It’s been a while since we had our Six Sigma Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting. This month’s topic was “How Effective is Lean Six Sigma?” We had 18 people attending at the NC Biotech Center, which sponsors ASQ Raleigh and has a state-of-art conference center for the event.

The attendees represented various industries such as life sciences, semiconductors, and manufacturing. About one third were non-ASQ members, and 40+% were first-time attendees.

To help build the Quality community, four ASQ Raleigh member leaders (i.e. volunteers who make things happen) welcomed the audience and gave an introduction of ASQ and ASQ Raleigh.

Given the range of attendee’s experience in Continuous Improvement, the meeting started with a 30-minute refresher on the Lean and Six Sigma methodologies, prompting reactions and ideas on the challenges and opportunities in the current environment, which was the focus of the break-out session.

After about 50 minutes of active discussion, three break-out groups shared their key takeaways, touching various questions, such as

• How to help change the culture?
• How can Lean Six Sigma help drive change?
• How do we address the challenges related to bringing back manufacturing to the US?
• How do we gain buy-in from senior management?
• How to apply Lean and/or Six Sigma in non-manufacturing, such as R&D and IT?
• What kinds of incentives are effective for different demographics?

A few ideas emerged as potential topics for future events.

• What is a Kaizen event? How do you lead such events?
• How do you align or prioritize Continuous Improvement effort or projects?
• What could business process re-engineering look like now (compared to the 90’s)?
• How can Lean Six Sigma help R&D, Quality, and tech transfer?
• How do we engage people in Continuous Improvement?

Thanks to all participants for their contributions. We will have many ideas to work from.

The next event will be the monthly Quality Special Interest Group at Frontier RTP on Thursday, March 13.