leangurus.com Blog » Service & Transactional Industries http://leangurus.com/blog The place for all of you Lean Gurus out there. Tue, 10 May 2011 00:36:12 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Master Black Belt Certification: http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/11/28/master-black-belt-certification/ http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/11/28/master-black-belt-certification/#comments Fri, 28 Nov 2008 22:39:31 +0000 Aaron http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/11/28/master-black-belt-certification/ I received an e-mail from Sharon de Courla-Souza, who is the head of Process Excellence, the Americas, for Tomson Reuters. She is on a quest to standardize master black belt (MBB) certification for her organization. She is proposing the following criteria, and would like members of the Financial Services Business Transformation roundtable to provide her with feedback on her criteria:

Projects Completed: 5
Projects Coached to Completion: 50
Classroom Training Received: 20 days BB + 20 days MBB
Classroom Training Delivered: 5 days
Written Exam: yes
Panel Interview: yes
Black Belt Experience: Minimum 2 years 

If you would like to respond, please send an e-mail to me or to sharon.decorla-souza @ thomson reuters.com.

]]> http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/11/28/master-black-belt-certification/feed/ 0 Lean in Government Article http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/11/28/lean-in-government-article/ http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/11/28/lean-in-government-article/#comments Fri, 28 Nov 2008 22:18:29 +0000 Aaron http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/11/28/lean-in-government-article/ Teresa McMahon who is the director of the State of Iowa Deparment of Management’s lean initiative sent me this link to her article that is located on LEI’s website: Lean Thinking In Government: State of Iowa . Theresa has spearheaded the Lean Government Collaborative which was formed with Six private companies that include members from Wells Fargo, Rockwell Collins, EDS, Pella Corp., John Deere, and the State of Iowa. If you are interested in joining her collaboration and have business operations in Iowa, please contact me or Teresa for more information on how to join her group.

]]> http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/11/28/lean-in-government-article/feed/ 0 Financial Services Lean Roundtable http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/07/06/financial-services-lean-roundtable/ http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/07/06/financial-services-lean-roundtable/#comments Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:11:13 +0000 Aaron http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/07/06/financial-services-lean-roundtable/ At the WCBF Six Sigma conference in Chicago I met Karim Houry who is the VP, Business Reengineering and Quality at the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation in New York, NY.  Karim sponsors a quarterly lean meeting called the “Financial Services Business Transformation Roundtable.” Attendees meet in person, but remote members can attend via a conference call and webinar. I have been invited to attend his upcoming meeting on July 10th at 9am EST in New York City and through the rest of the year. There are lean mgmt professionals representing the largest financial services companies in the United States including Wells Fargo, Citi, HSBC, Bank of NY Mellon, Edward Jones, Vanguard, Textron Financial, UBS, Bank of America, and many others. The meeting facilitator for the July 10th, 2008 meeting is Habs Moy, lean master blackbelt with the DTCC. If you are interested in attending please contact me and I will forward your information to Habs. Habs will then provide to you the web conference link and the phone number to dial in on. The Agenda for the meeting is:

  1. IBM on BPO trends and procurement outsourcing
  2. Tools and Methodologies (Morgan Stanley, DTCC, Merrill Lynch)
  3. Preview BMGI Lean survey results
  4. Plans for Q4 Meeting and 2009

I have spoken with Habs Moy, and I may be presenting at their Q4 meeting. I will post the meeting time and agenda for the Q4 when the details have been confirmed.

]]> http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/07/06/financial-services-lean-roundtable/feed/ 1 Process Improvement Help http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/05/04/process-improvement-help/ http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/05/04/process-improvement-help/#comments Sun, 04 May 2008 17:30:49 +0000 Aaron http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/05/04/process-improvement-help/ I have put together an outline of topics that are included in my continous process improvement course.
To view or download the outline click on the link below:
Course Syllabus (25k Word Document)

This course is designed to be completed in four 1 1/2 hour segments in a classroom or over the web. I also have a deep dive 3 day course that covers an introduction of continuous process improvement. Please contact me for more specifics.

]]> http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/05/04/process-improvement-help/feed/ 1 Six Sigma Presentation http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/05/04/six-sigma-presentation/ http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/05/04/six-sigma-presentation/#comments Sun, 04 May 2008 17:14:20 +0000 Aaron http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/05/04/six-sigma-presentation/ I had a great time presenting at WCBF’s Lean and Six Sigma Summit last week in Chicago. The presentation highlights a project we completed to improve a document sourcing and fulfillment process. If you want to view or download my presentation, please click the link below:

Lean Fulfillment at Financial Company (4.5 MB PPT File)

]]> http://leangurus.com/blog/2008/05/04/six-sigma-presentation/feed/ 0 Annual Lean Six Sigma Summit – Chicago http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/12/01/annual-lean-six-sigma-summit-chicago/ http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/12/01/annual-lean-six-sigma-summit-chicago/#comments Sat, 01 Dec 2007 18:00:26 +0000 Aaron http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/12/01/annual-lean-six-sigma-summit-chicago/ 4th Annual Lean Six Sigma Summit in Chicago,April 29 thru May 2 2008. The WCBF sponsored event: “4th Annual Six Sigma Summit” for leading experts and senior executives across industry passionate about quality and process excellence. I will be presenting at 1pm on Thursday May 1st, 2008. My presentation is in Track F, and is titled “Lean Fulfillment in Financial Services”. In my presentation you will learn how a financial services company implemented lean for their forms printing and fulfillment process. With over 30,000 retail dealer locations, Wells Fargo Financial has a big job in keeping the stores supplied with the right amount of credit applications and other consumer documents. Gain insight into how Six Sigma was used to improve quality and how lean was used to improve the entire forms management process throughout the supply chain:
View the Conference Brochure Here:
“Six Sigma Summit (500 KB)“

]]> http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/12/01/annual-lean-six-sigma-summit-chicago/feed/ 0 World Conference on Quality and Improvement http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/04/27/world-conference-on-quality-and-improvement/ http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/04/27/world-conference-on-quality-and-improvement/#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:54:42 +0000 Aaron http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/02/27/world-conference-on-quality-and-improvement/ April 30 – May 2, 2007, Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, Florida. The ASQ sponsored event: “World Conference on Quality and Improvement” is designed for all levels of quality practitioners. I will be co-presenting during session W17 at 9:30am on Wednesday, May 2nd with Bill Casey from Quest Diagnostics. The title of our presentation is “A Simple 10 Step Kaizen Method for Leaning a Service Process Flow.” The session will cover the successful implementation of a 10-step Kaizen event at Quest Diagnostics to facilitate quick improvements as well as provide another example from Wells Fargo.

]]> http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/04/27/world-conference-on-quality-and-improvement/feed/ 0 Lean Institute Training – Standard Work http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/03/05/lean-institute-training-standard-work/ http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/03/05/lean-institute-training-standard-work/#comments Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:37:40 +0000 Aaron http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/03/05/lean-institute-training-standard-work/ I had the opportunity to attend a two day training course put on by the Lean Enterprise Institute. This course was held at the Wells Fargo Imaging Production Facility in Eagan, MN in February 2007. The course highlighted the importance of being able to manage work and create standard tasks to reduce variability. This is an important concept of Lean: If the work processes are not standard then you cannot effectively measure and improve them. The instructor was Sammy Obara who is an associate with the Lean Enterprise Institute, and he is affiliated with HONSHA, which is a group of former engineers from Toyota. Sammy was very knowledgeable and he puts on a pretty good course. The only real criticism I found was that many of his examples were from Toyota that did not transfer well to service industry processes. However, if you are looking for a standard work course, his training is definitely thorough enough for most beginner to intermediate level Lean students.

]]> http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/03/05/lean-institute-training-standard-work/feed/ 1 2007 International Lean & Six Sigma Conference http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/01/26/2007-international-lean-six-sigma-conference/ http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/01/26/2007-international-lean-six-sigma-conference/#comments Sat, 27 Jan 2007 01:24:10 +0000 Aaron http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/04/26/2007-international-lean-six-sigma-conference/ February 27th – March 1, 2007, Orlando, Florida. The 2007 INTERNATIONAL LEAN & SIX SIGMA CONFERENCE is for intermediate to expert knowledge levels of Lean and Six Sigma. Many presentations will require a sound understanding of Six Sigma.

I will be presenting during Session 3 at 1:30pm on Wed, February 28th. The title of my presentation is “Finance Company uses Lean to Improve Document Retention.”

Abstract: Lean techniques were used to save a document retention operation that was drowning in paper because financial documents were arriving faster than the department could process. Lean methodology was adopted and all manual processes were evaluated for waste, redundancy, and necessity. As a result, capacity increased so much that all backlog was cleared. Customer service delays reduced from over 14 days to less than 24 hours. Cost savings were realized, as staffing levels were re-allocated to value added positions within the company.

]]> http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/01/26/2007-international-lean-six-sigma-conference/feed/ 0 Service Areas to Evaluate for Waste http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/01/08/service-areas-to-evaluate-for-waste/ http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/01/08/service-areas-to-evaluate-for-waste/#comments Mon, 08 Jan 2007 21:43:53 +0000 Aaron http://leangurus.com/blog/2007/05/08/service-areas-to-evaluate-for-waste/ The following processes are examples which could be examined for the application of Lean tools:

  • Generating and mailing documents
  • Processing paperwork such as credit applications
  • Servicing phone calls from branches
  • Complying with regulatory agencies
  • Conducting meetings

These represent general processes that exist in service or transactional organizations. The first step in a Lean company is to identify your opportunity for improvement.

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