Business Process Improvement Using Lean Six Sigma and Performance Metrics

All organizations are facing pressure to improve complex processes that are slow, error-ridden, costly, and maybe most importantly, frustrating to end-users and process workers alike. Process improvement, or continuous improvement, is not just for production and high-volume work centers. In this applied program, the emphasis will be to prepare you to tackle and succeed in improving your most demanding and poorly performing processes in a systematic, repeatable, and data-driven way.

This program will explore the five-step process improvement problem solving methodology known as DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) as well as the popular Lean/Kaizen Event methodology. At the end of the program, you’ll be able to diagnose process performance for the four common workplace inefficiencies as well as use data-driven and group problem solving tools to unearth root causes to poor performance. Finally, you’ll be able to identify, prioritize, and choose solutions that best meet customer and organizational needs.

Not only does this program prepare you for continuous improvement back at the organization, but it helps prepare the organization for a repeatable and consistent way to identify and execute on-going process improvement work. Whether it’s to augment the organization’s existing toolkits for process improvement, or to take all the tools and templates provided in the program to build a continuous improvement approach from ground-up, this program provides you with resources needed for long-term success.

• Practice facilitation, analysis, and project management skills needed for continuous improvement project work
• Exposure to a variety of processes across industries, government, and not-for-profit settings to increase your ability to perform data-driven problem solving
• Work on strategies and approaches to develop buy-in, manage change resistance, and deal with conflict common when improving any complex and poorly performing system
• Use evidence-based research to help with scoping and managing continuous improvement projects
• Learn from CI professionals on when to use, or not use, a particular problem-solving tool
• Practice insider “pro-tips” for group-based problem solving

• Operations managers, supervisors, or functional workgroup leaders
• Business analysts, project managers, or quality professionals and engineers
• Customer-facing professionals in transactional or regulatory environments, process improvement teams, or process workers