Overall savings will depend on the size of the deployment e.g. how many Six Sigma projects you can run and the size of your resource in terms of trained Black Belts and Green Belts. The level of maturity of your Six Sigma people will also have a bearing, for example newly trained people will typically start with ‘learner projects’ through which they can apply the tools and methodology on less complex and pressured process problems which may deliver lower levels of benefits than can be achieved by experienced belts.
Typical benefits delivered by mature belts would be as follows:
- Black Belts (full time) – £100k to £150k per project with the potential to run around four projects concurrently
- Green Belts (part time) – around £75k per project usually run sequentially
So in order to estimate benefits you will need to consider the following:
- The number and type of projects you can run
- The number of belts you can sustain on the programme
- The experience of the belts
- The ‘transferability’ of benefits from project throughout the organization
Finally, as with all improvement approaches ‘where you are starting from’ will influence your potential i.e. What is your process baseline performance? How much ‘low hanging fruit’ is there? What levels of performance are you targeting?
There are many examples of Six Sigma benefits across a range of sectors and industries. Motorola and GE are the most famous Six Sigma companies and their accounts will demonstrate significant benefits over the last 10 years. A summary of some companies is shown below:
- Allied Signal – Cost Savings Exceeding $800m annually
- General Electric - $2bn savings annually
- Network Rail - £27m in 2005
- Visteon - $100,000 per project
- EEV - £700,000 on £100m turnover in 2000
- Marconi Optical Components - £250,000 savings on £30m turnover in 2001
- General Domestic Appliances - £7.8m in 2000