Gillian Mann, Master Black Belt at Air Canada, gave a very enthusiastic presentation at the IQPC Lean Six Sigma Summit West. Air Canada began their corporate-wide Six Sigma flight in 2002 with GE captains at the helm of their training. Since then they have been very successful internalizing the program and making it their own. Gillian gave a quick overview of their deployment:

• Today they have 11 Master Black Belts, 51 Black Belts, and over 1,200 Green Belts
• Training is done in-house
• Over 1200 projects in project database and more than 700 closed projects
• They have realized more than $450M in benefits of which over $400M is hard benefits

Best Demonstrated Practices (BDP) is a program used in connection with Six Sigma to leverage best practices across the organization. To explain the program Gillian said, “In school it is called plagiarism, in business it is called not reinventing the wheel.” The true definition of a BDP is, “A proven technique or strategy that effectively delivers results and achieves business objectives.” One example of a BDP at Air Canada is the Six Sigma Express program that helps Green Belts close projects quicker without “short-cutting” the Six Sigma methodology.

In January, Rita Toporowski of Air Canada will be speaking more about Six Sigma Express at the IQPC 7th Annual Six Sigma Summitin Miami, Florida, USA.

Articles and Links

Air Canada hopes system spawns savings, July 7, 2003

Six Sigma in the Airline Industry