Three exceptional workshops opened up the third annual iSixSigma Energy Forum for Process Excellence, being held May 16-19 at the Westin Oaks Hotel in Houston.
The workshops, attended May 16 by a host of leaders in the oil & gas and utilities sectors, were as follows:
- “Change Management: The Cornerstone of a Successful Lean Six Sigma Implementation”, by Bob Silvers, Managing Director, SSA & Company
- “Design for Failure to Enable Sustainability and Reliability Within Energy Operations”, by Rob Fioto, Chairman and CEO, RACE
- “Introduction to Theory of Constraints Lean Six Sigma (TLS) Continuous Improvement”, by Mark Woeppel, President and CEO, Pinnacle Strategies
“Change Management: The Cornerstone of a Successful Lean Six Sigma Implementation”
Companies that take up the challenge of implementing Lean Six Sigma do so with the intent of achieving some type of improved business performance – higher margin, greater market share and improved customer satisfaction, to name a few. Often, however, leaders fail to realize that if you do not get at the heart of changing your culture to embrace Lean Six Sigma as a means to execute your work, you will not achieve the full benefit Lean Six Sigma can deliver. The key factors to implementing a successful deployment are well known: leadership support, the right people and projects, and processes to support the implementation. Less well known is that failure to make change management a cornerstone of your deployment plan to assist in the culture change will inhibit achieving the full benefits Lean Six Sigma delivers. This workshop, delivered by Silvers, served to benefit organizations that are exploring the options of implementation, in the early stages of an implementation or have been implementing for years. It began with the basics of understanding what is Lean Six Sigma, and moved through the key factors of implementation – project identification, leveraging value stream management, and leadership support in getting closer to the C-suite – all encompassed in a change model. Silvers shared examples of best practices and provide case study examples.
“Design for Failure to Enable Sustainability and Reliability Within Energy Operations”
Even though you made the leap to Lean Six Sigma (LSS), failures can and will happen. The numerous systems and processes within energy operations are full of variables that we cannot easily monitor or control. These variables often jump up to bite us at the worst possible time. Furthermore, it is through the investigation of failure that we find true revolutionary innovation. This interactive session, delivered by Fioto, walked through methods of early detection and warning, but more importantly, the harnessing of innovation for the design of systems that are impervious to failure.
Takeaways included:
- Establishing a culture that rewards the identification of potential failure modes is critical.
- Lean Six Sigma is not a static animal; you will need to continually adjust your model to maximize rewards.
- True revolutionary innovation is found within the heart of conflict that causes our system failures.
“Introduction to Theory of Constraints Lean Six Sigma (TLS) Continuous Improvement”
Many organizations struggle with their continuous improvement efforts; achieving real bottom-line results, whether in cost savings or increased revenues, has proved to be difficult. In spite of the widespread implementation of Lean and Six Sigma principles, poor results persist.
The TLS process generates 15 to 20 times better performance than Lean or Six Sigma. This session, delivered by Woeppel, showed the root causes of poor CI program performance and a systematic framework to create ongoing bottom-line results.
In this workshop, attendees learned:
- How to improve the effectiveness of a Lean or Six Sigma implementation using TLS
- The root causes of poor continuous improvement program results
- How to create a continuous improvement process that is aligned with the overall business strategy
- How to achieve substantial bottom-line improvements from process improvement activities
iSixSigma will be providing coverage throughout the 2011 Energy Forum for Process Excellence in Houston. Check back to this website for more articles and news.
