Spokane To Imitate Fort Wayne’s Six Sigma “Success”
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 6/10/09 @ 11:11 pm - Filed Under Local Politics
Spokane, Washington has decided to incorporate common sense
lean six sigma processes into local government. Their model is none other than local government right here in Fort Wayne:
For those skeptical that Lean Six Sigma can work for city government, advocates love to point to Fort Wayne, Indiana.
When Graham Richard became Fort Wayne’s mayor in 2000, the city was wary of this “Six Sigma” thing he kept talking about. But soon he was the toast of national efficiency experts, an author of a book on the subject and featured in US Mayor magazine.
Over the past decade, 300 Fort Wayne employees were given Lean Six Sigma training.
“We saw savings of over $10 million specifically attributed to the Lean Six Sigma processes,” former Fort Wayne finance director Ryan Chasey says. “Keep in mind that our Six Sigma efforts were not fully geared toward cost-saving, they were also geared toward service improvement.”
Of course to this day I have never seen a detailed analysis showing the so-called $10 million in savings. And this type of hand-waving savings isn’t just indicative of what goes on here - it’s endemic in the entire six sigma initiative. I believe quality initiatives have their place in mass manufacturing environments but that’s not local government. I do not believe anything Fort Wayne has done via Six Sigma processes couldn’t have been accomplished through common sense and competent management.
If nothing else, the people of Spokane got to read part of my view on Fort Wayne’s Six Sigma initiatives. From the article:
Meanwhile, Fort Wayne aerospace scientist Jeff Pruitt, who also blogs at fortwaynepolitics.com, says Spokane’s program should have more accountability than Fort Wayne’s.
“I see [Lean Six Sigma] as a path to give money to more consultants to waste taxpayer money,” Pruitt says “There needs to be some up-front outline of what the program intends to accomplish.”
I think the High Performance Looting Government Network was a prime example of this…
Comments
5 Responses to “Spokane To Imitate Fort Wayne’s Six Sigma “Success””
Leave a Reply
I’m still amazed at how “smart” these people became AFTER they left city government. Too bad the city paid them to do their jobs before they got smart…
Take a look at HPGN’s web site report on what they accomplished in Fort Wayne in 2008 (at http://www.hpgnetwork.com ). 175 hours of “leadership development” and 30 hours of “process improvement activities” for the year for which Fort Wayne paid $95,000. That figures out to over $463.00 per hour. Can we assume that that was more than the same group made per hour when they were paid by the city to “learn their trade”???
And, have you noticed that their “hype” still only mentions what they accomplished when they worked for Fort Wayne? (Read their information on the web site under “Case Study Examples” - It’s ALL from old work in Fort Wayne!!!) I guess they didn’t work on ANY other cases last year - so just what are they doing that’s new?
And, notice that Graham Richard still is pushing hard to get them recognized - but, of course, he claims to have no earnings from this organization.
Check out how much he was paid by the people in Muncie for his speaking to their local committee last November about what a great group HPGN is.
I went through the six sigma training in 2002 with a significant number of city employees. Six sigma is nothing new. In fact anyone who is good at solving problems does it. It is a methodology that is used to analyze problems. In my oppinion, it is good for those who have no idea how to solve a problem. Maybe that is why Fort Wayne pushed it so much.
Did it change the way I solved problems, no? Did it help me to solve problems faster, no? Can Minitab produce false positives, yes? If you rely solely on six sigma, then you can miss a lot.
Everyone knows, that garbage in is garbage out. In the past three years, a company I did work for relied heavily on Minitab and six sigma. They relied so heavily on statistics that they missed numerous problems and solutions all together.
The training cost $10,000 each and required six weeks of in class training. The cost to the city is a lot. I also heard that Grahm Richards was also one of the founders/owners of the training program used by the city. Was there more to the training of so many city workers?
Jeff, you are 100% correct. Six Sigma is oversold! Define the problem. Ask people familiar with the process/problem for their input. Identify the knowns and unknowns. Create a list of what might create the problem. Rank the list. Measure and track the changes. In other words you need a set of metrics by which you will measure any change to verify you killed the problem.
During the 80’s I was in charge of establishing the “Quality” improvement programs in our
petrochemical plants. We were into Juran, Crosby, Dr. Deming, etc., all of which tout statistical methods to reduce variability in a manufacturing proces. Our programs all started with great fanfare and considerable cost and inevitably died. In the 90’s it became evident to upper management that these programs were not a way to cut headcount and cost, which was their real objective, so the emphasis shifted to “teams”. Teams, especially “self directed” teams were seen as the way to eliminate middle managment and delayer the organization. So the consultants were paid to help us reengineer the company to work in teams, with money incentives based on how many people that allowed us to cut.
I never worked with a consultant that told us something we didn’t already know or actually improved our operation. They were upper management’s cover for headcount reductions, a concept which doesn’t seem to apply in the public sector.
Everet, you are correct when you say “I never worked with a consultant that told us something we didn’t already know or actually improved our operation.” This is a truism.
Management puts on these blinders and think that the latest “acronym” will save them. I worked for a medical device company which is big into 6-sigma, so much that they cannot solve any problem unless they can put it into numbers and the output tells them the Cpk is x. Minitab statistics is nothing more than what the calculator was for those who could not add.
The only consultant I respected was one back in 1991. For months I kept repeating myself to management on what the solution was. People, who know me, know I am not politically correct. I get paid to present the solution, be it good or bad news. In this case the consultant was given the VIP tour of the plant. He took lots of notes, but only management was with him At the end of the day, the consultant, management and I sat in a conference room to discuss the problem. After ten minutes, I stood up, interrupted the plant manager and stated what we knew and what we did not know. As I spoke the consultant took notes. When I was done the consultant stood and addressed management. He said that during the tour, no one was able to answer the questions he had, yet the engineer who just spoke answered every single question he had and presented more data and insight than all of them combined. Between him and the engineer, we would solve this problem.
Did the consultant bring anything to the table, no? He was respected because the company was paying him big bucks to solve the problem. Instead of listening to the people who understand the problem and know the solution, Companies bury their collective heads in the sand hoping there is a cheaper way to solve the problem. Every consultant picks the brains of the employees and puts their knowledge down on paper submitted with a fee. If you pay big bucks, you are obligated to follow through with the recommendation so you do not look like idiots for wasting company money. But then the manager needs to get rid of any of the people who identified the problem correctly, but that management failed to listen to.