Scottish Power win onesixsigma.com sponsored DfSS award

The annual IQPC Process Excellence awards took place in London last week. The awards honour innovative projects and programmes across all sectors, and this year the judging criteria were expanded beyond Six Sigma and Lean to the broader range of Process Excellence.

There were seven categories, and onesixsigma.com was proud to sponsor the award for Best Design for Six Sigma project. The deserving winner was Scottish Power for their “Final Debt Reduction” project. Accepting the award were Andria Reid and Graeme MacTaggart, who said: “We are very proud to accept this on behalf of everyone at Scottish Power. This project impacted over 3,000 people and it was implemented from the top of the organisation all the way through.”

It was a very successful night for Scottish Power, who picked up three awards in total. In addition to the DfSS award, the company was presented with the “Best Project Contributing to Innovation” as well as the estimable “Best Improvement Programme”. If there had been an award on the night for the most enthusiastic winners, they would have won that as well!

Presenting the award, Sophie Smiles, director, explained onesixsigma.com’s commitment to Design for Six Sigma. “Last year onesixsigma.com launched a DfSS Special Interest Group bringing together 20 organisations to share common interests and problems. Founded upon the success of those meetings and others, i&i was launched this year. i&i is the community of practice for Improvement and Innovation. Its founding members share a common goal to drive their i&I programmes through collaboration and best practice sharing. The DfSS group continues to establish itself as a mechanism for networking and sharing best practice.”

The gala dinner was sponsored by Venturehaus, and managing director Alan Noble did an excellent job of hosting the awards ceremony. He commented: “It’s an honour to be able to present these awards to such deserving recipients. Process Excellence isn’t a one-time, one-result initiative, it takes dedicated passionate people to be able to turn a good company into a great one, and I’m delighted to be first to congratulate them.”

Venturehaus specialise in Operational Excellence programmes in the Financial and Government sectors, and consequently sponsored the individual award for Best Operational Excellence Project in Financial Services, the winners of which were HSBC India. Accepting the award on behalf of his team for their “Project Quick Collect”, Kundan Sinha, HSBC India’s Vice President of Six Sigma, summarised the whole meaning of these awards when he told us “It’s indeed a pleasure for the HSBC team to be given an opportunity to share the findings and success stories of our projects. It’s a great motivator for all of us after winning this award and it feels like a great achievement.”

The other winners on the night were HSBC India for Best Operational Excellence in Financial Services Project; Sutherland Global Services for Best Fast Track Project; Hindustan Zinc for Best Process Improvement in Manufacturing Project; and Firstsource Solutions for Best Process Improvement in Service & Transaction Project.