Why are So Many Businesses Abandoning Formal Problem-Solving Projects for Complex Issues?

When you ask most six-sigma green or black belts how many projects they have led now invariably the answer is “the one project that they used to become certified”. Of course, this significantly diminishes the return on investment for receiving the training, which is very expensive. If the companies paying for the training are not utilizing the Shainin or Six Sigma knowledge throughout the year to solve the problems, it is difficult to justify the training in the first place. My experience is that in some cases upper management is not aware that each certified problem solver should have projects throughout the year. This not only adds to the bottom line but expands problem-solving training to those who participate on teams including supervisors, technicians and operators.

Another contributor to formal problem-solving diminishing is the focus on Continuous Improvement or CI teams. Many times, leaders will conflate these concepts to the same process. Many times, CI leaders know very little about formal problem solving so the focus tends to be on cycle times and layouts rather than defect reduction. In addition, company leaders want to easily see a spreadsheet on CI projects but have difficulty visualizing problem solving project savings which can miss the hidden cost related to customer charges, expedited shipping, sorting etc.

In summary, company leaders believe that the process, product and tooling, engineers are all- knowing and can solve any issue without thinking twice when the problems expensively last months and years. The engineers tend to try to analyze each variable and not focus on those that give the best data to purposely step toward the root cause/ Red “X”. It was Dorian Shanin that stated, “Talk to the parts”. He believed they were smarter than the engineers.