Six Sigma Consultant
As a business owner, you have identified couple of business processes which are under-performing from the objective of Customer Satisfaction and company productivity. You know that reengineering your processes with Six Sigma methodologies will be the best solution but you do not have trained resources. Six Sigma consultants will alleviate this burden on your head by either training your resources on Six Sigma techniques or scoping and implementing the project all by themselves.
Hiring a Six Sigma Consultant - The green and the grey side
Green Side
- Six Sigma consultants are professionals who have specialized in Six Sigma tools and methodologies. Outsourcing your function of having a Six Sigma project implemented by a set of experts may work absolutely fine for you, especially considering when you do not have trained resources.
- Six Sigma consultants can either be freelancers or they can be a Six Sigma company. You could decide to hire either of them depending on the complexity and the criticality of the business process. Either ways, they will save on the cost required to train your employees on Six Sigma tools.
- Consultants save a lot of your time. Imagine, if you had to improve a process which is impacting customer satisfaction levels in a big way, you would want an immediate and fast remedy. By having trained consultants work on the process improvement mechanism, you would effectively eliminate training and transition times for resources who have been just trained in Six Sigma.
Grey Side
- Lack of product knowledge - A Six Sigma consultant company may have the knowledge of Six Sigma tools and methods, but he may not have the conceptual product knowledge which a resource in your company may have. This may turn out to be critical in process improvement plans where understanding of the product is the key.
- Knowledge enhancement of your resources - By outsourcing Six Sigma projects to a Six Sigma company, you are cutting down on an option for the employees to learn the Six Sigma methodologies. This may prove critical when your business ramps up and you have more business processes to be optimized.
A lot of companies have worked around the green and the grey side of employing a Six Sigma consultant by working out innovative strategies. Some companies have insisted on including a set of resources from the company to get involved with the consultants at times of scoping and implementing the project. Some companies have started identifying non-critical processes and give targets for resources to work on after preliminary training in Six Sigma methodologies.
There are many arguments on both sides of the river as to which method works best. For now, the answers are inconclusive. Irrespective of the method, it does provide benefits to the company.