Roles and Responsibilities
(Please refer to the figure below)
Six Sigma Organizational
Architecture
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Quality Leader/Manager
(QL/QM) - The quality leaders’s
responsibility is to represent the needs of the
customer and to improve the operational effectiveness
of the organization. The Quality function is typically
separated from the manufacturing or transactional
processing functions in order to maintain impartiality.
The quality manager sits on the CEO/President’s
staff, and has equal authority to all other direct
reports.
Master Black Belt (MBB) - Master
Black Belts are typically assigned to a specific
area or function of a business or organization.
It may be a functional area such as human resources
or legal, or process specific area such as billing
or tube rolling. MBBs work with the owners of
the process to ensure that quality objectives
and targets are set, plans are determined, progress
is tracked, and education is provided. In the
best Six Sigma organizations, process owners and
MBBs work very closely and share information daily.
Process Owner (PO) - Process
owners are exactly as the name sounds—they
are the responsible individuals for a specific
process. For instance, in the legal department
there is usually one person in charge—maybe
the VP of Legal—that’s the process
owner. There may be a chief marketing officer
for your business—that’s the process
owner for marketing. Depending on the size of
your business and core activities, you may have
process owners at lower levels of your organizational
structure. If you are a credit card company with
processes around billing, accounts receivable,
audit, billing fraud, etc., you wouldn’t
just have the process owner be the chief financial
officer, you would want to go much deeper into
the organization where the work is being accomplished
and you can make a big difference.
Black Belt (BB) - Black Belts are
the heart and soul of the Six Sigma quality initiative.
Their main purpose is to lead quality projects and work
full time until they are complete. Black Belts can typically
complete four to six projects per year with savings
of approximately $230,000 per project . Black Belts
also coach Green Belts on their projects, and while
coaching may seem innocuous, it can require a significant
amount of time and energy.
Green Belt (GB) - Green
Belts are employees trained in Six Sigma who spend a
portion of their time completing projects, but maintain
their regular work role and responsibilities. Depending
on their workload, they can spend anywhere from 10%
to 50% of their time on their project(s). As your Six
Sigma quality program evolves, employees will begin
to include the Six Sigma methodology in their daily
activities and it will no longer become a percentage
of their time—it will be the way their work is
accomplished 100% of the time.
Now we know how some companies have organizationally
structured their Six Sigma quality program. But how
do you ensure that everyone’s doing their job?
How do you keep your employees motivated when fires
are burning all over the corporate landscape.
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