Abstract:

Designing, developing and delivering training can be a slow process, taking precious time to produce a learning product and instilling that information in your target audience. Most training organizations follow the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate) model or some variation, to accomplish their training objectives. It’s inevitable that over time these processes pick up extra steps or veer off on sub-tasks, extending the path, bloating, until we are left with an unrecognizable process that is more complicated and much slower, impacting your organization’s performance.

That was us a few years ago, before we decided it was time to go on a diet. Looking for ways to help us improve our training we turned to the ideals of Lean process improvement to identify waste, and Six Sigma for process variation reduction. Using the Lean Six Sigma processes, we aim to slim down our time to market and improve our training quality and efficiency. It started with a detailed mapping of the as-is process, to get the full scope of the task before us. Using the tools of Lean Six Sigma, the DOWNTIME model to pinpoint wasteful activities, describing the causes using the Fishbone diagram followed by a pen dot vote (80/20 rule), and applying the five whys to determine the root causes. With this data we brainstormed solutions and used the benefit matrix to prioritize the implementation of solutions that would improve quality and performance. After implementing many of our solutions we started measuring our successes, seeing increases in certification scores, and a shorter time to deliver our training products.

This paper gives you an overview of how utilizing a Lean Six Sigma process can help successfully improve performance in training organizations and pinpoint wasteful activities where you can immediately improve quality, cost, and time.

Keywords: BEST PRACTICES;ENHANCING PERFORMANCE;TRAINING

Mike Thorpe

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Find Waste, Improve Quality and Deliver Better Training