1, the company's top management (boss, CEO) exceeded its authority.
In the process of implementing lean six-horse, the top management belittled their leading role and responsibility, thinking that as long as they pay people, they can entrust other managers to do this well. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time and energy on it. After all, the top management has not fully invested, and there will be no adverse consequences for the time being.
Because they didn't take the time to personally participate and understand, they just stayed aside to help Lean Six Sigma. It is normal for enterprises to encounter problems and obstacles when they are changing, especially the methodology that can bring breakthrough changes to enterprises, which is more likely to lead to various contradictions and interests. If the top management has no confidence in this, it is easy to stop or give up for fear of the pain caused by change.
2. Lean Six Sigma has nothing to do with strategy.
Many enterprises lean six horses for the sake of lean six horses. The focus is on the number of projects, the number of black belts and green belts, and the number of training sessions. Sometimes, local improvement will increase the running load of the whole system. After the implementation of the enterprise for a period of time, it is found that all the project teams have reported their local improvement effects, but the overall financial results of the company have not changed much.
It is a common mistake to focus energy and time on the wrong indicators. It takes courage and wisdom to find the most valuable balance between the attention of customers and the attention of internal processes. If the selection of improvement projects is not broken down from strategic tasks, but each department/team chooses according to their own understanding, then it is easy to understand improvement from a local perspective because each project team is in different positions and undertakes different tasks, lacking a global view. In this way, it is difficult to achieve satisfactory overall results in the development of lean six sigma. As a result, the project personnel are very hard and the top management is ungrateful.
3, insufficient planning, groping in practice, delaying the fighter.
A good plan is the basis for the successful implementation of lean six sigma. Many companies go too fast, and the top and middle levels have not fully understood it, and they have not yet obtained enough psychological commitment from the management. The effect can be imagined.
What rhythm, what steps, what to do at each stage, who to organize, how to carry out, what challenges to face and how to solve them must be planned in the early stage, and negligence in any link will lead to confusion in the follow-up work. It is a helpless choice to cross the river by feeling the stones. If we can plan the situation at the bottom of the river and the route of crossing the river in advance, we can live fast and well and avoid the risk of drowning.
It took too long for the first batch of projects to achieve tangible results.
Due to the lack of experience and guidance, quite a few companies chose projects with too long implementation cycle (more than 6 months) in the first stage. Generally speaking, for a new management methodology, 10% people in enterprises support change, 10% people oppose it, and 80% people hold a wait-and-see attitude. It is normal for most people to lose confidence if they don't see the changes they expect to see within the time when 80% people need to prove the potential of lean six-sigma method.
5. Insufficient enforcement.
Only a few people in the company are keen on lean six sigma, and most people don't believe that lean six sigma can bring good changes. Therefore, in the process of implementation, there are many problems, many excuses to shirk responsibility, but few ways to achieve breakthroughs. Companies need to do something in the following aspects: create an atmosphere that must be changed, and bring people from the status quo to the psychological state of being dissatisfied with the status quo and eager to change. All improvement depends on ideas, establish a process to change ideas, and don't take action before thinking clearly. Don't avoid conflicts and different opinions, and actively eliminating doubts is very important for implementation. Establish a follow-up and feedback mechanism, adjust the direction and strategy in time, and use the wisdom of full participation.
6. The chief financial officer did not fully participate in improving the results and reached * * * knowledge.
The calculation of project improvement benefits must be reflected in the company's specific financial accounts. Otherwise, if the benefit calculation is calculated by each project team and does not correspond to the company's financial accounts, it can only be the vernacular of the project team.
If the participation of the company's chief financial officer is not enough, or an understanding is not reached with the project team, it will appear in the project achievement report meeting, and the results reported by each group are remarkable, but the company's financial statements are not specifically reflected. It's hard for the top to verify the truth.
7. Senior leaders have not paid enough attention to the deepening of Lean Six Sigma.
There is a lot of work to be done to deepen lean six sigma: cultivating management talents with process thinking; Gradually get rid of the dependence on consultants and internalize the ability to improve; From function orientation to process orientation; Transfer lean six sigma technology to the deep level of the organization; Keep lean six sigma on the management agenda and so on.
If the top management only treated Lean Six Sigma with goodwill, it would not advocate enterprises to do the above-mentioned real hard work. It's not surprising that it has become a "sport".
8. Pay attention to the project results, but ignore the improvement of process capability.
The project has concentrated the company's resources and achieved results in a certain period of time, which is easy to satisfy the sponsors. However, the competitiveness of a company does not depend on a single project, but on the ability of various processes to deliver value to customers. Therefore, whether the effectiveness of the project can be solidified into the corresponding operation process is a huge challenge for the company to implement lean six sigma.
In many companies, the psychological end point of Lean Six Sigma is the end date of the project. This is quite dangerous. If the company's assessment is determined in this way, the work will be over as soon as the project is over. Whether the improvement of the original process in the project can cope with environmental and internal changes, and whether the people/machines/materials/methods/environment in the process can run continuously and stably need to be followed up and standardized. If this step is omitted, all the work will undoubtedly fall short.
Another challenge is that project personnel do not have enough ability to institutionalize the project process and copy it to other processes. We see that many high-level officials are puzzled by the phenomenon that once the project is completed, the indicators will fall back within three months.
9. Lean Six Sigma team is not authorized enough.
The company changed from departmental operation to process operation. Before the organizational structure is fully adjusted, the implementers of Lean Six Sigma are not fully authorized, so it is difficult to promote the departments that have passed the process to shift their attention from the daily operation of their own departments to the operation of the whole process, which leads to the phenomenon of perfunctory projects and the failure of reform. At the same time, it is also a problem that a company attaches importance to lean six sigma talents. If a team is needed to create or consolidate the competitiveness of the company, and at the same time they are not given considerable authority to mobilize resources and solve contradictions, they will lose the spirit of reform, not only difficult to achieve results, but also easy to lose core talents.
10, there is no lean six sigma talent development channel.
From company performance appraisal to promotion channels, there is no situation that encourages a large number of lean Six Sigma talents to emerge. In the final analysis, any process is realized by people. Lean Six Sigma needs talents with soft skills and technical skills. Whether it is internal training or external recruitment, it is difficult for them to release all their abilities to strive for this process of creating value if they can't lay a career development channel for them. Without a fighting team, if you want to bring great achievements to the enterprise with lean six sigma, it can only be an armchair strategist.