YOUR

OPINION
Vote of Confidence in Six Sigma
By
Christopher
A. Kliesmet,
Advanced
Integrated
Methods

erhaps one of the last great

frontiers of Six Sigma application is in government. Professional
audits, as well as mountains of
anecdotal evidence, suggest that
government-run processes could
provide fertile ground for applying Six Sigma and other quality
improvement and cost reduction
methods. Attempting to establish a
foothold in this frontier, however,
has been excruciatingly difficult.
At few junctures in U.S. history
has there been such an urgent need
for a workable solution for reining in costs, continuing or even
expanding services, and improving
the quality of those services. Two
of the most pressing issues for the
United Stateshealthcare and the
national debtwould benefit from
the rapid and broad deployment of
Six Sigma across government processes. Yet, we find few instances of
Six Sigma (or other private-sector
continuous-improvement systems)
deployed in government and often
encounter outright resistance when
broaching the possibility.
Holding down the fort
There are, of course, shining examples of Six Sigma being successfully
applied in government. The most
well known of these examples are
the efforts of Graham Richardfor-

mer mayor of Fort Wayne, INas

described in his book, Performance is
the Best Politics. Richard proved that
governing bodies can readily adopt
process improvement techniques,
such as lean and Six Sigma, with
astonishing results that belie the
myth of Six Sigma as unsuitable for
the public sector.
In fact, Richard received the
Government Leader of the Year
Award in 2007 for his success using
lean and Six Sigma across a broad
spectrum of public servicesfrom
filling potholes to policing. It also
should not be lost on the political
class that Richard credited the cost
reductions and service improvements achieved via lean Six Sigma
as the primary reason he went from
winning his first election by a mere
0.02% margin to a convincing 16%
reelection margin.
Unfortunately, attempts at implementing robust quality programs of
any kind more often meet the fate
of Milwaukee Countys efforts.
The Wisconsin county appeared
to be the prototypical candidate
for Six Sigma and was poised to
be the first county in the United
States to adopt it. Fiscal scandals
left the county in dire financial
straits. An irate electorate removed
a significant portion of county
leadership via recalls and elected
a new, reform-minded county
executive, Scott Walker, eager to
champion novel approaches, such
as Six Sigma.
Armed with recommendations
from a county-sanctioned, blue ribbon advisory panel of local leaders,
a volunteer citizens group recruited
organizations from the worlds of
business and academia, as well as
ASQ, to establish a pilot program

in the countyand all at no charge

(portions of the cost were covered
through an ASQ Community Good
Works grant).
Walker traveled with a sizable
contingent to Fort Wayne to consult with Richard and his team to
get a jumpstart and to build from
Fort Waynes experiences. The
Milwaukee team designated and
trained project Champions and
promptly initiated several pilot
projects. Simultaneously, a county
board member drafted a resolution to approve Six Sigma as the
countys official quality program.
In the end, the county board
failed to approve the resolution due
to political infighting, and Walker
could not afford to expend additional political capital to continue
to push for the adoption of Six
Sigma. Five years later, like many
other U.S. counties, Milwaukee
County faces worsening finances
due not only to its self-inflicted
wounds, but also the financial pall
cast over the entire country by a
recession.
Instead of the win-win scenario
of improved services and lower
taxes offered by Six Sigma (and
verified in Fort Wayne), the county
is faced with the age-old (but avoidable) political false choice between
reduced services and higher taxes.
Why not Six Sigma?
Quality services, cost reduction and
accountability are, arguably, the key
critical-to-quality concerns of all
customers of government.
Given the wide and successful
application of Six Sigma across a
broad spectrum of markets and
industries, the equally broad and

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YOUR
OPINION
deep financial constraints brought
about by a worldwide recession and
the tantalizing promise of politically powerful win-win solutions, the
central question becomes, Why
hasnt the public sector eagerly
researched, experimented with and
applied Six Sigma?
One simple explanation is that
those who enter politics tend to
exist in an insular and traditionbound environment and simply
have no knowledge of modern
continuous improvement methods. The same was once true in the
medical field, although that barrier
is beginning to crumble with the
adoption of lean and Six Sigma
by many hospitals. But ignorance,
obstinacy, fear of the unknown and
aversion to risk remain formidable
impediments to new ideas in any
arena.
There is a widely held and
patently false notion that Six Sigma
requires a profit motive to be successfulthat it is simply not applicable to nonprofit and public sectors.
Of course, the Fort Wayne example
decisively disproves this hypothesis,
but more needs to be said from a
philosophical perspective.
Most detractors leap directly
to the bottom-line argument that
taxpayers are customer shareholders in any public sector process
and that those who establish and
operate these processes have a
fiduciary responsibility to taxpay-

Call for
articles
30

february 2010

ers to operate them efficiently and

without waste. This is undeniably
true, but there is also a more altruistic top-line motive that is often
overlooked, particularly by those
who believe human compassion
requires ignoring dollars-and-cents
metrics.
Those who decry financial
metrics owe a humanitarian
responsibility to provide the highest quality service to the largest
population possible, regardless of
the resources available. In the end,
the fundamental Six Sigma truism
provides the strongest argument:
Everything is a process, and Six
Sigma improves processes irrespective of their setting.
Process concerns
There is a misconception and fear
that Six Sigma has an impact on
public policy, but this ignores the
basic tenet that Six Sigma is concerned only with process.
Politicians continue to determine policy. Six Sigma is used to
design processes that efficiently
implement that policy with the
highest possible citizen/customer
satisfaction, regardless of the
political overtones of that policy.
In fact, the first step in any Six
Sigma analysis is to determine what
is critical to customers, critical to
quality and critical to cost considerations.

A final, and perhaps cynical,

explanation for the reluctance of
the public sector to adopt Six Sigma
is one of its most powerful byproductsdirect accountability.
By mandating the establishment
of metrics and benchmarks tied to
citizen satisfaction and accurately
measuring whether the process is
delivering more or less of whatever
its citizens want, Six Sigma leaves
little doubt about whether a process
is delivering its service in a quality
and cost-effective manner. These
clear and unmistakable metrics
make it easy for taxpayers and
service consumers to understand
whether they are getting what their
elected representatives promised.
The world faces enormous challenges that are dependent on the
ability of governing bodies to provide quality services with limited
resources to an expanding population. Irrespective of the politics,
principles, promises and policies
that prevail, Six Sigma is a respected
tool with the proven power to implement those policies and promises
to the satisfaction of citizens and
customers. Failure to take advantage
of that is unconscionable.
CHRISTOPHER A. KLIESMET is owner of Advanced Integrated Methods and director of
competitive advantage at RCM Technologies
Inc. He received a bachelors degree in electrical engineering from Marquette University in
Milwaukee and an MBA from the Keller Graduate School of Management.

Six Sigma Forum Magazine is seeking articles for publication.

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considered, along with submission requirements, go to

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W W W . AS Q . ORG

Who Wants a SIPOC Anyway?

By Aditya
Bhalla, QAI
India Ltd.

he supplier, input, process,

output and customer (SIPOC)
method can be a very versatile tool
when undertaking a Six Sigma
define, measure, analyze, improve
and control (DMAIC) project. But
SIPOC suffers from benign neglect
because many project leads tend to
view it merely as one of the mandatory templates to be populated as
part of a DMAIC journey.
If done the right way, SIPOC can
be an elegant addition to the effort
and can yield significant benefits:
1. Preventing scope creep: The
SIPOC defines the start and end
points of the process that is within
the scope of the project. It takes care
of issues of scope creep in the define
phase. It also provides a commonsense check for the detailed process
map analysis in the measure phase
2. Providing management with a
big-picture view: In large organizations, it is common for senior management to have vague impressions
about the work being performed by
various teams. SIPOC is an elegant
solution that provides management
a fair perspective of the workings
and flow within the process without
pulling it into the nitty-gritty details
of the process flowchart.
3. Contributing to team dynamics: It is well established that groups
evolve according to five stages (forming, storming, norming, performing
and adjourning). SIPOC provides
the group an easy avenue for jointly

accomplishing project milestones,

thereby providing the positive impetus necessary for the group to reach
the performing stage.
4. Identifying the essence of any
process: One of the guidelines
for SIPOC creation is to describe
the process steps in the format of
tool-action-object. For example,
Operator enters data in system X.
This practice of summarizing the
essence of process steps has been
borrowed from value engineering,
where it has been used successfully
to reveal the core function of the
process. This is important because
functions remain constant, but the
means to accomplish them do not.
For example, the function of scanning application forms is to change
customer records from a physical
format to a digital one. But scanning is just one way of capturing customer information in the database.
Others include online data entry by
the customer and tapping into other
databases (such as those maintained
by government or industry bodies).
Another advantage of using the
tool-action-object format is to analyze and overcome problems. For
example, the tool or object may be
absent or degrade over time, or the
action may be absent, insufficient,
intermittent or excessive.
5. Generating ideas for process
improvement: SIPOC provides a tool
to observe the flow of information
and materials, making it possible to
identify waste and initiate improvement during the define phase.
6. Effective failure modes and
effects analysis: When problems
arise because of the interaction
between the tool and the object,
each of the failure modes linked to
the input variables can serve as the

basis to determine and mitigate the

potential risk in the process. SIPOC
can help easily identify the potential
failure modes that can compromise
each of the process steps.
7. Creating a data-collection plan:
A well-constructed SIPOC can help
create a data-collection plan by
identifying the factors that affect a
process. A recommended guideline
for making a SIPOC is to identify the
input, output, supplier of the input
and the customer (willing recipient
of the output) for each process step.
Many practitioners tend to ignore
this guideline, and some authors
present it as an optional activity.
Why is this action important? Any
process steps performance can be
affected by several factors. Listing
the specific factors and identifying
their potential failure modes can
help generate the potential hypotheses to be investigated through
process walkthroughs or through
formal analysis of process data.
8. Easy transition to value stream
maps: SIPOC traces the flow of
material and information via the
process steps. This comes in handy
when creating a value stream map.
It also provides the team an opportunity to perform a five whys analysis on the as-is structure to identify
bottlenecks, such as lack of onepiece flow, and existence of waste.
In the hands of skilled practitioner, SIPOC can be your own personal Swiss Army knife to help you
complete a successful project.
ADITYA BHALLA is innovation practice manager at QAI India Ltd. in New Delhi, India. He
earned a post-graduate diploma in patents
law from the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research University of Law in Hyderabad, India. Bhalla is a Six Sigma Master
Black Belt and a member of ASQ.

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