Making the Case for Quality

July 2008

Six Sigma Green, Black Belts Help Manufacturer

Save Nearly $1.5 Million

by Jeanne Chircop
At a Glance . . .
The newest component
of Crown Equipment
Corporations quality
management program is
Six Sigma. While lean is
the systematized corporate
effort, company managers
apply Six Sigma to certain
projects as needed and as
resources are available.
The company now has 18
certified Six Sigma Green
Belts and 15 Black Belts
in its North American
manufacturing facilities.
To date, Green Belt efforts
have resulted in hard
savings of $1.2 million
for Crown, and Black
Belt efforts have brought
$285,000 in hard savings,
with more expected as the
projects proceed further.
While the time requirement
for the first 12 Green
Belts to undertake
training was a whopping
2,400 hours (total for all
12), the company has
calculated that it has
saved a little more than
$500 per hour for each
hour spent in training.

With a corporate commitment to helping customers lower costs and maximize productivity, its no
surprise that Crown Equipment Corporation is itself dedicated to lean manufacturing and total quality
management. Continuous improvement has been intrinsic to the companys philosophy since its founding in 1945, as management has periodically adjusted product offerings and services to meet changing
customer needs.
Yet even with decades of success that has made the Ohio-based manufacturer the worlds top-selling
producer of electric lift trucks, the company still recently found ways to use Six Sigma strategies to
improve processes, reduce scrap and gas usage, and fine-tune operations. The company now has 18
certified Six Sigma Green Belts and 15 Black Belts in its North American manufacturing facilities
striving to lead the corporation toward even further improvement.

The Little Company That Could

Crown Equipment Corporation began as a one-product, one-room operation in the small, rural community of New Bremen, OH. Started just after World War II by the late Carl H. Dicke and Allen A. Dicke,
the company manufactured temperature controls for coal-burning furnaces. By 1949, the enterprising
brothers followed changing technology trends and switched to producing antenna rotatorsdevices
used to enhance television reception. Even after diversifying into electronic components manufacturing in 1951 and then adding lift trucks in 1957, Crown Equipment continued as a leading manufacturer
of antenna rotators until late 2001, by which time changing technologies had rendered them virtually
obsolete.
Still privately owned and managed by descendents of the original founders, Crowns full product line
includes:

Manual propelled pallet trucks and stackers

Power pallet trucks and stackers
Sit-down and stand-up counterbalanced trucks
Narrow-aisle reach trucks
Very narrow-aisle turret trucks
Order-picking equipment

The companys electric lift trucks are used throughout the world for transporting materials and goods
in warehouses, distribution centers, and manufacturing environments.
Still headquartered in the same, though renovated and expanded, offices in New Bremen, Crown is now
a multinational corporation with regional headquarters in Munich, Germany, and Sydney, Australia.
The company has 11 manufacturing facilities in seven U.S. locations and also has strong international

The American Society for Quality

www.asq.org

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manufacturing capabilities, building lift trucks in Sydney,

Australia; Roding, Germany; Queretaro, Mexico (two plants); and
Suzhou, China. Crown also owns branch sales and service center operations in Australia, Belgium, England, Germany, Korea,
Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, and more
than 40 locations in the United States. In addition to the companyowned branches, a network of independent U.S. and international
Crown dealers operates in nearly 100 cities.
U.S. Manufacturing Operations
Like nearly all large manufacturers,
Crown Equipment owns production
facilities in several countries; however,
the majority is still found stateside:
New Bremen, OH (five plants)
Connersville, IN

Despite this diversification and

global spread, Crown designs
and manufactures 85 percent
of its lift truck components.
The company also assembles
its own products and provides
maintenance services to
customers.

Greencastle, IN

Such vertical integration creates a strong competitive

Celina, OH
advantage, according to Mark
DeGrandchamp,
Crowns
Fort Loramie, OH
director
of
quality
and Lean/
New Knoxville, OH
Six Sigma. We know our
products better, he says, because we design and build our own
motors, cylinders, electronic assemblies, wire harnesses, and
masts [the part that lifts the pallet].
Kinston, NC

parts. Cellular manufacturing is an integral part of lean manufacturing, as it drastically reduces waste and duplication of effort.
Properly trained teams can manage processes, defects, scheduling, equipment maintenance, and other manufacturing issues
more efficiently and thus reduce waste of all kinds.
Crowns focused factory initiatives paved the way toward a
formal commitment to lean manufacturing in 1999. A pilot
project in the companys New Knoxville motor plant brought
such significant benefits that the company has since applied lean
strategies to every process in every one of its facilities.

Six Sigma: A Winning Strategy

The newest component of Crowns quality management program is Six Sigma. While lean is the systematized corporate
effort, company managers apply Six Sigma to certain projects as
needed and as resources are available.
When youre in a lean system, explains Jeff Caudill, Crowns
main manufacturing leader for the New Bremen campus, it
may be that you have a problem that requires a more powerful
problem-solving tool, and Six Sigma provides that tool.
In general terms, Six Sigma enables a company to address
specific areas targeted for improvement by providing:

A structure to identify root causes

This intimate product knowledge significantly reduces client
Advanced tools to achieve desired outcomes
downtime due to maintenance, repair, and parts replacement.
Crowns multidisciplinary teams also have the ability to quickly
Six Sigma supports lean manufacturing by reducing variation
adjust concepts during the design stages and provide supporting
and waste. Data-driven strategies focus on defect prevention,
tools that lead to increased productivity, operator comfort, safety,
with no more than 3.4 defects allowed per million opportunities.
and better fleet management.
We have one of the lowest life-cycle costs in the industry,
DeGrandchamp says, claiming customers are willing to invest in
the quality of Crown trucks and service because they feel it will
benefit them with cost avoidance in the long term.

Flexible Enough to Change

Crowns impressive history of growth stems from its leaders
keen awareness of changing technology and market trends combined with a corporate culture that has embraced flexibility and
challenge. A continuous focus on effectively satisfying changing
customer needs is a hallmark of total quality management.
The companys commitment to using formal quality tools
and strategies dates to the mid-1990s. Traditionally engaging
conventional production-line manufacturing, Crown management became interested in the concept of focused factory
manufacturing in 1996 as a way to increase productivity and
competitiveness. Focused factory strategies enable plants to
focus on limited, specific tasks. Utilizing a cellular model, this
manufacturing approach arranges production facilities and floor
labor into work cells, or multiskilled teams, that manufacture
complete products or complex components rather than single

The American Society for Quality

Some quality experts refer to Six Sigma as a philosophy, while

others consider it a methodology. ASQ identifies four basic
themes common to Six Sigma:

Use of teams that are assigned well-defined projects that

have direct impact on the organizations bottom line.
Training in statistical thinking at all levels and providing
key people with extensive training in advanced statistics and
project management. (These key individuals are designated
as either Green or Black Belts.)
Emphasis on the DMAIC approach to problem solving
define, measure, analyze, improve, and control.
A management environment that supports these initiatives as
a business strategy.

Every Six Sigma project needs organizational support, and targeted Six Sigma training enables professionals at every level of
a company to assist with implementation. At the organizational
level, specially trained champions and executives set the
direction for selecting and deploying projects. At the project
level, those professionals actually conducting projects and
implementing improvements are Green Belts or Black Belts,
depending on the level of training they have received.

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Crown initiated its Six Sigma program in 2005 with four-day

Champion training for key upper-level managers. Rather than
addressing any particular challenge, the training was a natural
extension of the ongoing improvement philosophy championed
by company management.

Green Belt Training

In late 2005, all of Crowns U.S. business unit managers were
invited to submit names of potential candidates for Green Belt
training. Managers were directed to consider candidates who
were:

Personally motivated to do their best

Recognized to have a mathematical mind that would be
wellsuited to the statistical nature of the improvement effort
Willing and able to pass an internally developed test on
quality tools and statistics

Design for X
The Six Sigma perspective views
all work as processes that can
be defined, measured, analyzed,
improved, and controlled. Processes
require inputs (x) and produce outputs
(y). If you control the inputs, you
will control the outputs, generally
expressed as y = f(x).

Each candidate was required

to suggest a project that would
bring improvement to the company. Members of a Six Sigma
steering committee ultimately
selected 12 Crown employees
to participate in the companys
Green Belt training and certification, basing selection
primarily on the potential longterm benefits of the projects.

The Green Belt training was conducted at company headquarters

by a certified American Society for Quality (ASQ) trainer. Six
Sigma Green Belt training is typically conducted in two weeklong increments one month apart. The Crown sessions were
held in October and November 2005. At about the same time, a
half-dozen Crown employees from the companys Kinston, NC,
facility attended similar training conducted at North Carolina
State University.
Both the ASQ and NC State training sessions followed similar
formats. All of the Green Belt candidates presented basic details
of their proposed projects to the group, and work began. Projects
ranged from general process improvement to scrap reduction,
improved machine operation, and more efficient gas usage,
among others.
The first week of training was devoted to strategizing how to
organize resources and eliminate roadblocks; the second week
was devoted to creating PowerPoint presentations about each
project that participants could take back to their local management to begin actual on-site implementation. At the end of the
second week, participants took a four-hour 100-question exam
about Six Sigma concepts and received certification upon passing. Group participants continued to meet via teleconference
every couple of weeks thereafter to ensure each of the projects
remained on track. Each Green Belt was tasked with completion
of a project within the following six months.

The American Society for Quality

Black Belt Training

The next phase of Crowns Six Sigma effort occurred the following year, with 15 individuals moving on to take Black Belt
training. As in the Green Belt program, each participant suggested an improvement project for the group to undertake. Black
Belt projects focused on:

Elimination of defects
Optimization of processes
Elimination of nonvalue-added steps, such as secondary
handling of goods
Improvement of overseas operations in order to eliminate
secondary handling of goods in the United States

Also like the Green Belt program, participants represented varied

experience levels and a range of disciplines:

Manufacturing engineers
Quality engineers
Quality management system (QMS) trainers of machinists
Quality technicians
Plant managers

Six Sigma Black Belts lead problem-solving projects by training

and coaching project teams at their facilities. Black Belts must
thoroughly understand and use all aspects of the DMAIC model
in accordance with Six Sigma principles. In addition, Black Belts
must understand and use other key Six Sigma tools, such as:

Quality function deployment (QFD)

Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA)
Basic robust design process tools, including noise strategies,
tolerance design, and process capability tools
Design for X strategies

Crowns Black Belt training occurred in the New Bremen facilities during December 2006 and January 2007. Two certified
ASQ trainers led the effort, which culminated with a four-hour
150-question written exam for the 15 participants.

Million-dollar Results
Every successful quality improvement program has both tangible
and intangible resultsconcrete, measurable results (tangible),
and beneficial though impossible to measure results (intangible),
such as improved morale, increased loyalty, higher employee
self-esteem, and enhanced customer satisfaction. Crown has chosen to focus on tangible, hard savings for measuring the success
of its Six Sigma efforts.
To date, Crowns Green Belt efforts have resulted in hard savings of $1.2 million for the company. The companys Black Belt
efforts have brought $285,000 in hard savings so far, with more
expected as the projects proceed further. While the time requirement for the first 12 Green Belts to undertake training was a
whopping 2,400 hours (total for all 12), the company has calcu-

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lated that it has saved a little over $500 per hour for each hour
spent in training.

Strongest Tool

For More Information

For more information about Crown Equipment Corporation, visit
http://crown.com.
For more information about Six Sigma and other quality tools,
visit the American Society for Quality Web site, www.asq.org.

Crowns results indicate Six Sigma is the strongest improvement tool you can use, according to John Daeger, quality
engineering manager of the New Bremen headquarters faciliContributing to this Article
ties. Company managers learned one important lesson, however:
Timing is everything. While the Green Belt training rendered an Mark DeGrandchamp is director of quality and Lean/Six
almost immediate $1.2 million in savings, the Black Belt effort
Sigma for Crown Equipment. With a bachelor of science
has moved at a much slower pace because of its timing and
degree from Purdue University and a masters degree from the
because participants werent assigned to the effort full time. As
University of Indiana, he has more than 23 years of experience
the Black Belt candidates didnt have the opportunity to focus on
working with quality initiatives. DeGrandchamp, an ASQ
their Six Sigma projects full time, the timelines languished.
certified quality engineer, has been with Crown for eight years
and can be reached at mark.degrandchamp@crown.com.
Now that demands have stabilized, Crown management is re John Daeger is quality engineering manager for Crown
energizing the Black Belt effort. The teams plan is to move the
Equipment, responsible for all New Bremen facilities. He
15 projects from the process development stage into the implejoined the company in November 2004. Daeger holds ASQs
mentation and control phases. Budgets have been approved to
quality manager, quality engineer, and quality auditor
include full-time commitment to the Black Belt program. Fullcertifications and has completed ASQs Six Sigma Green
time dedicated positions are currently being filled for a Master
Belt and Black Belt training programs. He holds a bachelors
Black Belt and a Black Belt.
degree from Concordia University and a masters degree
from Indiana Wesleyan University. He can be reached at
The company also has plans to train a minimum of 10 Green
john.daeger@crown.com.
Belts each year, with the intent that the growing number of
Jeff Caudill is Crowns New Bremen operations lean leader
Green Belts will help spread training throughout all branches of
and has specific expertise in analyzing data and statistics.
the company. In the broader scope, the company is also evaluatThough a relative newcomer to Crownjoining the company
ing how its Six Sigma and lean programs should work together
in 2006he has long-standing career involvement with lean
for total ongoing quality improvement.
and Six Sigma activities and is an ASQ certified quality
engineer. He can be reached at jeff.caudill@crown.com.
In the meantime, Crown has been recognized with numerous
awards, including outstanding achievement in waste miniAbout the Author
mization and pollution prevention. The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency has designated Crown as a Waste
Jeanne Chircop has been helping organizations share their sucMinimization Partner, one of only 27 in the country. The award cesses for more than 20 years. She has written about quality
recognizes the companys success in substantially reducing
efforts in the education, manufacturing, and natural resources
the amount of hazardous waste involved in manufacturing by
sectors. She holds a masters degree in journalism and resides in
eliminating the chromium from paint formulations. Additional
the Washington, DC, metropolitan area.
waste minimization occurred because of installation of a power
painting operation. This equipment has reduced the generation of
waste paint sludge and air emissions.
Crown has also received the Governors Award in Ohio for
Outstanding Achievement in Pollution Prevention. One of only
eight award recipients, Crown earned the nomination not only
because of its actual achievements in pollution prevention, but
also for serving as a role model for other industrial generators by
demonstrating the feasibility of pollution prevention.

The American Society for Quality

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