"Black Belt for Sale"

Black Belt for Sale | Quality Digest - Mike Micklewright

You might remember Mike from
his Dr. Deming podcast and impersonation. Not that I’m trying
to fuel any “Lean vs. Six Sigma” hooey, but Mike has a provocative
(don’t read it if an image of a noose or suicide imagery bothers
you) piece about the excesses of Six Sigma and those who push the
tools over common sense improvements. He particularly rants about
companies who are looking for “the belt” more so than real
experience or knowledge, as in this tale:

Another DOE expert is beaten by Six Sigma
A couple of years ago, my former mentor at the Saturn Corp., Philip
J. Ross, called me out of the blue and asked me how my business
was. His business was very slow at the time. Ross is an expert in
DOE and had authored the book, Taguchi Techniques for Quality
Engineering (McGraw-Hill Professional, 1995). He’s great
at resolving problems and preventing problems. I asked him if he had jumped on the Six Sigma
bandwagon and predictably, he said he hadn’t.

Now, one might think that Ross should have kept up with the
times and that it’s his own fault for his business suffering
because he didn’t change with the times. He may have
resisted, like I did.

However, I prefer to think of it as such. Companies out there are big fools for not
hiring an expert such as Ross to teach people the theory and
knowledge behind designed experiments to truly resolve and prevent
problems. Companies are big fools for falling onto the Six Sigma
bandwagon and setting targets for the number of Black Belts that
they have trained (so that the Black Belts can record it on
their resumes and jump ship), rather than obtaining the knowledge
to do true process improvement.

As with
similar stories, these types of excesses can be found with Lean
– companies who want to hire an employee or consultant with “Lean
certification” instead of knowing how to look for real Lean
knowledge or experience. Or worse, you find a hospital who wants a
Lean person with “DFSS experience required.” Do you really know
what you’re looking for, or is this just a laundry list of
buzzwords and empty “requirements?”