Lean / 6 Sigma / 5 S Etc...

[broken_legs]

Just wondering how many of you beyonders use this stuff at work regularly.

I used to work an engineering desk jo in a manufacturing plant and we had to learn all of this, now I work in oilfield services and my new company is beating the Lean war drum pretty loud. I tink i have a chance to get some actual qualifications that I could bring with me to another job, but im not sure if its worth my time.

Do any of you have actual Lean or 6 sigma professional courses or designations?

Does your company put a high priority on knowing this kind of stuff?


Thanks

[Antonito]

From what I've seen, if companies have the system already in place then it's an ace up your sleeve as far as employability. If they don't have the system and have no serious plans to bring it in, then they could care less

[TimG]

we use it. total frickin disaster, but i suspect that's more the implementation and management than Lean.

i'm ready to kill someone when i hear kaizen blitz at the office...

[PaleRider]

L6S was the flavor of the year in 2009 at my work place. I never finished yellow belt course even though it's only a few hours. Another reason is that I've never seen any IT job posting that asks for L6S so I don't really have to drive to get it, unlike ITIL. Yellow belt is trivial, IIRC anything beyond yellow belt requires real project experience and a mentor/sponsor...

[BlackArcher101]

Company uses 6 sigma, however the term "use" is open to intrepretation. The goal is to get employees at least their green belts, but the projects are never implemented and seem to be a waste of time.

[QuasarCav]

I've had much the same experience as the other posters. It was pushed hard in 08-09 but seems to have died off at the executive level after restructuring.

I received my Green Belt in March 08 but I wouldn't say it's used a whole lot in daily operations. There is a global group of 6S that work on projects and that is really where the skills come out.

[TimG]

There is a local "Lean Consortium" of manufacturers. seems like an excuse to take afternoons off to tour other company's production floors.

[TimG]

if you're still interested in this stuff, i heard thru the grapevine at the office that there's a 5s training course happening in the near future in town.

[Sugarphreak]

...

[deee_wreck]

Bumping an OLD thread.

I'm interested in taking the Green Belt to see if it is applicable and value added to my career. Trying to find something out of the "box" essentially

I'm curious to know if there reputable places to take the training in Alberta.


The only ones google pulls up are :
- NAIT (http://www.nait.ca/program_home_82962.htm)
- Simplilearn (http://www.simplilearn.com/)
- http://goproductivity.ca/workshops/lean-six-sigma/

I was given a budget of $2000 to spend only.

:dunno:

[zooter]

I can share my experience as someone who is a trained SS BB.

You will find it difficult to utilize SS in the O&G industry. SS/Lean is prevalent in the petrochemical and chemical industries, but formalized SS programs in O&G production companies is non existent.

SS works best and is easy to implement for transactional processes. Accounting, supply chain, procurement, HR (to some extent) etc. can adopt SS much quicker than an engineering department. When you want to apply SS to complex engineering problems, you begin to touch upon programs like DFSS (design for six sigma).

From a manufacturing standpoint, there is still a lot of value in the program. Reducing waste in manufacturing process will always have its merits. In O&G, I would say LEAN has more value as its quicker and easier to implement.

I was trained by my company many years ago (Large, Fortune 500 petrochemical company) so all of the training and investment was in-house as they had a large, formalized global SS/LEAN program.

Personally, I did not see the value in identifying SS projects, and trying to go through all the steps in DMAIC / DFSS. The real value in my opinion was learning how to use the statistical analysis tools and applying those in my every day job. Being able to take date, find correlations, perform multi-variate analysis is much more valuable than having a large group of people trying to roll-out a formalized SS program.

[jwslam]

BUMP

Considering this course:
http://www.sixsigmaonline.org/lean-six-sigma
$545USD and all it is is 10 online exams.

Any other easy options?

[haggis88]

http://www.msicertified.com/

These guys offer the Six Sigma courses too

I signed up for one of their free offers a long time back and get discount coupons through email regularly...i think they were offering the Black Belt course for like $99.99USD at one point, so might be worth signing up!

[legendboy]

The co i worked at for 10 years brought lean in hardcore about 6 years in. It was a complete nightmare.

Depending on the nature of the business they can work well or complete fail.

I think we stuck with it for a year and quit. I do miss doing morning stretches tho haha

[n1zm0]

6ó is an entire separate division in my company, while we're all at the very least green belt certified, I noticed it's being used less and less overall but for the higher up brass it's implemented a fair amount to mitigate newly discovered high-level problems (depending on the division manager as well tbh, some hate using it) or especially departments involving contracts or procurement.

People tend to more easily just find root cause analysis to fix issues on a more common level, rather than go through all the steps; find a sponsor/stakeholders, what is the value delivery etc.

On a support subordinate level I find it isn't always necessary, then again we have more than enough procedure docs to guide us through our job.

I think it's a good certification to acquire to say you have (on a resume) but I don't know if I'd use it in another company personally.