Overview

Approval of the business case and preliminary proposal (described in Chapter 5) sets off a flurry of activity that should be led by the design/deployment team. The development of a detailed deployment plan can take from days to weeks, depending on company size. This is one place where empirical observations support the hiring of external consultants: people who have worked on many of these types of efforts should be able to provide you with planning and structural templates that can save you from having to reinvent the wheel. Starting with an existing template speeds up the planning process and allows you to begin implementation much earlier than if you operate entirely on your own which in turn pays off in early results, which are key to making the process accretive in the first year. Meticulous planning for the first 100 days of implementation is a prime determinant of the ultimate success of a Lean Six Sigma launch and of your organization s ability to achieve major cost and lead time reductions and quality improvements in one year.

A major component of this initial planning is developing an infrastructure including the organizational structures, processes, measures, and tools to support Lean Six Sigma. One of the biggest risks that new Lean Six Sigma initiatives face is to become collateralized, not part of the ongoing methods of doing business but rather a program or something that we do with spare time or resources. A strong infrastructure moves Lean Six Sigma from collateral to business as usual. ...