Participant Interview: Suvendu Mahapatra- Avp, Zenta.

Mr Suvendu Mahapatra- A Black Belt and LMC past participant of Benchmark Six Sigma is currently working as Assistant Vice President at Zenta in Chennai. Mr Mahapatra talks about the success and business expertise he has developed through Six Sigma methodologies and the usefulness of Six Sigma in IT/ITES industry . Happy reading....

Q1) Tell me briefly about your career and academic Journey so far.

A) After completing my graduation I came to Chennai to do Chartered Accountancy (CA). It was a big change for me culturally and geographically as I belong to a small town in Orissa and Chennai was a too big city for me to get used to. But change is inevitable... is a hard fact. I completed my CA in 2001 and joined Zenta (Formerly known as GRO) as Financial Analyst. Over a period of time, I was entrusted the responsibility to handle service delivery for one of the Zenta's strategic client. During this time I got introduced to Six Sigma and got inducted to the corporate quality team. For last 5 years I have worked in various operational excellence initiatives including Six Sigma, Lean, Business Performance, Process Audits, and Transition. Currently I am leading the operational excellence initiatives for Zenta's Data Analytic Services.

Q2) Has Six Sigma impacted your career? Also, have you reaped any benefits from it in your personal life?

A) Definitely, because Six Sigma is a culture more than a methodology or technique. Once you imbibe the culture you will notice the change in you irrespective of the role you play in your organization. The only thing I would suggest all to keep in mind is to be "business oriented". Overall Six Sigma helps to become a solution oriented person in professional as well as in personal life.

Q3) How precisely do you apply Six Sigma skills in your current job at Zenta?

A) Being in a strategic role and a change agent it becomes necessary for one to approach challenges systematically by converting data to business inferences. I am a firm believer that Six Sigma methods and approaches can be applied to any projects and initiatives aiming at excellence and that's what we exactly do in our organization.

Q4) Which Six Sigma methodologies do you use most often?

A) We use DMAIC methodologies

Q5) You pursued your Black Belt and LMC from BSS. How conducive was the experience?

A) VK is one of the best tutors I have ever met. I always enjoyed his sessions because he makes learning Six Sigma easy for everyone. The content is very compact and relevant to the business requirements. I will highly recommend the course for IT\ITES employees.

Q6) What sort of Six Sigma Projects have you working on in past? Kindly mention some.

A) Most of our projects are focused on cycle time reduction and quality improvement. Off late, we have started applying Six Sigma for driving excellence in Facility Administration, Training and Human resource functions as well.

Q7) Do you think anybody if willing, can learn Six Sigma? Or it is only meant for academically brilliant people?

A) Yes and I have seen many examples. The critical requirement is, one should have belief and passion to learn Six Sigma and commitment to apply the learning to drive business results.

Q8) Would you like to give any suggestions to us for improving our program?

A) As I mentioned earlier, overall the program is well structured to enable a Black Belt to play his / her role effectively.

Q9) Would you like to tell us about your future plans? How will your Six Sigma learning benefit you?

A) We always try to make the Operational Excellence team critical to drive business and we have succeeded in it to a greater extent. We will continue our journey by grooming and inducting more Six Sigma capabilities to the team to drive business results.

Q10) Would you like to give any message for readers.

A) There is a thin line of difference between success and failure of driving any operational excellence initiative... "The Business". So my suggestion to everyone is to be more inclined to the business rather than force fitting any methods, models or tools, at the end of the day it matters how much value the initiative has added to the business.