As a junior in college while studying Supply Chain Management I began growing an interest in operations management. As a facet of operations management I started learning about Lean and Six Sigma.
For those who do not know, in a sentence, Lean and Six Sigma are two continuous improvement methodologies used by businesses to improve operations.
Lean = eliminate waste and optimize flow;
Six Sigma = eliminate variation and defects.
During the summer between Junior and Senior year in college, I interned at Honeywell Aerospace, a company that happens to be well known for their broad and deep use of Lean and Six Sigma. Naturally I found myself networking with the Lean Six Sigma folks and spearheaded an effort to earn my Greenbelt certification. I was successful in attending the classroom training and showing proficient use of the requisite tools such as Value Stream Mapping, SIPOC, VOC, FMEA, and Time Studies leading to the certification at the end of the summer.
Looking to parlay my Lean Six Sigma Greenbelt into a differentiation amongst my peers in my senior year job search for post graduation I found another internship during the school year focused exclusively on Lean Six Sigma implementation with Goodrich Aerospace. Finally, I made a connection with the founder of iSixSigma.com and was asked to write in their Blog community – the iSixSigma.com Blogosphere.
In fact, it was through the iSixSigma.com job boards that I found my first job out of school with Carpedia Intl.
As an operations management consultant with Carpedia and more recently as an independent consultant, I practiced implementing Lean, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, and other continuous improvement (CI) methodologies for a wide array of businesses.
While I am officially only certified as a Lean Six Sigma Greenbelt, I’ve trained numerous Black Belts, and have been told that the scale and results of my projects borderline Master Black Belt.
Here are some of the projects that I have worked on and the CI tools that I have implemented:
- Hong Kong Financial Services Operations – Eliminated Non-Value Adding activities, implemented Standard Operating Procedures, implemented Visual Management Systems
- New Jersey Medical Device Purchasing Group – Optimized inventory safety stock levels, implemented economic order quantity, improved Sales Inventory Operations Planning (SIOP) process
- Connecticut Regional Hospital – Implemented lean patient flow, began daily schedule review meetings, eliminated bed assignment process delays, implemented kan ban like variance action system
- California Winery Bottling Factory – Trained staff on Theory of Constraints and immediate variance corrective action, implemented Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED), completed parts room 5S, implemented Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) tracking
- Las Vegas Hotel / Casino Food & Beverage Department – Implemented just in time staff scheduling, completed kitchen 5S event, balanced staff role workload
- Winnipeg Heavy Equipment Manufacturer – Optimized paint line constraint throughput, redesigned factory floor layout to eliminate wasted motion
I worked on these projects for 4-8 months each, resulting in validated annual savings of $1.3MM on average.
I look forward to my next role where I can continue to leverage these continuous improvement skills in a full time position so that I can better see the lasting results and effects of these business improvements.
