Can Six Sigma Work For Mobile Workforces?

Six Sigma aims to provide customer satisfaction and to achieve the best bottom line results. Having worked with the shop floor and other areas of the businesses, the question that arises is - can Six Sigma work for mobile workforces?

Misconceptions of Six Sigma Implementation for Mobile Workforces

Though it contradicts the underlying fact that sales and services are the workforces that mainly come into contact with the customer and understands their needs and demands to increase sales. Using Six Sigma has proven to be a challenge. Six Sigma focuses on providing customers with what they demand or care about, which is called as the key outcomes or the critical Ys.

Technology combined with Six Sigma can prove to be effective. Just using technology solutions, the initiatives are bound to fail, as there are certain misconceptions about Six Sigma among mobile workforces. There is a perception of Six Sigma being counter-productive to the creativity of front line staff and time consuming, eating up time that can instead be devoted to meeting customers.

Sales personnel often feel that Six Sigma is against what is expected of the end results - and that is what they are accountable for. Six Sigma needs data to come up to decisions and for the mobile workforces this is what seems to be the problem area. There is no fixed data or fixed process that has to be followed.

Overcoming Barriers to Six Sigma for Mobile Workforces

When a business plans to apply Six Sigma to mobile workforces, they can overcome the above barriers by undertaking a few of these steps:

Identify critical Ys: For any Six Sigma project, it is important that Six Sigma methods and tools are utilized to achieve the maximum benefits.

For sales forces, it is most important to find and link the specific outcomes or the critical Ys to the field processes. This means that the business goals are defined around costs, productivity and profitability, and the deployment of the project is undertaken accordingly.

Supporting field staff: These staff members cannot spend a lot of time on training. However, familiarizing them with the tools is important, and that can be done in a short program. They can be shown the use of simple tools like SIPOC, which helps them in identifying the gap that exists between suppliers, inputs, process outputs and so on that lead to savings.

Leveraging Technology: The use of technology like MTA (mobile task automation) can be useful for mobile task forces, as it helps in data collection for the purpose of decision-making. It reduces the delay between the performance of tasks and the specific outcomes. As the quality of data improves, DFSS can help provide tools to bring in changes in the designs. Schedulers can also be used to get real time updates.

Change Management: It is important to overcome resistance to Six Sigma. This has to be handled very carefully by using tools, which show the advantages they get personally and otherwise. The data is extremely useful in showing the improvements needed and how much is to be improved. To reduce resistance, it is important to make changes in the organizational structure like a reward and recognition policy, incentives and so on.

The use of such tools and techniques and the best use of the latest technology can be extremely useful in making Six Sigma work for mobile workforces.