Professional Documents
Culture Documents
July 2008
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 Green Belt training was conducted at company headquarters Quality function deployment (QFD)
by a certified American Society for Quality (ASQ) trainer. Six Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA)
Sigma Green Belt training is typically conducted in two week- Basic robust design process tools, including noise strategies,
long increments one month apart. The Crown sessions were tolerance design, and process capability tools
held in October and November 2005. At about the same time, a Design for X strategies
half-dozen Crown employees from the companys Kinston, NC,
facility attended similar training conducted at North Carolina Crowns Black Belt training occurred in the New Bremen facili-
State University. ties during December 2006 and January 2007. Two certified
ASQ trainers led the effort, which culminated with a four-hour
Both the ASQ and NC State training sessions followed similar 150-question written exam for the 15 participants.
formats. All of the Green Belt candidates presented basic details
of their proposed projects to the group, and work began. Projects Million-dollar Results
ranged from general process improvement to scrap reduction,
improved machine operation, and more efficient gas usage, Every successful quality improvement program has both tangible
among others. and intangible resultsconcrete, measurable results (tangible),
and beneficial though impossible to measure results (intangible),
The first week of training was devoted to strategizing how to such as improved morale, increased loyalty, higher employee
organize resources and eliminate roadblocks; the second week self-esteem, and enhanced customer satisfaction. Crown has cho-
was devoted to creating PowerPoint presentations about each sen to focus on tangible, hard savings for measuring the success
project that participants could take back to their local manage- of its Six Sigma efforts.
ment to begin actual on-site implementation. At the end of the
second week, participants took a four-hour 100-question exam To date, Crowns Green Belt efforts have resulted in hard sav-
about Six Sigma concepts and received certification upon pass- ings of $1.2 million for the company. The companys Black Belt
ing. Group participants continued to meet via teleconference efforts have brought $285,000 in hard savings so far, with more
every couple of weeks thereafter to ensure each of the projects expected as the projects proceed further. While the time require-
remained on track. Each Green Belt was tasked with completion ment for the first 12 Green Belts to undertake training was a
of a project within the following six months. whopping 2,400 hours (total for all 12), the company has calcu-