Lynchburg Business

Lean Programs Helping Businesses Stand Tall

Issue: March 2010 by Carrie Williams in Human Resources, Inside The Magazine

The effects of America’s current recession are numerous and far-reaching. Of course, it’s mentioned everyday in the news, yet it’s also talked about in home improvement shows, reality documentaries and even popular cooking shows. Everyone is cutting back and learning how to get the biggest bang for their buck.

It’s no different for businesses. Companies have a fairly difficult challenge on their hands: keeping productivity at an all-time high, while keeping expenses at an all-time low. How are businesses able to find this seemingly contradictory balance? One option some chose to explore is lean programs, such as Six Sigma.

Six Sigma is a practice that was originally devised by Motorola to increase productivity and lower costs. In 2007, the local Lynchburg plant of AREVA, Inc., began its own Lean Six Sigma (LSS) implementation.

“Employees involved with this effort learned new skills and worked on projects that enabled them to be more effective and efficient,” Bob Cole, Manager of Performance Improvement at AREVA, Inc., said.

Companies who give this program a try seem to consistently respond in the same way. So, is this a simple program guaranteed to make your business successful? No. It’s a very complex system of statistical research, restructuring of man-power and re-planning of resources and budgeting. However, it is an effective program which will allow businesses to expand their goals, broaden their vision for the future and provide tools for change. Six Sigma may be a complex system, but it’s one that can alter the future of a participating company for the better.

Some of the first things the Six Sigma approach trains a business to do is focus on the ways it can eliminate expenditures. In Cole’s words, Six Sigma is “a data-driven and project-oriented methodology and a set of tools that help an organization improve quality, increase consistency and eliminate waste.” Of course, all of these results will help lower costs in the long run.

While reducing staff is the most effective way to decrease company outflow, it’s also the fastest way to lose support from employees. When dealing with the human element, nothing is black and white. Layoffs can’t always be avoided, however, and this necessary action must be communicated to employees. Stress is an everyday struggle for the majority of workers in America today with the unspoken threat of unemployment looming over their heads. By choosing to meet more often with them than in the past, a company can show that it cares about their well-being. Keeping workers informed will also help reduce stress, therefore allowing productivity to remain stable and perhaps even increase.

The same rules of communication apply if a company knows that there will not be job cuts. If there are no layoffs in the foreseeable future, a company should by all means tell its people. Managers will undoubtedly hear a collective sigh of relief, while seeing less lost time to nervous worrying.

Communication is key in other areas as well. When introducing a new Six Sigma program to your company, make sure to keep employees “in the know,” as AREVA chose to do.

“[AREVA, Inc.,] has undergone a significant amount of change in the past few years,” Cole said. “What employees did not want was ‘another program’ with no results…We make sure that all benefits are communicated back to the employees so that people can appreciate the benefits the company gains from their effort.”

Reorganizing responsibilities and prioritizing tasks amongst workers is another huge part of Six Sigma. Employees are seeing more duties delegated to them as co-workers leave or departments are restructured. To alleviate pressure on those people who are now shouldering a heavier load, utilize the statistical research aspect of Six Sigma. Cole explains that, for AREVA, Inc., their LSS program allows leadership to “objectively evaluate process performance through data collection and analysis.”

Measuring the productivity of a certain task could reveal that some responsibilities are hurting the flow of productivity and should be done less often or should be given to other workers who don’t have as much on their plates. By implementing this method, decision makers within an organization will quickly see which duties are directly related to the success of the company in relation to the data.

Employees who feel more invested in the company they work for will typically increase their yield. One way to do this is to allow them a place of leadership in the company. Nothing helps a person feel more confident in their job or increases their loyalty than knowing their voice is being heard. Delegating new leadership opportunities will not only fuel a renewed sense of dedication to the company, but it will also allow for a closer, inside look at the population that a company depends on most for its growth: the workforce.

Another method for achieving staff loyalty is to give more responsibility to those workers interested in shouldering more of a load. For example, a company may cross-train employees to show them that the organization is impressed with their skills and trusts them to do more. This will lessen the need to hire more workers and increase the number of tasks that actually get done.

“Team participation in projects produces solutions that include many different perspectives,” Cole said.

When a company improves processes in terms of statistical data and how this affects the bottom line, it essentially merges the two biggest driving forces of a company’s success: money and physical production. Unifying these two dynamics will allow for a harmonious and successful balance.

“Use data and facts to make decisions and guide improvement,” Cole suggested.

By doing this, as well as looking at the conversion of production statistics into monetary language, your company will see the benefits of Six Sigma.

Investing time and effort into your workforce and the people who make it possible will all contribute to a better future and a more efficient path towards your goals. Adhering to a lean program like Six Sigma takes time but these detail-oriented suggestions will help you to better understand the best ways to boost productivity to a record high rather than an unprecedented low.