Six Sigma has unique team infrastructure, consisting of green belt, black belt, master black belt, champion and executive sponsor. Reporting hierarchy is presented in the figure below: Tang et al. (2006), and Nonthaleerak & Hendry (2008) stress that team and reporting infrastructure are considered to be one of the key elements for the successful Six Sigma implementation. Let's look at each role. The executive sponsor should communicate, lead, and direct the organisations overall objectives toward successful and profitable Six Sigma implementation. Without direct involvement and complete commitment of executive management implementation will inevitably fail (Taghizadegan, 2006; Arthur, 2011). Champion is responsible for selecting employees which shall receive Six Sigma training, for project selection and monitoring, for communication between belts and executive management, and for supporting the Six Sigma philosophy across the organisation. Senior champion should be chosen from executive management, while project champions should be from either executive or top management. Project champions report to senior champion, who in turn reports to CEO. Master black belt (MBB) is responsible for guidance and education of black and green belts. MBB should possess deep understanding of all tools used within Six Sigma, leadership skills and preferably high emotional intelligence (Milivojevich, 2006). It should be considered as full-time position. MBB should be chosen from the best black belts. Black belt (BB) is the technical leader of the Six Sigma project. They report to the project MBB and finance representative, while project team (or teams) report to him. It is possible to have BBs as full-time or part-time position. Nonthaleerak & Hendry (2008) discuss advantages and disadvantages of these two position patterns: Arthur (2011) emphasises that black belts should have improvement, process-oriented, problem-solver mindset. Gupta (2005) defines black belt body of knowledge as follows:
He also defines following as key black belt tools and techniques:
Green beltGreen belt (GB) is considered to be a team participant. They work with black belts in projects, and should have knowledge of the process being optimised. They report to both process owners and BB. According to Gupta (2005), key green belt tools and techniques are:
Abbreviations explainedSince there are a lot of abbreviations in the tables above, here is another table:
This article dealt with two questions – How does successful Six Sigma organisation look like? and What are key roles and their responsibilities? Improvement specialists are crucial in deployment and execution of successful Six Sigma programmes – but they need to be coupled with an appropriate executive sponsor and politically savvy champions. In their work they rely on a wide range of engineering, statistical, and managerial tools and techniques. ReferencesArthur, J. (2011). Lean Six Sigma demystified (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill. Gupta, P. (2005). The Six Sigma performance handbook: A statistical guide to optimizing results. McGraw-Hill. Milivojevich, A. (2006). Emotional intelligence and Six Sigma. Quality Progress, 39(8), 45–49. Nonthaleerak, P., & Hendry, L. (2008). Exploring the Six Sigma phenomenon using multiple case study evidence. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 28(3), 279–303. Taghizadegan, S. (2006). Essentials of Lean Six Sigma. Elsevier. Tang, L. C., Go, T. N., Yam, H. S., & Yoap, T. (2006). Six Sigma: Advanced tools for black belts and master black belts. Wiley. This article is a part of Six Sigma series:
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How can Lean Six Sigma projects be deployed for maximum effect?
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