Jun 1, 2018
A true roundtable discussion of six sigma in AIIA. A few key quotes:
"Very early stages, we tried to roll out Kaizen ahead of the robotics piece, so there were two separate things that then we pulled together. The biggest challenge is getting peoples' time. So, trying to do the sales pitch to very resource squeezed operational areas, say "Give me your people to come in and talk to me about prices improvement," and drive their own prices improvement rather than answer a phone call when we're under immense pressure. That is the main challenge, so embedding it is the kicker."
"I have a Six Sigma background, but at the moment, we're working to embed that within the organization I'm in, and also work at embedding RPA as well, so we've embedded RPA for probably about the last 18 months, so we're doing a bit of backtrack in terms of we've done some RPA stuff, now let's put some Lean and CI side of it in, and how do we make sure that we're not automating rubbish."
"It's amazing. We've got so much sponsorship it's incredible. What we don't have is all the peripheral processes that are needed, Lean enough, to actually go."
"If you're going to put in a rapid or a streamlined development, it's going to cost you between 30 and 50 thousand pounds. You need two people straight away. When you got 350 processes or 340 processes, it makes it harder, so you're naturally, you think you got 340 processes to go after, but when look at all of the transformational road maps that are going on and already looking at driving out opportunities and value, it makes it really hard to go after certain things."
"What you should be looking to do is standardize your processes, digitize them where you can, put your continuous improvement lens on it, and then we'll automate what's left. The people who are going, while they're under significant cross-challenges, they're going straight to the automate the hell out of my process."