"My company already has ISO-9000."

ISO-9000 and other standards define what a business must do to establish and control its processes.
Six Sigma methodology adds the all-important "how to" recipe for making performance breakthroughs.

ISO-9000 and Six Sigma are much stronger together than either alone.

Are you satisfied with the Return on Investment you are realizing from your Quality System, whether ISO-9000 or another?

You can give your ISO-9000 system a huge boost with Six Sigma, regardless of how well (or not) it is already implemented.

Make it Simple!

We hear you. In a smaller business, your employees have to wear many hats. It's all about competition.

How reliable are your business processes? Can you depend on them for the survival of your business, or do you feel there is still too much left to chance? These days, there's no shortage of information, but you need insight.

You need the advantages of Six Sigma, Lean, and more, but with a good dose of common sense. And it may not make sense to train and maintain a team of specialists just for process improvement.

What is Six Sigma?

Six Sigma is a breakthrough methodology which focuses on the total customer experience, to remove defects from processes. Problems are fixed permanently, with a high Return on Investment.

"Sigma" is a measure of variability in a process. Since the goal is to make each business process more reliable, Six Sigma reduces the variation and provides the customer fewer defects. The result is almost always a substantial margin or revenue improvement. If something can't be measured and clearly tied to a business strategy, in Six Sigma it doesn't exist.

"Six Sigma" means that the variation in a process is six times smaller than its allowable limits. Such excellence yields only 3.4 defects per million opportunities. To put it another way, if you played 18 holes of golf every day (lucky you), you would miss a hole-in-one shot only once every 45 years!

It isn't worthwhile to get hung up over whether a process ought to be 3, 4, 5, or 6 sigma. The point is to make breakthroughs that move towards excellence. Six Sigma has been proven great for this, time and again.

Six Sigma methodology includes all of the statistical tools required in a five step process called DMAIC (Define / Measure/ Analyze/ Improve/ Control).

What is Lean?

Lean is a set of tools designed to increase the speed of processes by eliminating wasteful practices such as excess inventory, delays, non-value added work, and more. Lean projects typically result in streamlined processes which are more flexible and produce more output in much less time.

Lean is great for wringing speed from a process, while Six Sigma is best for discovering how processes really work and taking out sources or variation.

Our "Made Simple" Roadmap

The tools are important, but our strategy sets us apart. This is where Master Black Belt skills and experience are critical. We'll start by helping you evaluate your business performance, the ways that you measure your key processes, and identify good candidate projects.

Next, we provide leadership training. This training includes an overview of the Six Sigma process and Business Consulting Group's methodology. Initial leadership training may require only 1-2 days. We are skilled in change management techniques to build organizational understanding and acceptance.

You will decide the initial project based on the needs identified in the the performance review and leadership training. We encourage you to aim for at least a 90% improvement in one of your key process measurements. Each project will typically pay back $50-200K net.

We use the basic Six Sigma building blocks (DMAIC) tomanage projects, and add Lean and other tools as it makes sense.

Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control

At each phase of your project, we will introduce new problem-solving skills to the improvement team. We have found that the traditional way of teaching Six Sigma may alienate employees who cannot see the direct connection of the training material to their work. With our "Made Simple" approach, we demonstrate real projects. Your employees will contribute to the team, learn by example, and be invigorated.

The Difference We Make

Since we provide all of the initial expertise to provide a realistic strategy and complete your initial projects, you avoid having to train an expensive staff of your own Black Belts. While the traditional way requires four months training- minimum- you can immediately enjoy the benefits of our skills and experience. We've taken out all of the risk.

When you are ready to certify some of your employees as Black Belts, Business Consulting Group will round out their training as required and mentor them through two projects of their own. If you prefer, we will provide traditional Six Sigma strategy and training. Either way, you always have complete control.

Breakthroughs

Find out why gradual improvement can waste a lot of your time and money.

"My company is too small for Six Sigma."

Six Sigma will benefit businesses of any size. But the traditional way of training experts can be an expensive barrier. That is why Business Consulting Group developed a more realistic model - to provide the initial expertise and then train by real example.

"Manufacturing? We don't have any."

Several years ago, Six Sigma moved out of the manufacturing incubator. It keeps proving successful no matter the industry- including services, healthcare, financial, and information technology.