Vishwadeep Khatri

Yatha Raja, Tatha Praja - As the king, so the people - This last part of the shloka from Sanskrit is often quoted. Let us examine this. Point (In favor) - The point is emphasized often and is well accepted. Leadership at most places is likely to give an idea of the culture. Also, change in leadership can re-align an organization. It is common to see schools doing well when a dynamic Principal takes charge. Steve Jobs made a major reversal in fortunes of Apple. I am sure you have much more examples on this. Counterpoint (against) - The counterpoint is also commonly evidenced. I recently spoke to a business change leader who was planning a job switch. He was highly concerned about the average age in a company from where he had an offer. He said, "I shall join the company only if the average employee age is below 40 years". Leaders, many times want to choose the people that they wish to lead. This counterpoint explains the opposite logic - As the people, so the king or yatha Praja, tatha raja. On one hand, a dynamic leader is needed to create new mindsets and to challenge status quo. On the other hand, leaders wish to have the right team suggesting that the leader can perform well only if provided with the right team. Which view do you support more and why?

Hi Anirban, Normality test is done for continuous data so that we choose the right tests using mean or median. As you have nominal data, you may like to do tests for equality or inequality of proportions. If you imagine your nominal data in a bar chart, you are not likely to see a bell shape. For example, a head or tail outcome for toss of a coin shall have only two bars in a bar chart based on occurrences. Hope this helps.

These seem to be two different questions. MSA is ineffective if total gage R&R is more than 10% of total process variation. In some cases we may tolerate up to 30%. A process is unstable if special causes are found to occur too often. A run chart or a control chart may be used to assess stability. Process stability can be judged only when you are sure you have a reliable measurement system in place. Hope this helps.

MBB is a change agent, a knowledge bank, a facilitator, a Lean Six Sigma leader. He is a resource person for very complex Lean Six Sigma projects. His most important role, generally is to lead a change management program effectively being the link between senior most management and the LSS team. Having mentioned that, there are variations. Several companies like to hire MBBs (as they have established LSS competence) into strategic roles. Many companies like to move Black Belts to leadership roles after they have spent 2-3 years leading projects and establishing credentials as MBB.

Hello Mrityunjay, If someone is working in QA, Lean Six Sigma learning is a great value add. I can say this as - before getting in to this field of Lean Six Sigma, I was a QA expert (a third party auditor for quality assurance programs and carried out 400 plus audits). Subject Matter Expert is needed in many Lean Six Sigma projects and forms a very important part of the team. In most technical processes - a Lean Six Sigma expert is likely to be handicapped in the absence of SME. Let us understand this with a real life example. "A bank has 2500 Lean Six Sigma certified professionals (LSSCP) who are all change experts with DMAIC expertise. Every time, there is a change in a government policy anywhere in the world, an LSSCP is assigned to the change project. This LSSCP is not supposed to know about the exact legalities involved in the change. In some cases, the LSSCP does not know the exact banking (existing) process when he is assigned. In such a situation, while the LSSCP leads the DMAIC project, he needs two key people in his team - One, someone who is the process owner - knows the exact sequence and details of existing process. Two, the legal expert who knows the exact legal element in the change." To answer the other part of your question using this example, the legal expert may have gained his expertise based on his experience or qualification - not necessarily a doctorate. In a BPO, the relevant SME in a project could be a person who knows the technicalities about the dialler settings in an outbound process or could be a CRM expert who knows the existing CRM settings and the changes possible with current technology. (or approachable technologies). Some companies have progressed to ensure that Six Sigma competence is passed on to some members in each function. This ensures that SME is more easily accessible for at least the within function Lean Six Sigma projects. Hope this helps.

Hi Babita, I can see that there are not many jobs advertised recently. Although there are some for mortgage, insurance, banking (HDFC) on naukri.com in last one month. Please keep in mind the following. Problem Solving, Decision Making, Process Improvement Skills never go waste and certainly help in most of the responsible positions. Black Belts have more openings as compared to Green Belts, especially if a project is not done. There are ample positions in this sector. We referred candidates for 10 openings in ICICI bank recently and openings were filled. I will be happy to recommend your name for any openings that I come across when you have completed black belt. I came across one today - http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=4877280 Several people have been sharing success experiences and most of them have grown well in their career with six sigma competence - http://forum.benchmarksixsigma.com/page/media.html/_/banking-and-finance/ Six Sigma professionals, when confident and conceptually clear (which i believe you are - having scored well in GB) can apply to other sectors as well, as the skill set is domain independent. While Black Belt will certainly enhance your prospects, I suggest that you seek and carry out some small improvement assignments (not necessarily DMAIC projects) before or after BB to make it even better. Feel free to discuss more if you like. Best Regards, VK

Hi Salil, You are on the right track. Once you find some focus areas, check which of them have the strongest business case and management support. Identify the CTQ for those specific issues and check if reliable data can be obtained for the CTQ (output variable metric) in a reasonable time. Keep discussing your progress. I am sure you will do well soon.

Hi Salil, Good to know that you have taken a new role. "How" should come after "What". Let us look at it this way. You need to follow DMAIC. D- Identify what to improve (error reduction OR turn around time reduction OR processing delays OR client acquisition OR Client retention OR Repeat Sales etc) M - Measure the current status A - Analyze the potential X's to find the critical X's I - Improve the critical X's by generating, comparing solutions, and choosing the best. C - Controlling the X's and monitoring the X,Y For Define phase, you should take a week's time to identify the biggest business pain areas or the biggest customer pain areas that can be attacked. Once you are through with this we can discuss more. Feel free to ask more questions. Best Wishes, VK

Yes, Pragya, you are right. Did you initiate this discussion with a purpose? Do you wish to engage people in a discussion?

What would you prefer in your process - a false alarm or a missed alert? I am assuming that you are collecting data from your process and viewing it to judge abnormal behaviour so that corrective action can be taken. I am also assuming that the data you are collecting is continuous data, each value is independent of others and the data is normally distributed. False Alarm - A false alarm occasionally may be okay or you may never want it. It depends. However, too many false alarms can lead to the assumption that something is wrong leading to an unwarranted change in a well behaving process. Missed Alert - A missed alert may never be acceptable or may be sometimes okay. It depends. The text in bold requires a discussion and convergence to a logical conclusion. What do you think are the factors on which "it depends".

Benchmark Six Sigma is a leading training/ consulting company for Lean Six Sigma and Project management - Kindly have a look at the office locations here - http://www.benchmarksixsigma.com/contact-us We provide regular public training in India - http://www.benchmarksixsigma.com/calendar We do corporate workshops in customized formats. - http://students.benchmarksixsigma.com/industry-application/

Some of the frequently used questions are - How do you identify good projects? What kind of project should not be taken up as a Six Sigma project? Why is MSA carried out? How do you do it? How would MSA be relevant for _________ process? What is meant by sigma level? Why is continuous data better than attribute data? Explain with examples. What is a hypothesis test? How would you use hypothesis testing in a Six Sigma project? Give some examples of effective control techniques? Why is control chart used? When would a control chart be most effective? How are control limits distinguished from specification limits? Provide some examples. What are the common tools you would use for decision making in ___________process? Others may like to contribute and make this list bigger.

Hi 5S can be implemented in services. It is a good idea to implement 5s in the mailing system of the company. It is likely to bring very good benefits. If you want to do a project on processing time reduction on mail based process (common mailbox), you may do a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt project on Lead time reduction. (Lead time is the average time it takes for an email to be responded). However, a project should be chosen from pain areas of the company or those of customers and not just because of a good idea.

Large number of professionals have found that the Industry they find themselves in, does not provide enough career opportunities to grow. How do they tackle this? Well, people who are in a General Management role think they can shift their sector more easily than others. HR and Marketing people can move widely within their domains if not across them. However, people with reasonable Lean Six Sigma Black Belt competence have moved across industries with relative ease. This happens because the desired Lean Six Sigma skill-set is very much the same across domains, and across functions. Here are six examples - Mr. Mohan PB - From Automotive Manufacturing to Services - Mr. Devendra - From Manufacturing to Airports Authority - http://forum.benchma...ndra-sharma-r42 Lt. Col Shalini Agrawal - From Armed forces to banking, and then to IT, and from IT to Cargo - during this video she was with banking - http://forum.benchma...ini-agarwal-r20 Amol Dixit - From Audits and Accounting to Six Sigma - http://forum.benchma.../amol-dixit-r72 Himadri Sarkar - From Hotel to Telecom and now in Management consulting in US During this video, he was with Telecom - http://forum.benchma...adri-sarkar-r26 Haresh Hiranandani - From BPO to Banking - His video link - http://forum.benchma...hindra-bank-r79

There was an overwhelming response to the elevator problem. The elevator problem can now be seen at the following link - https://www.benchmarksixsigma.com/blog/biggest-mistakes-people-make-solving-problem/

Minimum number for an Institutional program is fifty.

The answers are at the following link - https://www.benchmarksixsigma.com/student_participants/

Yes, please send us an email to us at [email protected] or call Murugappan at+917838547722

Hi Virginie, Operational Excellence uses the same Lean Six Sigma techniques and is the name generally given to a long term continuous improvement philosophy. Many companies prefer to call their continual quest towards perfection as Operational Excellence. As Lean and Six Sigma cover the best in the world on continual improvement, you can confidently approach your interview with your skill set

Thanks Raghuram and Seena

Names from left - Parth Desai (PUMBA), Chinab Aggarwal (PUMBA), Vinay Singh (Somaiya), Murtuza Talib Kothari (Somaiya), VK, Pinakin Kamboj (SIMS), Varun Malhotra (NMIMS), Manas Madhu (SIBM), and Vijay Bhasker Reddy (IIT Bombay).

While B School students have good networking and learning opportunities on linkedin, their time is spent more on facebook and twitter. A small team at Mumbai and Pune is trying to change this. Is such a team likely to succeed?

Sorry, Muhammed Hamza, I missed your post earlier. You have an entirely valid and important query here. Logical validation of survey data - This would entail checking if the survey data is capturing information perfectly relevant to the identified project CTQ. For example, if the satisfaction measurement intends to judge customer feedback on a support service, but the question goes as "how do you rate us?", the customer may feel the question is related to his entire experience and not just the support service. Similarly, if the feedback information is gathered after a time gap (let us say a week later), the customer is unlikely to remember exact experience details and may provide inputs that relate to his brand perception rather than actual recent experience. Hope this helps.

Hi Anushri, Good that you asked this question here. As you are aware, the whole idea in Lean Six Sigma is about identifying projects that have a good business impact, are supported by senior management, finding the right team members to participate in the project, using the best techniques to succeed with challenges in each phase of the project. (D-M-A-I-C). I just noticed that you have been a high scorer in GB and have completed a GB project already. Graduating to Black Belt shall expose you to more details on measurement systems, more hypothesis tests, and above all exposure to the design of experiments. You might be aware that DOE was initiated in agriculture for the first time. In agri-operations, it is tough to confirm whether a specific combination of input variables in use is really the best for crop yield. The only option is to carry out well-designed experiments and use the inferences for large scale benefits. The use of experiments is important to try out new seeds, fertilizers, or new technological advancements. In addition, Black Belt shall equip you with change management concepts and approaches necessary for carrying out complex projects involving several stakeholders (internal or external). Hope this helps.