Part of a series<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n If you’ve been thinking about process excellence<\/a>, chances are you have questions about where to start. Below you will find answers – and related examples – to some of the questions we hear most often.<\/p>\n After scouring the internet, I am convinced that my organization has very low process maturity<\/a> and definitely needs to make some improvement \u2013 and quickly! I guess it\u2019s time to suck it up and bring in those Lean Six Sigma consultants to solve all of my problems. We can get the whole organization trained on Lean Six Sigma, develop a bunch of green belts and black belts within the company, and we\u2019ll be set. Isn\u2019t that what General Electric (GE) did?<\/em><\/p>\n Whoa! Hold on! It\u2019s great to have aspirations to get to an organization with a strong Lean Six Sigma<\/a> foundation but that\u2019s probably shooting for the moon when simply getting off the ground would be a great start. Not to overuse analogies, but crawl, walk, run is a great approach to take when thinking about process excellence improvements within an organization.<\/p>\n Since I know having data helps you to be more successful with process improvements<\/a>, maybe I\u2019ll start with overhauling my reporting systems. I know that our call center has really low customer satisfaction scores, so maybe we can just revamp that entire organization. Maybe we can do them both at the same time to really get things moving. I can use the Lean Six Sigma consultants for the call center work and the technical consultants for my reporting systems. Now, where are their numbers?<\/em><\/p>\n Double whoa! Once again, probably some good ideas, but is this really the right wait to start to transform your organization? Do you want to just throw out a number of large projects that you think will be great for your organization but will probably cause a lot of turmoil and consternation in the months they take to implement?<\/strong><\/p>\n What will be the impact to the call center if you need to pull out some of the top reps to dedicate to a long-term restructure? Even worse, what would happen if you didn\u2019t involve some of the most knowledgeable resources in the restructuring efforts? How about taking a \u201cThink Big, Start Small, Act Quickly\u201d approach to process excellence? Have you ever thought about starting with a process assessment to determine the complete roadmap of what needs to be done to improve a specific process, general area or entire organization?<\/p>\n A process assessment sounds good, but what am I going to do with a bunch of paper? Don\u2019t I need to just get moving on fixing things so that I can start to catch up to my competitors? I really like the \u201cquickly\u201d part. Does anyone ever get value out of those assessment things? Maybe I\u2019ll just do the reporting system and work on the call center after that.<\/em><\/p>\n Sounds like we\u2019re getting closer, but let me give you a few real-life examples of how companies have leveraged assessments to achieve process excellence<\/a> in the short and long term.<\/p>\n A large financial services provider compiled a list of over 200 billing-related processes. Their initial plan was to conduct a Kaizen session for each of these processes in order to knock out the improvements.<\/p>\n1. Is Lean Six Sigma the Answer to Process Excellence?<\/h2>\n
2. Should I Start by Overhauling Reporting Systems?<\/h2>\n
3. Do I Really Need a Process Assessment?<\/h2>\n
The Financial Services Firm<\/h3>\n