"If you never try and risk failure, you will not see breakthroughs" - interview with Bernd Weber

Last week onesixsigma.com published a review of BMGI's 5-day innovation workshop. Here we speak to one of the attendees, Bernd Weber, director of Lean Six Sigma at Qimonda, about the course and Innovation in general.

onesixsigma.com: What drove you to take part in this course?

Bernd Webber: If you look at DMAIC, especially in the Improve phase, sometimes there is a lack of methods to reach real improvements for the specific situation. When DOE or LEAN tools do not apply a breakthrough, substantial improvement may become difficult and sometimes you implement only incremental ones.

Solutions may already be in people’s heads, those who perform the tasks every day, at the shop floor level, or in transactional services. They probably know the reason why the process is slow, why we have defects, why some processes are poorly implemented. Simply getting these potential solutions out of people’s heads is difficult, but to make them think one step further, that becomes very difficult. Why? Because we people aren’t used to thinking out of the box.

Was the course as expected?

More than expected, this course makes a huge difference. It shows in well chosen examples why you are personally and psychologically trained not to think out of the box.

I myself am a Black Belt, a DFSS Green Belt and have experience in implementing LEAN.I knew some of the tools from DFSS. After this course you clearly recognize how DMAIC, Innovation and DFSS fit together, naturally. It now makes a lot of sense to use tools criss-cross.

Have you worked with BMGI before?

I am the Lean Six Sigma deployment leader at Qimonda. We chose to work with BMGI as our deployment partner some 15 months ago.

What does Qimonda do?

Qimonda is a leading global memory supplier with a broad diversified DRAM product portfolio. Qimonda has access to five 300mm manufacturing sites on three continents and operates six major R&D facilities. The company provides DRAM products for a wide variety of applications, including in the computing, infrastructure, graphics, mobile and consumer areas, using its power saving technologies and designs.

You have probably noticed that memory products face a rapid price decline. Thus we have to get always better, more effective and more efficient. Our core values are “creative, passionate, fast”; sounds like a translation for innovation, doesn’t it?

What does Innovation now mean to you?

We talked about the topic a lot during the course. I’d phrase it like this: everything that makes you think out of your common box of thinking. “Box” means your paradigms, the processes you’re used to, educated to follow. Now you know methods to exit the box yourself, and more importantly train and help others to do so as well.

For example: if you work in a group, usually it is not cohesive, not normalised. Team members are different in their psychological structure. Some act more sceptical, some more active, some are pushy, others behave as theorists. As we all know, it is difficult to lead and guide such a group. The activist going immediately somewhere, but the theorist says ‘wait a minute, I see some problems here’. They only exchange argument against argument. Often the meeting gets nowhere and they become stuck in a never ending discussion.

A lot of the tools shown and used in the course help to overcome this dilemma and to get people and their thoughts aligned and to think in parallel.

Are you going to apply these tools?

Definitely yes. Michael, our Master Black Belt responsible for training will integrate some tools into our training material in order to make it available for future Belts. In the course we already linked some of the tools to the DMAIC and DFSS cycles and deliverables.

What tools do you use?

There are plenty of tools. Some ten or so are very important ones which should be used by anyone searching for new, different solutions!

Who should be responsible for Innovation inside an organisation, and why would that be?

Ideally, it would be every employee.

But [it is difficult for] innovation to be bottom up. Best practices are done top down by implementing a system showing to everybody that innovation gets rewarded. We are humans, descendants from apes. We continue to do things we get rewarded for. If you get rewarded for complying and covering yourself and not doing or pursuing something new, this is risky, you will not be innovative. So reward people to think outside the box, to go for something new, to make mistakes.

Only two to three per cent of new ideas will become new services or new products. So the inner attitude of a company is essential to make innovation happen.

Can failure lead to innovative breakthroughs within a business?

It is the only way. John Cleese, former “Monty Python”, speaks at company charity events, some of them recorded and available as videos. One of them is called “The importance of making mistakes”. Someone who tries new things will fail, most inevitably. But some trials will not fail and become successes. If you never try and risk failure, you will not see breakthroughs. This means on the other hand, a company needs to maintain a culture of accepting failure, in my view the major obstacle nowadays. People must feel secure when thinking out of the box. Your bosses, the people you report to should reward those who try something new and inevitably fail.

Do you get enough support from your senior management?

In our company, yes, big time. The technology in our industry changes extremely fast. You have to have innovation daily, otherwise you are dead in this industry sooner rather than later.

How big is the Lean Six Sigma deployment programme in your company?

There are 13,000 people at Qimonda, we have 50 BBs active all over the world. We have over 140 GBs and more than 150 YBs trained now. We now start more GB projects very aggressively. Our CEO is driving this very heavily. Savings are, due to the nature of the industry high, more than 50 Million Euro in the first 2 years.

Can Innovation work hand in hand with quality improvement initiatives?

That is an interesting question. I think absolutely, knowing about articles stating the opposite. Having insight into one of the companies cited in these articles I know the reasons are different ones.

Lean Six Sigma projects start based on the fact that processes show measurable defects. The improvements, the solutions may only improve the capability of the process, make it more robust. Some of the improvement ideas generated may cause this process to be totally obsolete. Or to a breakthrough solution that was never thought of before.

It is much more important to fund innovation circles and to maintain a failure culture than to label Six Sigma as Innovation averse.

What are the typical resistance factors in your experience to creating an innovative culture in an organisation?

It is related to what we talked on some minutes before. No top down support, failure culture, no funding, creating an environment where people are not motivated to make mistakes and where those mistakes may in contrary lead to punishment. The success factor is the other way around; rewarding people for pursuing new ways.

What innovative companies do you most admire?

Apple, Google, Starbucks, Bionade. Innovation often is driven by small companies, which later get acquired by the big players. If not, they may sometimes drive these tankers out of business. The world is full of examples. I think Shell is definitely a really innovative company, even if you don’t see it.

Some internet companies definitely have to implement innovative back office processes, otherwise the products and services that we as customers really see would never work.

Traditionally innovation is something internal within a business. We see that there is a trend of companies who innovate in collaboration with other companies. Is that something your company does as well?

We already do that, there are technical and joint ventures, in the semiconductor business this is a very common way to speed up developments.

Is that sharing an Innovative idea? Was there no resistance? It is not that obvious.

It is not obvious. This is special in the semiconductor industry. Just imagine VW and BMW working closely on a similar technology. Normally there are lots of hiccups. We saw that with Chrysler and Daimler. For example, last fall we started a joint venture with Sony on the design of high-performance, low power, embedded and customer specific DRAMs for consumer and graphic applications. Some weeks ago we started another one with Micronix on non-volatile memory technologies.

Is there a formal process for tapping into the knowledge of your workforce?

An initiative called “Ideas for Qimonda”, “iQ”. Every employee may send his/her idea to an office where it gets evaluated. The initiative generates €40 million annual savings for Qimonda. On the other hand I see some room for a 'Chief Innovation Officer'.

Does the requirement for how a company should innovate vary depending on its size? And industry?

Surely, this is different. I worked in a medical environment before; a small company, slowly changing market. Some products are in the market for 60, even 70 years. Every innovation solution that eased the customer’s needs was a huge success and won us huge market shares. If you are Proctor & Gamble on the other hand, billions of new revenue has to come from new, innovative products every year. In the semiconductor industry you have to keep pace with implementing new technology nodes.

How fast do these processes go?

One each year or so, at least, it is accelerating.

Is it exciting to be part of that?

Yes that is very exciting, but exhausting! This course clears your brain again, just to see a few neutrals, and you get an idea of why you are not getting faster in some areas, where you struggle.

Was it a good crowd? Was there enough interaction?

Perfect, the attendants were from totally different business areas. This helped to think outside the box. The trainer is a walking book full of case studies and examples. This really helps you to link with the tools and to remember. Some of the tools sound a bit strange, at least the names do, but now I have a clear idea of what they can do.