VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [27]
“What does doing it ‘right’ really mean?” asked Amy. “You know, by your definition?”
“Well, the big thing, I believe, is what I mentioned: doing enough of the right things right to achieve an organizational change in culture. You know, for instance, there’s something I always taught my internal clients within Winner: it’s the ratio of ‘N over ten.’”
“What’s that?”
“‘N over ten’ means you take the number of employees and divide by ten, and that gives you the number of Lean and Six Sigma activities that should be taking place during the course of one year’s time.”
Amy quickly did the math in her head and decided it was a fairly large number.
“And what do you mean by ‘activities’?” she asked.
“Well, by my definition, it’s anything that promotes the Lean and Six Sigma mind-set. It’s presentations, like the one we’re giving today at Oakton, and in Rockville to F&D. By the way, I’m really glad we’re extending LSS to a service organization – because the principles apply to services as well as manufacturing. Anyway, activities are presentations, improvement projects, events like what I call ‘mixers,’ where people come together to share their Lean experiences. Whatever promotes Lean and Six Sigma and ingrains it into organizational thinking.”
Amy nodded, then said, “Well, you’re talking about a lot of activities.”
“Yes, I am. And that doesn’t even include training, which is hugely important. I mean, it’s expensive, sure, but you have to have enough people with the skills to actually do the improvements.”
“Of course,” said Amy.
“What I used to tell my internal clients was that you should be striving to achieve the correct green-belt to black-belt ratio. You know, you want your black belts to be about two percent of the employee population. Black belts are of course higher in skills, but you need enough green belts to stretch the Lean way of doing things into all parts of the organization.”
Amy was not sure she wanted to have the correct black-belt to green-belt ratio further explained, so she asked the other question forming in the back of her mind:
“You say you had ‘internal clients’?”
“Right. The past ten, eleven years or so my time at Winner has been entirely dedicated to Lean and Six Sigma. I became a corporate trainer in Six Sigma, then caught the Lean bug and became a Lean Six Sigma internal consultant. Winner businesses would pay for my time and experience, just as they would any other consultant, but at a somewhat lower rate. So I had clients and ran programs and so on. Finally, after doing that for some time, I moved up into LSS administration.”
“Oh,” said Amy. “But … I’m a little curious about this. I was glancing through your personnel file the other day, and … your actual operations experience? Where was it?”
“It was at Winner,” said Wayne. “I was hired by Winner right out of college. I was a plant engineer for a year or so, and then they put me into a kind of fast-track training program where I learned a little bit of everything – purchasing, inventory control, plant management, maintenance, distribution, all of those. And then I moved into quality management – and that’s where I really connected, first with Six Sigma, and then a year or so later with Lean manufacturing. Of course, my last job was administrative, coordinating all the LSS programs and activities throughout Winner, and it got old after a few years. Between you and me, I’m happy to be back here in the real world.”
“Uh-huh. I see, but you’ve never actually managed operations?”
“Well, I’ve never had that exact title until now,” said Wayne. “But I’ve dealt with all kinds of operational issues. As an internal consultant, I saw and dealt with everything. I mean, we all have to grow, don’t we.”
She felt the last comment was directed as much at her as himself. And she inwardly acknowledged he was right. What had she, Amy, done so far except manage marketing and sales? Yet Nigel and Peter, with a big nudge from a prominent customer, had trusted her, hadn’t they. And they had chosen Wayne Reese. All right, she thought, maybe Wayne