Doug Franz, our Director of Production Services, receives Green Belt Certificate in Six Sigma process improvement.

Doug, “Six Sigma is a management philosophy that emphasizes using data for management. You measure productivity, defect rates, defect types, and whatever else necessary.  Once you have enough data to understand the production, you start tweaking the production to see if you can make it improve.  Improvement means increasing the rate of production and/or reducing defects”.

To achieve a Green Belt, you take on a project and use the Six Sigma DMAIC process (define, measure, analyze, improve and control) to achieve the desired results.  You work under the guidance of a Black Belt.  I finished my Green Belt.  I don’t have plans to go on and get a Black Belt.

I worked with three other MBA students to assist the Vineland Housing Authority, a pseudo-government agency in southern New Jersey, to streamline their rent payment processing.  The project took six months to complete.  The Executive Director of VHA had a need to cut costs and reduce the time it was taking their small staff to process the over four hundred rent checks they receive monthly.  She also was interested in comparing the costs of their current process versus an electronic payment processing service offered by their bank.

We were the classic caricature consultants with clipboards and stopwatches that followed people around and measured how long it took them to do things.  We measured every step of the process from end to end every month for four months, then spent a month crunching data.  Along the way we made several suggestions of process improvements which they implemented for immediate improvement, and at the end of the job we gave them a list of more difficult changes they should make for additional improvement.  With our help they reduced their cost of processing payroll by 30%.  They realized enough savings that the electronic payment processing was no longer attractive.

The short story for our customers is that Six Sigma is a scientific system of management by measurement.  It’s clearly defined and methodical.  By observing the production in action and measuring the appropriate attributes I am able to modify the production to increase speed and quality while reducing costs.  This method is most effective in improving long-run production and long-standing processes, but experience with it will help us set up short-run production and processes more effectively.

Congratulations Doug!