2020 has arrived! It is time to start initiating strategic plans and operational goals for the new year and beyond. You might be wondering whether Lean Six Sigma might be beneficial. Can it really work on the challenges you are facing? The answer is most likely, yes! And not just in the obvious places. I recently met with Brent Drever, our founder, to discuss some of the types of improvement opportunities that are well-suited for Lean Six Sigma projects.
Improvement Opportunities for Lean Six Sigma
- Customer Retention – Determine customer retention rates and improve on keeping customers.
- New Customer Acquisition – Focus on improving new customer acquisition processes; typically, as-is processes are a mix between manual and automated, which sometimes is inefficient and frustrating for new customers.
- Automation Optimization – As-is processes are often automated to increase efficiency, but without conducting process analysis first, the newly automated processes often create errors or exceptions requiring other manual rework. These projects focus on the analysis of the process activity steps to eliminate waste and optimize quality improvements prior to the implementation of the automation process.
- Product/Service Optimization – Adding the rigor of LSS in evaluating products/services that are offered to customers, with an emphasis on improving the products/services that are most important to customers (often multiple projects).
- Customer Service Optimization – Customer service efficiency and effectiveness (often multiple projects).
- Vendor Management – Consistency of external vendor contract terms, processes, etc.
- Cash Management – Extension to vendor management and implementation of best practices for paying vendors, using terms like 2%/10 days for payment terms.
- Back Office Optimization – This is typically multiple projects, and it focuses on back-office efficiency and effectiveness.
- Marketing Optimization – Adding the rigor of LSS to marketing and striving for measurable results.
- Employee Retention – Determine employee retention rates and improve on keeping employees (training new employees is expensive and time-consuming).
If you are ready to get started, we can help! Acuity Institute offers a full-suite of Lean Six Sigma training programs and coaching services that can help you with your implementation and project coaching needs. Make 2020 the year that you accelerate your Operational Excellence program.
Contact Acuity Institute today to learn more about how Acuity Institute can help you achieve your program goals.
