as old.  Of course the reference he used in Fortune magazine is a quote from a consultant trying to sell his version of Six Sigma.  Before Six Sigma became the hot term it was TQM or Total Quality Management.  So the new version according to Charles Holland is now MVT which stands for Multi Variable Testing.  His book states MVT works well with Six Sigma.  My interpretation is that his method is just one variation on the implementation of Six Sigma type tools.

 

In the same way Six Sigma was really only a slight variation in emphasis in implementing TQM tools.  I do have to admit that slight changes on older systems sometimes have great effects.  In this case, I don't disagree that the Six Sigma term could be updated.  It also can use some slight improvements.  The improvements needed come down in my view to implementation.  Far too many Six Sigma projects fail because of faults in one part of the implementation.  But that is probably not a surprise.

 

Jack Welsh as been quoted that DFSS or Design For Six Sigma was much better than the basic Six Sigma and the DMAIC process.  It can be but the implementation can be more challenging.  Mainly because it becomes more complex to develop an entire new process or product verses fix one component.

 

Implementation of DFSS also requires a larger view and almost always requires participation of other functional groups like marketing that is normally left out of many Six Sigma presentations.

 

I am not sure if MVT will actually become the new process improvement buzzword.  I don't care as the tools will likely be the same if history repeats.  I will be interested to see what slight changes are associated with it.  MVT doesn't offer anything that I haven't seen or used before.  The emphasis on certain tools in the arsenal are probably very good for some applications.  Does that mean it will become the next buzzword?  Six Sigma is actually lasted longer than most of the previous versions.  So we will have to wait and see if it catches.

I have heard quality experts answer the question what comes after you reach Six-Sigma?  Their answer was go to seven sigma.  This sounds like the logical next step to someone focused on improving quality.  To someone running a business it doesn't sound so logical.  It cost money to get to five sigma and even more to get to six sigma.  The trend indicates seven will be even more expensive.

 

How much cost saving can you expect by reducing defect levels below 3.4 defects per million?  If you can come up with a justifiable case let me know.  Maybe the airlines or medical industry if you include the cost of litigation and damage to reputation or brand name.  But I want to see some data that supports this.

 

There are other problems created for the marketing and sales departments when a DFSS (Design for Six Sigma) process makes a big change in reliability.  I haven't seen any discussion on how this improvement changes the marketing and sales processes.

 

After my paper is published, I will post more about this.