INTERVIEW: Philippe Joly, Independent Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Trainer, France

How were you introduced to and trained in Six Sigma? ...What is your Six Sigma experience to date?
What Six Sigma programmes are you currently working on?
How does your integrated training work in SMEs (Small and Medium size Enterprises)?
Do you think "soft skills training" is important?
Following the management's decision to implement Six Sigma, what is the next step, and how should management sell Six Sigma to their employees?
What is GEMBA?
In your opinion is it better for companies to start slowly with a leadership team and project, or take on a more aggressive deployment and training?
What are the hardest obstacles to overcome in Six Sigma training?
What is the quintessential success factor of Six Sigma Training?
So How do you feel Six Sigma fits with other Quality initiatives such as ISO, TQM etc? Do you integrate these alongside Six Sigma principles in your training?
What proportion of a company's total workforce should be Green Belts, Black Belts, and Master Black belts?
In the absence of a global standard certification, are we in danger of de-valuing the Black Belt Title? What do you think are the most important qualities or criteria of a Black Belt?
What is your opinion on training using CD-ROM packages?
How mature is Six Sigma in companies in France?
What are the main differences in training and deploying Six Sigma in a non-US culture?
Final Thoughts?

How were you introduced to and trained in Six Sigma? ...What is your Six Sigma experience to date?

In 1998, I was selected to pioneer the deployment of Black Belts at Kodak, France. I joined the second wave of Black Belt training in Rochester, New York. The duration of the training was five weeks; I received four weeks covering the classical DMAIC body of knowledge, plus some additional days of “soft skills training”. I worked for approximately two years as a practicing black belt, working within several departments managing Six Sigma projects. In 2001, I was then appointed lean manager of the Colour Film Flow for the French Kodak site, where I overviewed, and pioneered the deployment of Lean initiatives. I joined the Six Sigma Academy Independent Contractors Group two years ago as a Master Black Belt, and now provide training and guidance across France and other European countries. The bulk of my experience is within the Chemical sector, but I have also worked in Mechanics, and Business Process enterprises (Several Banking and Insurance companies are joining Six Sigma recently).

What Six Sigma programmes are you currently working on?

I provide training mainly in France (but I also travel occasionally to Italy, UK and Sweden) for French Six Sigma Academy customers (or French subsidiaries of US customers); I am currently training a French chemical company.
I'm also translating Design for Six Sigma training manuals into French, and developing some new training where the Black Belts and Green Belt training courses are integrated. The Six Sigma Academy also allows me to work with smaller companies directly, so I am kept pretty busy!

How does your integrated training work in SMEs (Small and Medium size Enterprises)?

I developed a solution (specifically designed for SMEs), with one of my customers, in order to train fewer Green Belts and Black Belts more efficiently. During Monday and Tuesday of each week, we train new Green Belts in the basic DMAIC methodology. On Wednesday, previously trained Green Belts who are now going through their Black Belt training join the group, and the morning is used for presentations, project sharing and coaching. Full Black belt training begins in the afternoon, and the Green Belts return to their normal roles. The idea can work really well for smaller companies; training is less expensive as you are tailoring the course for both belts with two “inputs” and two “outputs” each week. It’s also really good to integrate the two levels at this stage, and build on the teams’ “softer skills” required in Six Sigma projects at the same time.

Do you think "soft skills training" is important?

Yes. It is essential to HAVE soft skills in order to succeed in projects; it doesn't all come down to statistics and standard deviation! Your ability to listen, communicate and sell your ideas for improvement, will be the criteria for your success because you are essentially a change agent. However, if you are selected to be a black belt and you haven’t demonstrated these soft skills already (or at least shown the competency to improve these skills), then I would seriously question your ability as a Black Belt.
So, I think it is very important to have COMPLIMENTARY soft skills training. In your training lesson, you can learn some new soft tools, exchange experiences and benefit from the other candidates with you.

Following the management's decision to implement Six Sigma, what is the next step, and how should management sell Six Sigma to their employees?

First, a Company needs true management involvement, ongoing support for Six Sigma deployment, a strong deployment structure and resources (including high level project coaching, monitoring, and re-enforcement of people). When these factors are present, then Six Sigma will sell itself. If you align your rewards and employee recognition programmes with Six Sigma projects, then your teams will share their success together, and spread the principles of Six Sigma throughout the Company. It will filter back up through middle management and up to the company Directors. For this to work, it is essential that higher management takes responsibility for Six Sigma initiatives and pushes the benefits; because generally middle management will resist. This resistance comes from having more constraints (budgets, head-count etc.), and less decision-making authority. In the absence of top management commitment, fire-fighting results, and more often than not the projects fail. The Black Belts do not work GEMBA in such situations, and this will result in a lack of data.

What is GEMBA?

GEMBA is a Japanese word meaning the real place where the job is done; where the real action takes place. In manufacturing industries it means on the shop floor and for business processes, GEMBA is where the value-adding activities to satisfy the client are carried out - in the office. I encourage all Black belts to be GEMBA, and use it within both Six Sigma and Lean projects. It is a simple principle, which I learnt from my past experiences as a project manager, so I was doing this naturally. You basically need to work with the office employees and operators to make change happen. It is easier to be GEMBA now, and this process is a lot quicker nowadays thanks to new technologies such as laptops.

In your opinion is it better for companies to start slowly with a leadership team and project, or take on a more aggressive deployment and training?

In my opinion, I think that a more aggressive approach to deployment and training will give better results. In some cases, starting with a pilot is a good solution for a CEO that needs to convince its staff first. It can be very useful and sometimes even necessary to have a first incremental step in order to learn, define, and decide how to fully deploy Six Sigma throughout the entire company. It is also important sometimes to show the results of a successful pilot to prove that Six Sigma works also for our type of activities, and demonstrate the benefits from deploying the methodology throughout the organisation. Following this step however, the deployment must be a dedicated and full-company initiative. You can only take on an aggressive approach to deployment and training successfully with the sufficient resource, so again, the CEO needs to be behind the initiative 100%. This is regardless of industry sector and company size.

What are the hardest obstacles to overcome in Six Sigma training?

The biggest difficulty for Black Belts, often comes from not being able to assign 100% of their time Black Belt responsibilities. This generally results in fire-fighting urgent issues, and takes much longer to complete a project. Personally, I believe it is much better to have fewer Black Belts, that can give 100% of their effort and time to projects. The other difficulty comes from gaining the large body of knowledge, and finding the support for mentoring the first waves of Black Belts in the company. It's important that this support is strong for the first wave, so they can be used to help mentor the future waves coming up through the company. Following three or four waves depending on the company, the organisations own Master Black Belts and Black Belts can become increasingly autonomous through integrating their own training and experience. The first stage is always more difficult though, and relies much more on consultancy support.

What is the quintessential success factor of Six Sigma Training?

Success will come from the Six Sigma deployment champion leadership as well as committed support from the CEO and top managers. It must be started and maintained properly. This is something that is emphasised much more in Six Sigma than in any other initiative, and it is essential for success. Six Sigma works better than TQM and ISO standards in my opinion, as it encourages every member of staff to speak the same language, and it has rigorous financial evaluation at the beginning and at the end of each project. It is based on finance using resources and people. Standard targets for a Black Belt Saving per annum is €250k, and sometimes its even bigger. I trained a Green Belt having a project with a €100k per annum target. Following validation of this project, the results were €108k p/a, but as well as this, €540k p/a was gained through an increase in capacity. CEOs like these kind of projects!

So How do you feel Six Sigma fits with other Quality initiatives such as ISO, TQM etc? Do you integrate these alongside Six Sigma principles in your training?

Quite often, companies have other initiatives which they have previously implemented (some successfully, others not so well), and I think Six Sigma can work very well in these companies too. There are no new tools in Six Sigma; they are all taken from past techniques, assembled in a very structured and methodological way, and this can quite often work in favour for Six Sigma success. ISO recommendations for instance, are very important tools for the control phase of any project, especially with SOP, training, and project documentation issues. It certainly is no detriment for staff to already have experience of using these tools. I integrate tools in my training from other improvement projects where appropriate. For instance, I give an introduction to Lean tools during the last week of Black Belt training in relevant teams, we build paper planes to try the balancing tool, Kanban and layout. I find other tools such as Reengineering, 5Ss, TPM, and visual controls very simple and effective, even though they may not be classical six sigma tools. It is impossible not to talk about them.

What proportion of a company's total workforce should be Green Belts, Black Belts, and Master Black belts?

I do not believe that any recommendation should really exist. It is dependent on the company, its requirements and its targets. I think a minimum break-even point would be interesting, although I dont know the best way of calculating that. The GE global guideline of 1% of the workforce being assigned as Black Belts (100% dedication), works well. In a transactional environment, where companies have more white-collar workers as opposed to blue-collar workers, it is said that a higher percentage will do a company a lot of good In comparing service companies to their industrial counterparts, I would also suggest to consider having more Green Belts and fewer Black Belts, for ease of deployment.

In the absence of a global standard certification, are we in danger of de-valuing the Black Belt Title? What do you think are the most important qualities or criteria of a Black Belt?

There is much disparity. In Kodak, you are certified after your first project whereas in GE, you must complete at least two projects before being certified; which is correct? It would be of great benefit for recruitment purposes (especially for SMEs) to have global standards and certifications for comparison of skills. I have come across consultancies for instance, who have used their Black Belt or Master Black Belt title in order to sell their training and use in depth Six Sigma language, which only intimidates the customer. They may not have even completed a project end-to-end themselves, but can use their titles as the standard does not exist. So there is a lot of variation, and this can be a danger for smaller companies who would rely on such designations. The larger well known Six Sigma Companies will not push for standard certification, preferring to retain their own Black Belts for themselves. It is imperative however, that any certifications for Black belts are not purely statistics but essentially on project management skills and good GEMBA behaviours.
Much has been written about the qualities of a Black Belt. In my opinion, the best Black Belts have excellent soft skills, are open minded to new ideas and are data driven - although at the same time suspicious about numbers. I think you can easily get lost in data by going too deep into statistics, and loose focus on the really important aspects of your project. I'm sure there will be others who will disagree, but personally, I believe the most important qualities of a Black Belt should be his or her ability to be an agent of change, not to be a great statistician.

What is your opinion on training using CD-ROM packages?

E-Training, books and other CD ROM Packages, can be useful to understand deeper technical aspects of Six Sigma Statistics. These methods allow the candidates to spend time alone to go through data, and concentrate on learning the body of Six Sigma knowledge. I think these programmes can be useful for Yellow Belts, for instance, when they just need some awareness of Six Sigma, although this can also be provided in a company Intranet, or a monthly newsletter.
For Green Belts and Black Belts however, the most important criteria for training in Six Sigma is the practice and questioning of this body of knowledge. The interaction, project sharing and personal coaching can not be replaced by a CD ROM, book or training video. If they were to produce the same results, then schools and other classical classroom training institutions would have closed down as soon as the television was invented!

How mature is Six Sigma in companies in France?

In my opinion, it could be better! France and Germany especially have very different cultures to the USA; we are much more sceptical of new ideas.
It seems that in France, companies are slower to get started, and there is much suspicion at first. Once committed however, the benefits start to be realised and companies don't really look back; certainly all those trained in Six Sigma never regret it. Even companies, who have difficulties on their first deployment initiative, study the reasons for failure, build a reaction plan and then re-start more efficiently. It is a growing market though and both large and smaller companies are looking to Six Sigma more these days. I spoke recently at a conference in Brittany about Six Sigma for SMEs and there was much interest. It just takes a little longer in our culture for full commitment to go forward.

What are the main differences in training and deploying Six Sigma in a non-US culture?

Firstly there is the Not Invented Here syndrome. I have found some reluctance in France against what may be seen as an American Flavour of the month. There are language issues as it is in English. Many companies also believe they are so unique that it would not apply to them. I think it comes down to both time and education; even though Six Sigma was developed within an electronics company and for manufacturing processes, it can be applied in other industries and processes very successfully. The lack of standards can be more of an issue as in many European countries, a title such as Black Belt which may hold no official certifications is more suspicious. I also think that in the US, there is a much stronger belief and trust in management than there is in Europe, (although this is not as true for Northern countries such as UK and Sweden).
These are some of the considerations which must be tackled; otherwise it is all too possible to miss the opportunity to use good methods to get very good results. There is a lot of scope in Europe. Six Sigma has the qualities of being built on past initiatives such as TQM; it adds rigour, structure, and financial evaluation to these initiatives, which our cultures particularly like. Lean is often something which companies implement first as it gets quicker results and you don't need such a big organisation to get substantial results. For some processes, it can be a little superficial though and if you want to drill deeper, you will need the rigorous projects structure that Six Sigma provides: both tools and methods have their pro and cons, and both can help realise breakthrough improvements.

Final Thoughts?

It works. Six Sigma has proven data to show that it works and as yet, I haven't heard of a company that has received no benefit at all from its deployment.
It is important to understand that the leverage of Six Sigma lies in the practical application of tool in projects, and not the theory behind these tools.