Workshop . . . May 24, 2007

Use Six Sigma to Improve Quality

Workshop:
Six Sigma Methodology

Speaker:
»Ginny Elkins, senior process consultant, Ceridian HRO Outsourcing

Payroll professionals can move closer to eliminating all payroll mistakes by using the techniques of the Six Sigma quality improvement process, Ginny Elkins, senior process consultant, Ceridian HRO Outsourcing, said May 24 at the American Payroll Association’s 25th Annual Congress.

Six Sigma is “a way to get to know how good you are at what you do,” Elkins said.

Six Sigma refers to a statistical measure indicating that 99.99966 percent of output meets customer expectations, Elkins said. A typical company has only a 95 percent success rate (3.5 sigma) and strives only for 99 percent success, which is just 4 sigma, according to Elkins. The seemingly small difference makes a large impact. For example, Elkins said that the U.S. Postal Service would lose 20,000 pieces of mail an hour at 99 percent accuracy and only seven pieces per hour at 99.999966 percent accuracy.

Achieving Six Sigma requires an organization to “work a little harder and dig a little deeper,” Elkins said.

After introducing Six Sigma, General Electric saw additional profits of $100 million, Citibank achieved a 64 percent reduction in customer service calls, and Motorola saved $250 million a year in production costs, Elkins said.

Elkins, who is a Six Sigma green belt, said that black belts are project team leaders trained and certified in Six Sigma methodology and tools and responsible for successful project executions. Green belts serve a similar function with less training and project scope and are usually project facilitators rather than leaders. Many companies also designate some managers as yellow belts, who identity metrics and establish ways of analyzing processes. And some companies, like Ceridian, train every employee in the principles of Six Sigma and designate them as white belts.

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