Leaderboard

Sponsor: Is a senior business leader or executive who sponsors the Six Sigma engagement. Responsible for signing of objectives of the project and approver of business case in the project charter. Sponsors and promotes the initiatives throughout his span of control for implementation. He is responsible for ensuring resources are available for projects and required funding is arranged. Champion: is a functional head of a team in whose area the Six Sigma project is getting implemented. He is responsible to ensure availability of resources required for the project. Responsible for driving actions or working with upstream or downstream processes to get their commitment if required in the project. Generally, approver who will approve the different critical tollgates. Doesn’t get involved in day to day activity of the project. Champion is the liaison between the project team and senior management including Sponsor and thus responsible for securing subject matter experts and non-Six Sigma resources critical to the success of the project. Black Belts go to person for any troubleshooting. Responsible to communicates the plan for business success In a typical Lean Six Sigma Project both sponsors and champions are critical to drive actions for successful completion of a project. At times Sponsor and Champions can be the same person. Sponsor and Champions get mapped as per ARMI tool to drive change on the process where both are at approver level. Only Variation is the severity of decision where they are required to approve. It is very important to have both Sponsor and Champion for a project to ensure project closure on time. Lets take an example- A Manufacturing company has Finance Shared Service Centre. A project is to be driven to improve the First Pass Yield(FPY) of the invoice processing. Improving the FPY there are different parties involved from Procurement teams, vendors, Requisitioner, Business Users, IT teams(SAP, Workflow, Scanning Solution) and Accounts Payable Team. While the Invoice Processing happens at Accounts Payable team but will require the other functions to improve the process. To undertake this process Black Belt will need funding and resource alignment. To even this project to start, this must be approved by Sponsor so the required funds can be made available. In this example head of Shared Service Centre is the Sponsor who will provide all the resources, alignment from different functions is made and funding required for the project is provided. Sponsor will approve the project charter and approve the DMAIC tollgates. In the above example head of Procure to Pay(P2P) team is the champion under him the project will be executed. Will provide and align resources (Sponsors, Black Belts / Green Belts) and ensures cross functional collaboration. Will ensure accountability for results is there. Will be responsible to ensure change is accepted well. Will be approver as per ARMI.