Today is your last chance to join and get your Black Belt Certificate.

Why should you get your Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certificate? What is it worth?

• You are able to identify, select, prioritize and solve almost ANY kind of business process challenges for your company or for your clients and customers. Without prior industry knowledge I am executing successful Lean Six Sigma projects in manufacturing, service industry, maintenance industry, healthcare, finance, etc.
• Typical Black Belt projects deliver between $50,000 to $100,000 financial benefit depending on the size of the company. One of my Black Belt students is working on his first project with an expected financial savings of $1,000,000 on yearly base.
• Next to your freedom to choose where you want to work and the measurable impact of your work, you are able to teach others in the organization on the Lean Six Sigma methodology. Teaching and coaching of others is essential if you want to become a Black Belt because that is the multiplication of your impact.
• You as a Black Belt, will advise CEO’s and Directors of the Board. Once an organization experience the power and efficiency of Lean Six Sigma, they are going to be addicted to it. They want to apply it in everything they do. I train and advise Board of Directors in setting up their Strategic Plans because they want to make sure it it Lean Six Sigma proof.

If you are serious, and want to make a big step in your career, now you can.

We offer you 2 options:

Option 1: Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Training

This option is for those who are not able to execute a real project but want to learn the methodology on Black Belt level for possible future application.

After receipt of one time payment of 1997 USD, you get excess to the online training material. Passing the online test with 80% results will grant you the certification of completing the Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Training.

This is therefore a theoretical proof of your knowledge.

Option 2: Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certificate

This option if for you if you can execute an improvement project at an organization.

This is where you are going to demonstrate your proficiency in Lean Six Sigma. Next to the online training material with video’s, presentations, downloadable templates, etc, you get one-on-one coaching from me to ensure good results in the shortest possible time.

To get your certification, you are going to complete one project and coach someone on another project. Average lead time is 6 months for both, so 12 month in total.

The time requirement is about 20 hour study in total and weekly 2 hours meeting with your project team.

The price of this program is 3997 USD. You can chose to pay in 12 periods of 340 USD each.
While you are still in process of paying monthly, you are already achieving significant improvements as you progress with project under my supervision.

One of my Black Belt students is about to finish his project with a financial savings of 1 milion USD per year. So that is a very good return on investment, right?

How does it work?

If you join, we are going to work closely together like this:

• I help you choose your first project and set up your project team – this is a crucial point for your success
• Next, you study the 1st module
• Send all your questions to me by email
• I answer you within 1 business day so you do not have any delays
• You meet with your team to apply the material of the module 1
• If you have questions, again, you send them to me
• Once a month (= once per module) we have a Skype consultation to discuss you project
• You continue with module 2
• etc.

This is how I work with my private clients and big accounts and it is proven to be very effective in the past  years.

How about guarantees?

Furthermore, we always provide our customers with a performance guarantee. For this program I offer double guarantee:

1. After the first month, you can decide to stop and you get your money back.

2. I also guarantee you that your project savings will at least be twice the amount of your investment. Otherwise I give your money back. This requires that you follow up my advice and prove that by sending me your project documentation.

It is obvious that I take the risk off your shoulder, therefore I will work closely with you starting with careful project selection.

What do you need to do now?

Just send an email today to peter.herku@gmail.com saying you want to join our certification program.

I will contact you and discuss the next steps.

We are going to start TODAY (January 16th, 2012).

Warm regards,

Peter

        +31 55 737 00 02

Consultation

What is your plan for next year?

Are you still in your current job? Do you like it?

Or would you like to make a big step in your career. Maybe you are tired of the daily hassle and you would like to do something totally different.

You’ve spent maybe 5-10-20 years in your industry but you just cannot imagine yourself retiring from your current job.

It is not that you hate your work but you would like new challenges.  Maybe in a different industry.

Money may be important, but it’s not your primary motivation. Perhaps you’re satisfied with your current salary of $35,000 – $ 70,000 but you see the limitations. Earning $ 100 K is a little out of reach for now.

Getting out of your current job and do something really different with an reasonable $100 K or  more is actually what you want.

But how to get there?

You might be paralyzed by the idea of going for a business education program like MBA (Master of Business Administration).

You just don’t have $20,000 – $30,000 to spend and 3 or more years to study and HOPE you can monetize your efforts once…

Personally I would prefer something quicker, practical and cheaper…

I was in the same situation a few years ago.

While studied Chemical Engineering, working for 12 years in Finance, completing my MBA to broaden my chances…still I was not happy.

After getting my Black Belt Certification in Lean Six Sigma doors went open.

And you can get certified as a Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma in 1/3 of the time for 87% less

Actually even during my Black Belt training I was exposed to ALL kinds of business problems that had absolutely nothing to do with my prior education nor with my working experience.

My very first Lean Six Sigma project was in production: reduce size variation of a semi-finished product made of yarn.

• I have never learnt about how to produce that semi finished product
• I have never worked together on a specific project with machine operators
• I have never been exposed to solving a production problem

Applying Lean Six Sigma method, following the 5 phases (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) I was able to achieve significant improvements in 6 months:

• Variation in spiral size reduced for both width and thickness with resp. 26% and 42%
• Defect rate reduced from 21% to 4% (target was: 7%)
• Process was simplified
• Hard savings: $112,500 per year

Do you want to learn Lean Six Sigma and enjoy the freedom to solve almost ANY business problems without any prior knowledge or experience?

Join the Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certification Program starting on 16th of January 2012

Would you like to know more about the certification program, send me your question to peter.herku@gmail.com

Warm regards,

Peter

        +31 55 737 00 02

Consultation

If you want to …

• learn more about Lean Six Sigma (LSS),
• to evaluate whether it was something which would be beneficial to your job search, and
• specifically to discuss a job interview for a position requiring someone with LSS background.

Here’s your chance for a Free 45 minutes consultation with me.

Apply here:

http://peterherku.com/free-consultation/

There is no catch and no future obligation to purchase anything now or in the future.

This 45 minute free consultation will give you information to see how and where you can improve your organization…along with what results to expect.

This is what a recent client said about it:

“You responded very quickly, were extremely helpful in sharing general information about Lean Six Sigma (LSS) and also specific examples related to the healthcare field; also with your time for an extended telephone conversation to find out exactly what my needs were and explain how knowledge of LSS could benefit my career search. 

You went above and beyond by reviewing the job description, anticipating what issues may be involved with the position which LSS could help with, and giving me feedback on questions to ask on the interview.

As far as I’m concerned, your assistance was perfect and you went above and beyond.  I cannot see any improvement needed.

You are so very personable and approachable – not just a website to review or not just a generic email response. You seem to be such a genuine person!”

Theresa A. Eury, Mars, PA

http://peterherku.com/free-consultation/

Warm regards,

Peter

        +31 55 737 00 02

Consultation

Today I will show you how to treat “over-orientation”.

Case Study: Improving Planning

Some weeks ago I started coaching a Lean Six Sigma project team on improving planning efficiency.

This company is a provider of special training and education programs for blind or visual disabled clients. There program consists of more than 35 modules, highly tailor-made, and planned by 11 individual departments.

The current situation:

1. The planning of the programs is very time consuming work
2. The customers have lots of waiting time (waste!) before and during the training program,
3. The trainers have frequently unproductive hours
4. The program takes almost always longer than expected (bad on-time-delivery performance)

This company was trying everything they could to improve the situation but it went out hand. It was too complex and became even more complex each time they came together to solve the problem.

Customer Oriented…Really?

In their effort to provide their clients a flexible, tailor-made program, they were lost and bound by all the constraints.

I told them that being customer oriented means providing the best possible service not only to the customer in front of you but to all others as well and even to those waiting to be served.

When trying to solve this planning issue the company was mainly focusing on their own point of view: how can we satisfy all the departments, what are the personal requirements of the trainers, what is the best timing for them to provide with training.

Looking inward combined with all the individual requests of the clients made the problem even more difficult to solve.

My advice: Focus

I advised the team to look at this problem from the customers’ point of view.

-          What do they experience?

-          What do they miss?

-          What is their CTS Tree (critical to satisfaction)?

-          Where is the imbalance between quality, time and cost/effort for the clients as they receive their training program?

Concentrating on the output first, trying to quantify its current level (baseline) keeps the team from getting lost right at the beginning.

The team initially had identified 8 metrics to measure the effectiveness of the planning activities. I advised to focus on a maximum of 2 (waiting times and on-time-delivery) to eliminate the overwhelm.

Focusing on only a few but vital issues during the rest of the project execution will ensure quick results within 3 to 5 months and significant reduction of waiting times – normally between 30% to 50% reduction.

Less waiting times, therefore shorter total lead times per customer increases the capacity of this company without investing in resources.

Do you want to achieve more with your current employees and machines?

Is your team looking at the issues from the customers’ point of view?

And are you focused on the on a limited number of vital metrics?

Let me know your stories.  Please share your stories, comments, and questions below.

Peter

        +31 55 737 00 02

Consultation

“Author of Profitable Empowerment”

“When I subscribed I wanted to learn  how to solve any problem through the methodology. Now that I am busy with the first project, I am definitely learning to use Lean Six Sigma methodology with the presentations and  following the different steps with Peter’s comments and recommendations.

Now I see the key issue is to get use to see and analyze things through another perspective.  Be very focused, specific and concrete during  the discussions with the team.”

But what does she mean by “see things through another perspective”?

Lean Six Sigma makes you look at your daily work differently.

Part of the methodology is that your colleagues are also your customers. Their satisfaction depends on the balance between:

1. The quality you deliver to them (critical to quality = CTQ)
2. The timeliness of your delivery, and (critical to delivery = CTD)
3. The costs or efforts they have to “pay” for your delivery (critical to costs = CTC)

We call this a CTS Tree (critical to satisfaction). If one is missing, there is no satisfaction. Your Lean Six Sigma PROJECT can work on and improve the situation.

If you are struggling to find your first Lean Six Sigma project, just listen to your customers and find out where the imbalance is between quality, time and costs.

The “another perspective” is to look at yourself and your work through the eye of your customers. You are not inward looking but outward looking. It is not about you, you, and you.  It’s about constantly seeking the right balance for more customer satisfaction.

My wife sometimes gets crazy with me because I look at everyday situations from a Lean Six Sigma point of view.

When you start working with Lean Six Sigma you automatically look at situations differently.

-         In the restaurant when you wait longer (CTD) or the meal does not taste (CTQ)

-         In a shop if you pay too much (CTC)

-         At the dentist where you have to wait too long (CTD)

-         At your work where somebody gives you a report too late (CTD) and with mistakes (CTQ)

Do you see it? Can you identify similar issues in your work?

Leave a reply below of your experiences at work or in daily life that apply to these principles.  I’m looking forward to your comments.

Warm regards,
Peter

M.Sc. Peter Herku MBA, Lean Six Sigma Coach

        +31 55 737 00 02

        +31 655 30 10 94

Furthermore, Lean Six Sigma Herku Method is not only transferrable between different industries but it is successfully applicable in all areas’ of your business such as in sales, in marketing, in production, in administration or in human resources.

Why to Be Concerned About Setup Time?

First let’s look at setup time.

Setup time is mainly known in the manufacturing environment. Reduction of setup time – the time required to change from one activity or process to another – provides you with …

-         Higher equipment utilization

-         Increased productivity

-         Lower waiting times

-         Lower batch sizes

-         Reduced inventory

-         Increased capacity

-         More flexibility

Setup time is non-value-adding time; therefore its reduction should be your primary concern.

How to Reduce Setup Time?

Without going into much detail, one of the best way to reduce setup time is to move internal activities (those that require the production activity to be stopped) to external activities (tasks that can be done while running production).

Only the separation of internal and external activities will help you reducing your setup time by 50% with zero additional costs.

Learn more about setup time reduction at http://www.LeanSixSigmaBelts.com/

How to Apply This in HRM?

Improving the training and orientation period of new employee is very important because you are able to deliver the right quality quickly without losing too much of production.

The team also identified that site tour – showing new employee around the workplace, introducing ever important aspect of the work, to show where to find what – is an important part of the training.

The team admitted, that due to time pressure, even such simple yet very important element, is often not completed during the first days of the program.

This led me to ask the question: How much is such site tour different from one occasion to another? Should the site tour be different for the employees of the same job occupation?

The answer was: NO, and if it does, it is not preferred.

That was the trigger to separate the internal and external activities during the training period of a new employee.

While site tour was an internal activity (it was held during production time, therefore reducing productivity) we agreed to make it an external activity.

We are going to shoot several video’s showing around the workplace, explaining all the necessary details that the new employee should know. The video will be put on DVD and/or placed on the secured website of the company.

The new employee will receive the DVD/access during last interview with his/her boss and HR Manager.

The employee is then required to watch those videos and be prepared before he/she starts on the first day.

No live site tour will be held but of course any specific questions will be answered by the mentor (responsible person to carry out the planned introduction).

Advantages and tangible results of improving training of new employees

-         Increased productivity (due to reduction of lost production)

-         Increased and constant quality due to standardized introduction (video is always the same)

-         More detailed information is available (since watching the video is outside production time, so you can provide more valuable information compared to the life site tour)

-         New employee is more confident from day 1 because he/she is already familiar with the workplace and got the related information required to do his/her job well

-         Training period will be shorter because the employee will be able to do his/her job with less supervision faster

To tell you the truth, the above project was done in a Healthcare company but you can see it is equally applicable in Manufacturing, IT, Government, Energy, Real-Estate or Finance.

Do you want to learn how to increase your productivity by 50% and – more importantly – how to do it even with your less motivated colleagues? You can learn it in 30% faster, guaranteed.

Warm regards,

Peter

M.Sc. Peter Herku MBA, Lean Six Sigma Coach

        +31 55 737 00 02

        +31 655 30 10 94

Topics:

1. Why Lean Six Sigma?
2. How to Start Using Lean Sigma?
3. Where Should Government Focus On?
4. What Could Be A Good Mission Statement For Deploying Lean Six Sigma?

You can listen to this 40 minutes discussion here (skip the fist  1 min. commercial):

Warm regards,

Peter

• How to scope your improvement project using 80/20 rule (Pareto-law)?
• Why cleaning up your data essential before you can solve any problems with Lean Six Sigma?
• What are the common issues in companies, organization and institutions, etc. holding them back?

Background

“First you have to learn walking before you can run.” This is even true for Lean Six Sigma – and other – improvement projects.

At one of my clients we have started a project to reduce the number of incident. Whether you are working in manufacturing, service industry, government or healthcare, etc. you always have occurrence of unpleasant event. Just think about injuries, mistakes, faults, scrap, incomplete information, etc.

In our specific situation it was about unwanted events that could cause injuries by patients.

Because there was a lot of data available about incidents, we thought we could quickly improve the situation.

But we had to do some homework first…

Too Many Incidents?

Just like with every Lean Six Sigma project we do, we try to describe the problem and scope the project as small as possible by answering questions like these:

- How many incidents were registered in the last period?

- What kind of incidents was registered?

The above graph show us that fall incidents (when a patient had injuries due to a fall) has contributed for 70% to the Total number of incidents last year.

So we were about to focus ONLY on fall incidents.

Furthermore, because the whole organization consisted of different units, we investigated the Pareto-distribution (like above) of the fall incidents per organizational unit (let’s call them locations).

Location 3 was chosen to focus our improvement efforts because it had the highest number of fall incidents reported last year.

Typical Mistake #1: Project Scope

If you want to achieve measurable improvement in short period of time, it is crucial to scope your project well.

You only need to apply the 80/20 principle (Pareto-law) just like I have done in above example.

Not scoping your project small will cost you time and motivation. This is the number 1 reason why improvement projects give up without delivering any tangible benefit.

In our current example our project is focusing on the reduction of fall incidents at Location 3.

What Are the Causes?

Using the data of the fall registration system we could analyze and split up the fall incidents per reason. See below graph on Location 3.

The distribution of fall incidents per reason shows that in 60% of the cases the reason is unknown. This led us to the 2^nd common mistake.

Typical Mistake #2: Quality of Data

The high percentage of unknown incidents has surprised the team. Unfortunately the figures were the same for all the other locations.

We started investigating the individual fall incidents by studying the information registered by the employee.

Interestingly, in many situations we could find real reasons of the fall although the employee registered the incident as “Reason Unknown”.

It was obvious: the registration – thus the data quality itself – needs to be improved FIRST before we could do anything to reduce the number of fall incidents.

Data first, analyzes second.

Like someone said: “Good data is better than excellent analysis.”

This helped our team to scope or project even smaller:

“Reduce fall incidents with reason “unknown” at Location 3”

Typical Mistake #3: Register to register

Going through the individual incidents and re-classifying them based on the included information, we could reduce the number from 60% to 19% for the situation where reasons were unknown.

We realized: employees do not know exactly how to register and why to register. They just do the work their managers have asked them to do.

What is missing often? Explanation on…

- Why is it important to register the incident carefully including as many information as possible?

- How to complete the registration?

- What are we going to do with the data?

This later one brings us to the 4^th typical mistake.

Typical Mistake #4: Registration Is Not Equal To ACTION

Many employees – I see it often in Healthcare – have many administrative tasks. In our example employees had to deal with 3 different kind of admin systems in connection with the incidents.

What was missing? Action. Doing actually something with the data to reduce / avoid incidents occurring again.

Due to many administrative tasks employees do not have time left to do something with the data, to improve the situation.

And this is exactly why we use Lean Six Sigma.

Do you want to finally change and improve your work?

>> You can learn how to do it yourself or

>> Get a helping hand by calling +31 55 737 00 02

Going back to our example, the employees of Location 3 got an extensive training on how to register and what we are going to do with the data. They clearly understood: without their commitment our improvement team is not able to find solutions.

Everybody got the message.

Everybody was happy to get a clear explanation.

Everybody understood the importance of change.

Result in 4 Months

We were able to dramatically reduce the number of unknown fall incidents from 60% down to 17% just in 4 Months time. Our goal is to stay under 10% and we can achieve that for sure.

Now we can start a new project that concentrates on the reduction of fall incidents.

First we had to learn walking but now we can start running.

Warm regards,

Peter

“Download the drawing with right-click”

Warm regards,

Peter

Recently I had my regular coaching session with one of my Green Belt student. Let’s call her Jess (not herreal name).
Jess was having a hard time with her project due to the following 3 important reasons. Pay attention tothese 3 elements and you will have an easy time completing your Lean Six Sigma project.

Key #1: Problem Owner Absence

Jess has been working on reducing workload of the Sales Department. This project was initiated by theDepartment Manager, but he was not regularly visiting the team sessions held by Jess.

This caused Jess to have to balance between the opinions of her team (consisting of Sales Managers) andthe Department Manager.

I advised Jess to avoid this problem by inviting the Department Manager (Problem Owner) to everyproject team meeting. Jess should not play the role of “postmen” saving time and improving thecommunication.

I told Jess that the high workload is NOT HER PROBLEM but of the Department Manager. He has tomake it clear to the team why is this a problem that must be fixed.

If you are a Green Belt or Black Belt project manager, make sure that the problem you work on is not yourproblem. The Problem Owner (who is responsible for the part of the operation that needs to be improved)should be 100% involved in the Lean Six Sigma project.

Key #2: Ask Questions Instead of Telling What to Do

Jess was – just like I used to be – very keen on preparing herself for the meeting with facts, figures andcharts in order to convince the project team about the problem.

She collected Voice of the Customer information, time registration forms, made nice analyses out of it todemonstrate that the first most important task of the Sales Team, issuing quotations timely, was poorlydone.

I advised Jess not to spend too much time in preparation of the charts and her presentation but spend moretime on thinking about what QUESTIONS could she ask from the team.
When you ask questions, you create awareness and active participation of the team. Team members try toanswer your questions, so they have to think about it and they discuss it with each other.

In this way you are working constructive with the team and the members convince themselves instead ofyou trying to convince them.

Telling people what they should do creates a defensive reaction and puts you in conflict with one anotherinstead of working together.

Key #3: Change is Required.

It should be clear right from the beginning: Lean Six Sigma project will find a solution to the problem.

Meaning: the way this Sales Team used to work has to change. CHANGE IS UNAVOIDABLE.

Jess – and every Green Belt and Black Belt – needs the support of the Problem Owner at this point.
Explain this to the team right at the very beginning of the project – and even before the start.Shange isgoing to come if we are working on a real problem. (Of course, if there is no problem then nothing has tochange.)

Because the Sales Team in Jess’ project did not want to change the way they work, no significantimprovements could be expected. And that is not good.

Solution? The Problem Owner has to make it clear: the Sales Mangers have to change the way they work.The current lead time for sending quotations and the quality of the quotations is not acceptable.

So again, be very clear about one thing: change is not an option but a logical consequence of the Lean SixSigma project work.

Are you working on a (Lean Six Sigma) project and want to be sure you are taking the right steps?

There are coaching seats available for you.
Warm regards,
Peter