People

Process
Technology

BUSINESS OPTIMIZATION
Targeted reengineering to improve performance
and drive eciencies of scale
By Allison Price
very business, big or small, regardless of the industry or
division, needs to have a concerted Con8nuous Process
Improvement program ingrained in the DNA of the
company, in order to remove complexi8es and achieve
eciencies of scale, says Stefan Vale, a Lean Six Sigma
Master Black Belt and Process Improvement Guru who has
successfully implemented these principles at several notable
Fortune 100 companies (including American Express, Visa
Interna8onal, Tyco/ADT, Citrix, Royal Caribbean Cruise Line,
Lennar Homes, Bright Star, and many others) over the past
25+ years.
But what exactly is Lean Six Sigma and how can it be
incorporated into businesses that are more transac8onal than
manufacturing oriented? To answer this ques8on, we rst
must go back to the origins of this methodology to discover
its roots and successes over the past 100 years. Yes, that is
correct. The basic concepts of Lean were originally developed
during the turn of the century with the Industrial Revolu8on,
when pioneering manufacturing companies of every variety
employed thousands of American workers to mass produce
goods on a grand scale, using conveyer belts and long
produc8on lines, to produce thousands of units for products
sold to consumers all over the world. Innova8ve techniques
for designing (and re-designing) the produc8on of these
goods were developed to ensure business processes operated
both eciently and cost eec8vely.
The Japanese carmaker Toyota leveraged this philosophy and
developed addi8onal process modeling techniques to reduce
waste. Then in the 1980s, industrial engineers from General
Electric and Motorola developed Six Sigma, a sta8s8cs-based
process improvement methodology, which focused on
reducing (or elimina8ng) defects and controlling process
varia8on, using advanced sta8s8cal tools and Lean process
tools. Although both Lean and Six Sigma were originally
created for manufacturing businesses, American Express was
one of the rst transac8on-based companies to successfully

implement Lean Six Sigma, back in 1999, when Stefan Vale

successfully graduated from the 1st wave of Lean Six Sigma
Black Belt (Project Manager) training. This set him on a
successful career journey, as he would go on to bring these
principles to many other transac8on-based companies and
ul8mately become a Cer8ed Master Black Belt (Trainer &
Program Deployment Manager).
All businesses are made up of people, process and
technology (at varying degrees), says Vale, What I do is
analyze underperforming business func8onal processes,
quan8fy the impacts to the business, iden8fy (and test)
solu8ons, implement the op8mal solu8ons and then
measure the net-net benets, to ul8mately remove
wasteful defects and control process varia8on.
The author of the book The Prac)cal Guide to Process
Improvement and a successful business consultant, he has
been responsible for leading numerous large scale
reengineering project ini8a8ves over na8onal and global
business networks, to deliver millions of dollars in
opera8onal saves, sales and revenue.
So what are some of the tools of the trade that he can
share with us to help deliver measureable process
improvements? Says Vale, I begin every project by
mee8ng with the business owners to iden8fy their specic
pain points that are adversely impac8ng their key
performance indicators (KPIs). Then I analyze the voice of
the customer, employee and industry (using compe88ve
benchmarking analy8cs). This gives me a good sense for
where to begin to build out a vibrant project pipeline of
areas that will have the greatest impact. Then I do a
preliminary process capability analysis (to determine the
level of impact), I meet with the execu8ve program
sponsors to align on the priori8za8on and create a detailed
project charter for each approved project ini8a8ve. There
are many dierent tools that I use throughout the various
phases of the project lifecycle, requiring me to work very
closely with the business subject mager experts and
process owners. Some of these process and sta8s8cal tools
are illustrated in my book. In the end, my goal is to deliver
measureable results that

actually transform the
business into a consistently

performing engine, where

they can actually feel the

benets, as measured in their

KPIs. Residually, they also

come away with having
greater visibility into the inner

workings of their overall

business process architecture,


to be able to make more
sound decisions in the future.
Available on Amazon Kindle

BUSINESS

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