Project barriers to Green Belts through critical success factors

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to utilize critical success factors (CSF) and identify items Green Belt (GB) practitioners note as barriers to completion of Six Sigma (SS) projects in a major manufacturer setting. Design/methodology/approach – The design of this paper is a descriptive study of a single location of a global manufacturer’s internal data and survey of accredited GBs who have completed an SS project for company accreditation utilizing company focus on CSFs. Findings – The results demonstrate the GB practitioners have competing priorities, have time constraints and lack project management skills that reduce timely completion of SS projects. Top management responsibility for SS GB projects are defined through the CSFs of leadership, project management and project selection. Research limitations/implications – This study pertains to the single manufacturing location of a major, multinational company. The survey of SS GBs is limited to those individuals who have become accredited to company requirements, in the initial stages of strategic implementation, resulting in a small sample size. All GB projects follow the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) methodology. The implications may be reproduced in similar environments where GBs conduct SS projects to test the robustness of the study. Practical implications – This study underscores the importance of proper coaching and mentoring of SS practitioners, especially those who are expected to contribute as GBs in a part-time manner. Implementation of SS goes beyond initial deployment and requires active mentoring of GB practitioners to make sure that SS projects get proper focus. The results are relevant to both researchers and practitioners. Originality/value – This paper examines SS projects with a GB perspective, an important contribution to SS but lacking in the literature. While GBs are important to SS implementation, and serve as a pathway to fulltime SS personnel, there are few studies that note this work. This study will support practitioners in the importance of wider SS deployment through active support of GBs, where top management responsibility for GB success is defined through CSFs for improvement.

A study into the reasons for process improvement project failures: results from a pilot survey

“…defined without an appropriate knowledge of timelines when utilizing basic project management techniques (Laux, Johnson and Cada, 2015), charters or baselines considering time and costs should be based upon previous work (Laux, Johnson, Cada, 2015). Documentation can help to avoid any task duplication and minimize interest conflicts by taking into consideration roles and responsibilities (Antony and Gupta, 2018).…”

“…Six Sigma is a project-driven management approach (Bilgen and Sen, 2012;Arumugan, Antony andLinderman, 2014, 2016) which employs structured methods and tools to improve products, services and processes (Arumugan, Antony and Linderman, 2014;Laux, Johnson and Cada, 2015;Tkáč and Lyócsa, 2009). Each Six Sigma project uses a structured and organised approach, led by a project methodology expert and involving a n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l o f Q u a l i t y & R e l i a b i l i t y M a n a g e m e team brought together for the purpose of the project (Anand et al, 2009;Margazão, Carvalho, 2015).…”

Programa Seis Sigma Auto-organizado: modelo da situação atual e necessidades de mudanças

“…The first variation is composed of Champions, Master Black Belts (MBB), Black Belts (BB) and Green Belts (GB) (Hahn, 2005;Buch & Tolentino, 2006;Gutiérrez et al, 2012). The second one has the following formation: Champions, Black Belts (BB) and Green Belts (GB) (Schroeder et al, 2008;Calia et al, 2009;Laux et al, 2014), with the difference regarding the non-use of MBB. Each member has a different function, with their own responsibility and acting levels, interacting with each other for the development of projects.…”

Learning Lean Six Sigma: A Student Reflective Study

“…These written assignments were requested throughout the semester at four different time points, to assess the development of perceptions during the project execution. Students were encouraged to be specific in their comments, allowing us to analyze how students perceive their own accomplishments, based upon this reflection model, derived from CSFs of: a) leadership commitment and participation, project alignment to business strategy, SS framework, project management/execution, utilization of SS tools, SS training, and project selection (Laux et al 2015).…”

“…The relationship between project success and firm performance has been studied in the literature (Kumar et al 2009). In addition, critical success factors of project success for LSS have been identified (Laux et al 2014). These factors of success (CSFs) may be summarized through commitment and participation of organizational leadership, project alignment to strategy, project management, an operating framework, utilization of LSS techniques, training of personnel, and project selection (Laux et al 2014).…”