Reasons Why You Know You Need A Formal Process Improvement Structure

1. Fragmented processes causing delays and defects: Firefighting versus Fire Prevention. The focus must be preventing defects, errors, and mistakes.

2. Customer Complaints: For every customer that complains about your product or service, there are 16 more that won’t tell you directly. Word of mouth can kill you!

3. Supplier Complaints: Do your suppliers complain about the last minute delays imposed on them?

4. Employee’s Whining: What’s stopping your employees from doing a good job? “I could do my job better if ____”.

5. Blaming People: The problems are in your processes, not your people. Six Sigma is process focused.

6. Knee jerk Reactions: Managing by Gut feelings. “We’ve always done it this way”. Data driven methods create improvements.

7. Margins are low, expenses are high, and our growth is stalled: Defects and delays eat away at profits, and lack of a strategic focus inflates expenses.

8. Field failures: How many customer service personnel do you have? How large is your warranty and repair efforts?

9. Too many inspectors: You cannot inspect quality in, but you can build it in.

10. Absenteeism and turnover: Employees don’t want to do a bad job. Are your internal systems preventing your employees from doing a good job?