Delivering Long Term Sustainable Improvement with Six Sigma at Network Rail

Jeff Ayland

Jeff Ayland has led the development and delivery of Network Rail's Six Sigma programme since he joined in May 2004. As Head of Six Sigma Deployment he has programme management responsibility for project prioritisation, methodology selection and benefits analysis. He is also responsible for managing key enablers such as supporting technology, recruitment, training and stakeholder management responsibilities, including external consultants and programme communications.

Previously, Jeff was the deployment Master Black Belt for Siemens Magnet Technology in Oxfordshire where he managed a team of 8 full time Black Belts building capability within the medical imaging business, which faced fierce international competition. Jeff worked extensively with international teams delivering cost and quality improvements both internally and in the supply chain through training, coaching and mentoring in Lean, Six Sigma and business improvement techniques.

Jeff started his career in the Aerospace industry where he trained and mentored teams in improvement techniques and statistical methods, supporting the delivery of over 100 improvement projects across UK, USA and Europe. He has a strong passion for creating and developing high performing teams to drive and deliver extraordinary business results.

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1. What does Six Sigma mean to Network Rail?
2. Who are your customers? How do you use 'voice of the customer' data and where do you get it from?
3. One of Network Rail’s public corporate objectives is higher service performance; how does Six Sigma work to achieve this goal?
4. How do measure your customer’s satisfaction? How has Six Sigma helped to improve this?
5. How have you adapted your approach for Network Rail?
6. How do you realise the real benefits (both hard and soft) that are a direct consequence of Six Sigma projects?
7. How do you use Six Sigma to sustain team and people development within the organisation?
8. What is your certification process?
9. How does Network Rail’s approach stand out from the standard top-down approach? What do you do differently?
10. On a personal level, what would you do differently, given the opportunity?
11. What’s next for Six Sigma at Network Rail?

NB: Click on images to enlarge.
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onesixsigma.com: 1. What does Six Sigma mean to Network Rail?

Jeff Ayland: For Network Rail, it means long-term sustainable performance improvement. Our chairman Ian McAllister is unequivocal in his support for our Six Sigma programme in addressing the root cause of failure enabling 'predict and prevent' instead of a 'find and fix' approach.
We see it very much as a business transformation journey. When Network Rail took over from Railtrack, business performance was generally poor. The Board recognised that as the business became more stable and basic improvements were made, there would come a time when we would need more robust tools to build on the early successes that were being delivered in terms of business performance.

In essence, it was recognised at an early stage that as the easier improvements disappeared our approach would need to be more sophisticated to leverage the required customer deliverables. The decision to start a Six Sigma programme in this early turbulent environment was a forward thinking one that meant in some ways the improvement tools were ahead of their time in terms of what the business needed. It was also recognised that building the capability would take some time, so investing in the future made a bold statement about Network Rail’s commitment to Six Sigma and its longevity as a programme.

Also, Six Sigma did not arrive simply as the latest initiative, and as such has not disappeared quickly. It is used at Network Rail is an umbrella term for various business improvement techniques.

2. Who are your customers? How do you use 'voice of the customer' data and where do you get it from?

Primarily, Network Rail has focused our Six Sigma programme on two main customers: Train Operating Companies (TOCs) and Freight Operating Companies (FOCs). We provide the network for the TOCs and FOCs to run services for their customers. The end user customers – passengers - are directly affected by the service performance that the industry – i.e. TOC’s, FOC’s and Network Rail – provides.

This industry effort is measured in one way by train performance data. Practically, this means that the voice of the customer is captured by measuring the arrival time of services against the published timetable.

This culminates in a top level metric of overall industry delay minutes, where TOCs and FOCs will have a proportion of the delays attributed to themselves and Network Rail will also have the same.

Of course there are a number of internal customers that also have needs and wants within Network Rail. The core delivery functions of the business, operations and customer services function and the maintenance function are primarily responsible for delivering the 'day to day' running of the Network.

The interaction of these functions with engineering and major projects and investment all make for strong internal customer relationships where trade offs have to be carefully managed to maximise daily and weekly performance – whilst also planning for the longer term needs of the countries railway in following years.

3. One of Network Rail’s public corporate objectives is higher service performance; how does Six Sigma work to achieve this goal?

We have a large and diverse business incorporating 33,000 people across 14 functions, so delivering higher service performance can be a very direct requirement of the individual’s role or it can be in support of colleagues who act as the direct customer interface.

Six Sigma projects reflect this range of improvement opportunity. From vegetation management, utilisation of large railway machinery, maximisation of possession times, specific actions to address a specific shortfall in asset performance, specific customer needs projects, heavy maintenance regimes, engineering-related projects on specifications, station-related projects that directly effect the customer, litter clearance etc etc.

A very practical example of the impact Six Sigma can have on higher service performance can be seen in a train despatch project that was implemented at Acton Yard in London. The Great Western Main Line from Paddington is the key route to the West of England and the line is shared by both passenger and freight services. Freight services were suspected to be causing delays to passenger services due to variation in the start time of these services being dispatched onto the network.

A Six Sigma project looked at the release of freight services against the required timetable and found that, as suspected, some services were being released with variation in the start time. The release times of these services was only varying by a few minutes, but the effect of the cumulative delays caused to passenger services was large.

Subsequently, several route causes were addressed in the despatch process making double digit percentage improvements and realising several thousand delay minutes saved per annum.

This was a great project for Six Sigma; the use of basic analysis, good project management, keen customer and stakeholder involvement and a great result all lead to increased customer satisfaction. One FOC managing director wrote a complimentary letter thanking the project team for their efforts. Again a great result.

4. How do measure your customer’s satisfaction? How has Six Sigma helped to improve this?

Businesses are run to strict budgets and financial controls - Network Rail is no different. The requirement to safely deliver a railway that the country can afford is key. So, improving the financial efficiency of the business whilst simultaneously improving service performance is the same for Network Rail as for any other business. If you are a global express, telecommunications, automotive or financial services business, managing these tensions will be the same; it’s the business context that will change.

In short all businesses are striving to achieve goods and services that are delivered 'on time and in full' where the customer is delighted. The delivery of 'basic requirements' will not be considered as driving customer satisfaction, unless of course they are not present.

Increasing customer satisfaction be delivered on the platform of ever improving business performance (see Kano model below).

On the service delivery & performance side Six Sigma has helped in two ways:

1) Improvements in service delivery at Network Rail has reduced delay minutes in the order of 10’s of thousands over the 3 year programme to date. The focus on improved service delivery also enables higher performance for TOCs and FOCs they too have also yielded delay minute reductions in the same order of magnitude. Six Sigma projects also deliver satisfaction improvements in the way we work with our primary customers.

2) Six Sigma provides a framework for closer working relationships, with a common language for improvement, and this fact alone has been seen as a very positive benefit regardless of the service delivery & performance improvement benefits. In short – it is changing the culture.

On the financial efficiency side Six Sigma has helped to deliver many millions of pounds in benefit over the 3 year period. This financial year sees the programme targeting, and on track to achieve, savings approaching £60m. This is a fantastic contribution to business efficiency and one that far outweighs the programme cost.

5. How have you adapted your approach for Network Rail?

The functional nature of the organisation has lead to functional improvement streams. This is managed for consistency across the business by a small 'light touch' central Six Sigma deployment function in the strategic change function.

By ‘light touch’, we mean that functions are closest to their customers and importantly their needs, having central control over the improvement choices may yield sub-optimal solutions and outcomes.

So, cross functional working, where the process demands more than one functional input, is addressed as needed through a centrally managed improvement forum chaired by the central Six Sigma deployment function.

The primary function that delivers improvements for the TOCs and FOCs is the operations and customer services function, so Six Sigma programmes that directly affect TOC and FOC improvement will be managed to completion by operations and customer services function. Practically however, projects from other functions that are delivering service performance improvements and financial efficiencies have the service performance benefit portion validated and signed off by the operations and customer services function.

6. How do you realise the real benefits (both hard and soft) that are a direct consequence of Six Sigma projects?

For project benefit sign-off of a 'fiscal' nature, financial controllers are engaged to validate operational expenditure savings and budgets are adjusted accordingly. Network performance sign-off service performance improvements and manage the subsequent effect on train planning and timetables.

Soft benefits are also 'formally logged' in the same way on the same document. This allows the champion to formally recognise and challenge the softer benefits that are being claimed by the project.

7. How do you use Six Sigma to sustain team and people development within the organisation?

We have offered a comprehensive programme of education, awareness and development on Six Sigma since the programme was initiated 4 years ago.

We have seen a steady progression of staff move through the organisation as they have progressed with Six Sigma, and this has caused the programme some ‘nice’ problems. Back filling the posts as people have progressed has sometimes been challenging. Also the need to progress those with good performance has caused some challenges with making the next career step available.

It has been very important to gain external recognition for the programme and its core asset – our people. Both the Deputy Chief Executive, Iain Coucher, and myself were invited to speak at the IQPC lean Six Sigma summit in Amsterdam in November last year. We spoke on alternate days about the programme and its challenges as we move forward.

It was great for the business to do this external benchmark. Our peers and colleagues from other industries were challenging and supportive of our efforts so far and above all were very interested as to how we are deploying Six Sigma in our business. We came away with a refreshed perspective on what we have achieved and where we need to build capability for the future.

We also entered the UK Skills National Training Awards (NTA), a joint entry with our consultant partners The Six Sigma Group. The NTA takes entries from all business sectors and compares the achievements of the programmes to come up with a National perspective on what has been achieved. The relative nature of this award is very interesting as it compares the achievements of large businesses like Network Rail against small businesses with only a few staff. The process is very searching from NTA. It made us again take stock of what we had achieved over the past 3 years and think about this in a logical way. This level of external, independent scrutiny helped us to consider the next steps and validate our plans for the future.

Network Rail were delighted to pick up a regional national training award at the 1st attempt! It was important for me as an improvement professional to see Six Sigma being recognised against many other training and people development approaches from lots of other business sectors. I think it was a great achievement on many levels: company, industry, personal and professional.

Six Sigma and the development of our people’s capability is an obvious fit. We have recently acquired a World Class training and development centre in Coventry known as 'Westwood'. The leadership development and training programmes that run at Westwood are truly World Class and have won awards in their own right. Six Sigma is a headline programme that runs there offering staff from all levels of the business the ability to do their job differently and make a difference to how the business performs.

Including Six Sigma in the Westwood experience also reinforces the stance that Six Sigma is the company’s chosen improvement methodology and is here to drive sustainable performance improvement for the long term.

8. What is your certification process?

Our training programmes last 2 days for Yellow belts, 10 days for green belts and 20 days for black belts. In addition, we have 'train the trainer' bespoke modules with ongoing mentoring support.

The belt certification process is rigorous and rewarding. We do issue certificates for the completion of formal training but we are very careful in pointing out that this is only the beginning of the development journey for the individual.

Completion of projects is required, and the validation of both the non financial culture benefits, as well as the financial benefits, is a pre requisite for gaining Network Rail certified belt status.

I held the 1st draft of belt certifications at our Westwood centre on the 31st of January 2007. I formally certified 25 belts as having achieved the required standard for green, black and black belt advanced status.

This represented a real programme milestone and a point of light on the pathway to maturity. It was a fantastic event that was followed by the 1st company-wide Six Sigma belt conference.

All Black belts from all functions and improvement heads were invited to Westwood, some 80 people in all, to consider issues like; ongoing deployment strategy, programme lessons learnt, cross functional opportunities, sharing project successes and approaches and also to simply to network with colleagues.

We plan to run these events as a regular feature of the programme ongoing. It was great to see the enthusiasm and determination of our belt community at a forum like this – remembering that 4 years ago there was no Six Sigma programme within the business.

9. How does Network Rail’s approach stand out from the standard top-down approach? What do you do differently?

Well I am not sure that the approach is vastly different from many organisations attempts to deploy a Six Sigma or process excellence programme – at least in conceptual terms. The real differences are the determination to succeed and the passion to make the difference and 'make it happen'. This determination and passion has been converted into success, measured on many levels.

In terms of top-down, the executive backing from the board has not changed or flinched since the programme was launched. This has allowed the programme time to mature and deliver benefits whilst sticking with the concepts of data driven, root-cause analysis that enables defect & waste free processes. What business wouldn’t want that?

Bottom-up, we have a large yellow, green, black, MBB and champion contingent, 1500 in 3 years. Teams are also made up of many specialists from across the business – the number engaged has been large. Additionally, there is the dialogue with programmes such as the 'front line leaders' within the Westwood modules as previously described. This is where I have personal involvement in communicating the messages and answering the critics and challenges that arise. These are lively forums!

We also have a middle-out approach: over 300 Six Sigma project champions have been developed in over 40 sessions. These sessions are held for leaders & managers right across the business. Again, this takes up a significant proportion of my time discussing the issues and answering the challenges that are raised with respect to improving whilst still having to deliver the day job.

We have 50 black belts across the business, empowered and supported by our 10 master black belts, surrounding line managers and other programme support colleagues.

All these efforts combine to give a consistent and coherent message to the business on how we continue to deploy our Six Sigma programme.

10. On a personal level, what would you do differently, given the opportunity?

There are a number of things that can always be done better, there is always room for improvement in the individual or the companies approach to deploying an improvement programme.

I had the great honour of meeting Jack Welch at European Six Summit in 2005, we spoke about deployment issues and critical things to stay focussed on when improving the business, he said a number of things to me during the 15 minute conversation:

"It’s [deploying Six Sigma] about developing your best people."
"Be honest – you could always have gone faster – few businesses wish that they had been successful more slowly."
"Your own personal success and the success of your business will come from the reflected glory of the achievements of others."
"You don’t need to aim to be the smartest person in the room, that’s not it – harness the power of all those with the ideas and knowledge to make the difference."
"Seek out and spot those people with some 'development runway' in front of them, they are the stars of the future."
"It’s not about you anymore [being a leader] – it’s about delivering for your customers and developing your best people – that’s it."
"As you deliver results and achieve things, celebrate, celebrate, celebrate!"

The advice from Jack is well received and I try to relate to his sentiment in everyday situations – this is not always easy when the pressure is on and the deadlines are approaching…

11. What’s next for Six Sigma at Network Rail?

We have a defined Six Sigma journey (see the image below) we are currently moving through phase 2, and aiming for phase 3 – 'be the best'.

To support this, we will now focus on other functions such as HR and finance & increasing Six Sigma capability in the projects and engineering function.

Building lean Six Sigma capability in the major projects area of the business, this area of the business handles renewals projects at all levels from installing a new foot bridge to managing the upgrade of the West Coast Main Line. The potential for lean Six Sigma here is large.

We are also looking at incorporating design for Six Sigma in support of the 'The 2030 Railway' – this is a very exciting and ambitious programme to make improvements across the rail network to enable higher performance, deliver more capacity and improve the end to end journey experience over the coming years.

Additionally, we have begun utilising shorter interval projects, to enable productivity improvement in the maintenance function with a Lean Six Sigma approach. This programme will focus on deploying tools and techniques to deliver improvements in depots and delivery units across the network.

Continuing the roll out of short interval '5 Day DMAIC' workout events will also add to the overall improvement portfolio – these events are very exciting and fast paced. Key processes are worked over a 5 day period using the DMAIC model as a framework for the activity. The specialist nature of these events means that the improvement practitioners and facilitators have to be extremely tenacious, focussed and highly skilled in order to deliver the results required by the close of the event.

We have also embarked on a benchmarking programme with our colleagues in the Royal Mail as our functional journeys compliment each other. To-date, they have primarily employed lean and Six Sigma approaches in the so called 'back office' functions such as HR, and are now shifting focus to their delivery functions – the functions that we have initially concentrated on. It will be interesting to share experiences and approaches given or different approaches.

Most importantly, we will be continuing the steady programme delivery that has been established so far – not losing sight of the challenges and the need to deliver solutions for today and tomorrow as well as the plans for many years ahead.

Our people remain our greatest asset in achieving a level of sustainable performance improvement and I am sure it is a challenge they will continue to succeed at!

Thank you very much for allowing me to talk about the Network Rail Six Sigma programme.

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If you would like some more information on the programme please contact: jeffery.ayland@networkrail.co.uk

For more information on Network Rail please go to www.networkrail.co.uk.