e-Zsigma August 2003 Newsletter
Six Sigma SpotLight:Bruce Miyashita, VP Six Sigma, Maple Leaf Foods |
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Six Sigma SpotLight is a regular feature of the e-Zsigma newsletter, and allows us to introduce one of the global six sigma community's superstars. Bruce Miyashita, Vice President of Six Sigma at Maple Leaf Foods, is one such star. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with sales of $5.0 billion in 2002, Maple Leaf Foods Inc. employs 14,000 people across its global operations which span Canada, USA, Europe and Asia. Maple Leaf is a leading food processing company committed to delivering quality food products to consumers around the world. Earlier in his career, Mr. Miyashita's has held positions at IBM as well as the highly-respected management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company. For the past seven years, as a result of his roles at Bombardier and Maple Leaf Foods, Bruce has been a major contributor to the development of Six Sigma as it is known today. Through his work with Six Sigma Academy™, he has advised corporations including American Express, DuPont, and Johnson Controls in their deployments of Six Sigma. In addition, Bruce has designed, written, and delivered Six Sigma training ranging from one-day introductions, executive programs, one-week "Green Belt" courses, as well as "Black Belt" training, and has hired, trained, and coached over 500 Black Belts. Bruce holds an undergraduate degree from the Arts & Science Program of McMaster University, with majors in mathematics and history, as well as an MBA from the University of Western Ontario. We have had the privilege of knowing and working with Bruce since his early days at transportation giant, Bombardier Inc., where as Vice President Six Sigma, he launched their Six Sigma deployment - one of the early implementations in our global community's short and exciting Six Sigma history. e-Zsigma is delighted to be able to share with you our recent interview with Bruce Miyashita. -------------------------------- 1. News: "The first time we met, Bruce, was in 1998 when you were a member of the leadership team deploying Six Sigma at Bombardier in their Aerospace division. Now, you have reprised that senior leadership role at Maple Leaf Foods. What were some of the 'lessons learned' that you were able to apply at Maple Leaf to improve on their Six Sigma deployment? Was there a model that you could follow?" 1. Bruce: "They are very different companies, so you are naturally going to have very different deployments. Even if you did things perfectly in one company, you wouldn't necessarily replicate that in another. Keep in mind that also that, over time - since 1998, there has been a lot of development around Six Sigma - it really has changed a lot… the levels of sophistication and understanding - somewhat so in Canada and much in the United States. Then there were the deployment lessons learned… One change was that very early on, Michael McCain and I fell into the idea - which has only grown stronger and more powerful in our minds, that there is this link between Leadership Edge values and Six Sigma. Six Sigma can not do much of anything more than cosmetic in a company without the right leadership. This, I think, will explain why a lot of companies will have limited results with Six Sigma, or no results… because they have a weak management team. I think that a lot of companies can save a lot of money by not spending on things like Six Sigma because they don't have the right leadership team in place, and they ought to fix that first. Long before Six Sigma started, Maple Leaf Foods was trying to build its management bench strength… believing leadership must come first. There are companies that are transactionally successful doing Six Sigma: the number of Black Belts trained, the number of projects completed, albeit with very real benefits… Those companies that do that, also have an extra level of benefit because they also transformed the way the management works. It's like there are some manufacturers and then there's Toyota, which is a very holistic approach that has a cumulative benefit that is greater than the sum of the parts. A lot of companies will just remain at a very transactional level of result because the people running the company don't value analysis - don't value a scientific kind of thinking. They are mired in pride and ego… it threatens their beliefs. That speaks volumes about the kind of person they are and the kind of leader they are. When they're working on an outdated model or set of assumptions,… Six Sigma is going to be planting seeds in unfertile ground. … If we were to do a regression on companies (doing Six Sigma), that not only have a lot of successful projects but have also transformed their capabilities and competitiveness - it's going to be a small group of companies - I think that one element will be the character of the leaders there, how brutally frank they are when they look in the mirror about their own capabilities as people… Mikel Harry talks about "personal Six Sigma" - this is my opinion of what it means… Personal Six Sigma is, "if you can't change anything else, you can (still) change yourself". How on the earth are you going to transform a business model if you can't even confront some limitations in your own personal programming? And it is that self-awareness, I think, that is the hallmark of enlightened leaders… mature people who've got their head screwed on straight, don't have their egos bound up and so forth… they're whole people, I guess you could say. What Six Sigma means in that context is that you have to have the right CEO in there, (one) who is going to be in place for some period of time. I think it is interesting to note that companies that make a lot of progress in Six Sigma have a lot of stability at that level. I think GE has only had a handful of CEO's in its entire history - similarly Dupont, and other (Six Sigma) organizations like that. You've got to wonder about an organization that (changes) a CEO every three or four years… How on earth are you going to have any meaningful cultural change?… You can't, you won't. So I think there is an implicit success model to go from a transactional success to becoming a Six Sigma organization. This is all part of this leadership equation - the right leaders, but also stability in leadership that permits a constancy of purpose. Then, in my view, Six Sigma can be used as, what we call, a "canary in the coal mine". If you place a properly constructed Six Sigma methodology into a business unit - if you give it enough time, enough coaching, devote the resources, the training, the overall support, and yet, that Six Sigma effort atrophies as witnessed by just doing projects that may be saving money, but not fundamentally changing how people are thinking… in fact, Black Belts are leaving - there is not a lot of momentum… I'll show you an organization that operates under a set of leadership principles that are different than Six Sigma - generally not fact-based, somewhat hierarchical, bound too much by tradition - too driven, in a dangerous way, by gut feel and intuition and experience. So, that canary called Six Sigma keels over… for us, that's an indicator of what's going on in that business unit. It means that the leadership group there does not walk the talk on our leadership values. All of our leadership values… fact based, taking calculated risks, admitting mistakes without defensiveness… are exactly synonymous with Six Sigma. It means that those values are not alive and well in that business unit. Six Sigma is a vehicle for the propagation of Maple Leaf's Leadership Edge values, as well as the way those values come to life. You can not walk the talk on our Leadership Edge values without inevitably championing Six Sigma - it is a contradiction otherwise - the two are bound together." 2. News: "What are some of the major differences between applying Six Sigma in the food industry versus an aerospace firm such as Bombardier? Conversely, are there common practices or elements that are common to both?" 2. Bruce: "Virtually all of the administrative practices of large companies are identical… it's all paperwork - it's all information flow. Even within operations - the moving around of atoms, there are a lot of things that are similar in that you have concepts of bottlenecks… concepts of supply chain requirements… Yes, there is differences in terms of the perishability of these things, but those are subtle differences that should not distract someone from the essential fact that a process is a process. Some of the more subtle differences… Engineering takes on a different meaning between a processed product and a fabricated product, as you might expect. The central importance, for example, of statistical tolerancing - the parts which fit together - are not that relevant in making a hot dog. What's more important are the formulations. Other industries that deal in formulations, whether it be hydrocarbons in oils or making bread which has recipes - you're dealing with mixture design tools, which would not normally be as important in a fabricated product. DOE (Design of experiment) is very important because you're dealing with a large number of process variables. Instruction, therefore, would be different in that we would not spend a lot of time doing a blow out of an assembly of parts and tolerancing of them - it's not relevant in a loaf of bread… (We) have a lot of large-scale DOE that take place on farms… massive design of experiments and you won't see that kind of thing in fabrication. These are the differences at a tool level." 3. News: "Since having became involved in Six Sigma in the 1990's, we have both seen it move from its origins in North American manufacturing to now span the entire globe and encompass almost all industries, transforming service as well as product quality. In the United States over the last two to three years, Six Sigma has begun to transform how hospitals, clinics, laboratories, and government as well as private agencies approach health care - driven by the reality of less and less resources being available to service a rapidly growing and aging client population. In Canada, we are now seeing discussions on for-profit clinics and hospitals, increased funding from tax payers, and the threat of hospitals actually running our of cash. With health care being one of the top priorities for Canadians, do you see a clear role for Six Sigma in helping to sustain one of Canada's most important institutions, universal health care and the governments that fund it?" 3. Bruce: "I'll take government first, and then healthcare second. My hypothesis is that if you looked at the City of Fort Wayne, (see e-Zsigma's July, 2003 Spotlight on Mayor Graham Richard), it's governance and city council effectiveness - how it is run, my guess it was not a political basket case before Six Sigma - it was not dysfunctional. It's kind of a rhetorical question, but do you think that Gray Davis would be successful if he tried to implement it in California right now? The answer, I think, is no. They can't even pass a budget! They are totally paralyzed politically and practically. It's a form of atrophied leadership and governance; not just Gray Davis, but the entire leadership system. Fort Wayne probably had both the vision in this man, (Mayor Graham Richard), who thought sideways enough to champion Six Sigma, probably also had a a situation that was stable enough and competent enough to make something of (Six Sigma), that would be my guess. Like a lot of companies, that is not the case with a lot of (levels of government)… which are possibly populated with weak leaders, possibly lead poor bureaucracies and civil servants, so sticking the technology of Six Sigma in there is as bad as sticking it into a dysfunctional company. I think there is a very interesting watch out for practitioners on the difference between efficiency and effectiveness, which is this. On the efficiency side, a process is a process. However, it gets very interesting when you look at effectiveness, because the objective functions can become very subtle. For example, with respect to government, we can talk about how much money we spent on police services, which is an efficiency question - how we deploy people - ratios, but we can't just look at the efficiency side of it. We have to look at the effectiveness, that is, how safe do the citizens feel? You can not just say, we have an efficient police force. At some point, you also have to say, we have a safer community, and when you enter that realm, it is not only the reality of safety, but it is also the perception of safety that is important to the quality of life… It's not just the dollars, it's also the outcomes. In these areas of civic life, the outcomes are not as easy to quantify or measure. Turning to healthcare, you can look at efficiency - over-prescription of medicine, poor administrative processes, errors that result in a patient going to the wrong room - all of these things. But… you also can't avoid a discussion in terms of the quality of the output. The big fear is that, if something like Six Sigma goes in without addressing that up front.. cut all the costs out so that it more efficient, but it is a scarier healthcare… the output could be like a time study gone amok… It is a secret fear of a lot of people - partly based on ignorance, but also based on what they've seen when other "experts" have come in and all they do is work on the efficiency, but are naïve on how to measure and understand effectiveness. While much of this may fall within urban legend, there are the stories of bean counters, who, for the sake of a few dollars, cut costs on product safety because in their weird calculus, they've figured out the number of lawsuits and jury awards and in the net present value of all of that, the savings is still justified. That legacy, which has nothing to do with Six Sigma, has a lot to do with people associating that type of thinking with Six Sigma. You want to know that the people touching healthcare have the maturity and skills and toolkit to look at the messy complexity of perceptions and effectiveness… when it comes to safety - the safety of our food, our water, public security. It means you are dealing in a more sophisticated realm and you can't blindly apply the widget model. The Six Sigma Black Belts and Champions have to be more ready or capable of taking on that challenge, and I don't think (everyone) is. If we're talking about public service or public and private healthcare, we're dealing with the same issues of efficiency and effectiveness - it's just that the effectiveness realm is that much more challenging, because you're often dealing with topics that are hard to get your hands around, and constituencies that are large and nebulous, and many interest groups. It makes the private sector and a static product - this muffler is going to Toyota - seem simplistic by comparison. It can be done, but it requires a great amount of leadership and skillful facilitators. I don't know if there are enough good Black Belts in the world for some of these things." Scroll up to right-hand side of page to continue interview... |
Bruce
Miyashita, V.P. Six Sigma, Maple Leaf Foods Click on image to go to Maple Leaf Foods website Continued from left panel... 4. News: "After reading Maple Leaf's 2002 Annual Report, I was compelled to go back and capture some numbers that I thought were interesting to point out. Within the 54 pages of that report, the following words appeared at this level of frequency: Revenue: 3, Profit: 8, Quality: 22, Six Sigma: 29, Leadership: 32. While revenue, profitability, and growth are of prime importance to shareholders reading that report, it is obvious that Six Sigma occupies center stage at Maple Leaf, and has rapidly become an integral part of both the culture, as well as a cornerstone of business strategy for the future. This is further evidenced by your President and CEO, Michael H. McCain's statement, "We have made our Leadership Edge and Six Sigma the essential DNA of Maple Leaf Foods and we will continue 'getting things done' that build on these pillars." Having been a central figure since the 1999 launch of Six Sigma at Maple Leaf four years ago, what are some of the key factors or milestones you would attribute to the success your team has seen, as well as this continuing high level of company commitment to Six Sigma?" 4. Bruce: "Many years ago, McCain Foods, did then, and still has now the McCain Quality Program, which was, back in the late eighties a quite insightful variant of TQM (Total Quality Management), where they made an investment in full-time people who would be considered precursors to (Six Sigma) Black Belts… 150 people, I think - that's a huge investment. I don't think anyone, in North American business, did that. The McCain organization realized that the people were not going to work on (quality) part time - it's never going to happen, so they invested in people. (Michael McCain) was already preconditioned to the notion that you had to invest in people, so the idea of Black Belts was old news to them. Like many executives, one couldn't help but notice what Jack Welch was talking about, and in the mid-nineties, when McCain bought an interest in Maple Leaf Foods, they knew they wanted to install an updated version of their quality program, and by timing, Six Sigma was on the scene. Since it appeared to be a better toolkit, and was the latest incarnation of the thinking, Maple Leaf decided to go with that technology. News: It would appear to be very much more an evolution, rather than a revolution. Bruce: We're both pleasantly surprised at the range of application - when you put this stuff in the hands of smart people, it is incredible what they can do with it." 5. News: "It is mentioned in your Annual Report that, "New discoveries being made every day that both defy conventional wisdom and create enormous potential for competitive advantage, all facilitated by the analytical, statistical and project rigor of Six Sigma". Without divulging any trade secrets, can you share with our readers, at least at a high level, any examples from your voyage of discovery?" 5. Bruce: "One example would be that we had some consumer products where, for years, we were saying "this is a defect". We'd spend a lot of time and money reducing those defects. We used Six Sigma to do market research, and we found out that (the defects) were not really CTQ's (Critical to Quality characteristics) after all. Hence, they were not defects by definition - the customer doesn't care. We had been spending a lot of money getting professional market research done… Why did it take Six Sigma to start asking the right questions and analyzing the data properly? How many companies out there are spending money on poor market research, because they don't understand proper data analysis? A second example would be agricultural feed formulations. Very intelligent, very educated scientists did not understand how to do design of experiment (DOE), because it has traditionally not been taught in our school system. Consequently, we were doing one factor at a time (OFAT) experimentation, with all the weaknesses of that. This speaks to the educational system. As a result (of using DOE), we were able to cut the cost of these products and improve the effectiveness. We were also able to conduct more experiments with the same research budget. It was a big culture change because you're having a non-scientist tell a scientist that they don't understand science. I was told on one project that the work had just upended thirty years of accepted practices - that they had to rerun the test many times because they couldn't believe the result - it was so counterintuitive to all prevailing thinking. In another project, we were able to map out the entire EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes), and as a result, found hidden commodity correlations to allow us to change our hedging strategy and therefore improve our expected EBIT and the volatility around it. That's worth millions (of dollars). While these types of successes keep Six Sigma firmly imbedded in the culture of Maple Leaf Foods, it is still a challenge… if you've got an ego, what Six Sigma is saying is that for all these years what you thought was the right way really wasn't. One of the articles we use a lot in training is, "Teaching Smart People How to Learn" by Chris Argyris, (see Argyris, Chris. "Teaching Smart People How to Learn." Harvard Business Review. 69 #3 (May-June 1991): 99-109). Talk about deployment issues - you show me someone who has multiple degrees on their wall... highly correlated with resistance to things like Six Sigma. Smart people are often not good learners… we are challenging their way of working." 6. News: "Michael McCain, in his Letter to the Shareholders of Maple Leaf Foods quotes Larry Bossidy from his recent book, "Execution: the Discipline of Getting Things Done": 'Worry about people who talk about philosophy and strategy too much, and pay attention to people who talk about getting things done'. What are some of the things that you, as Vice President of Six Sigma at Maple Leaf Foods, will be 'getting done' in the coming year?" 6. Bruce: "We have to continue to build the critical mass of Black Belts - that's a lot of interviewing, evaluating, and hiring, and in some instances, removing poor performing Black Belts. Of course, along with all of that goes the coaching and training. Secondly, we have a major push on to develop the Maple Leaf Foods Manufacturing System, which is how to run a plant by the book. We want to write that book with Six Sigma. Our third priority is that we want to go to the next generation of product score-carding and measurement - this is going to have significant consequences on how data is gathered as well as analyzed and reported for the plants. It will probably involve some rethinking of roles with respect to QA (quality assurance) and manufacturing. Traditionally, certainly in this company, there is an old model for what QA is all about… There's a lot of practical issues around how we actually measure the business processes as well as sustain them, and get that done, which is quite apart from Six Sigma and the Black Belts. There is a continued push to bring Six Sigma into how we evaluate people. This coming year, as a part of the evolution of a performance evaluation process we have, Six Sigma leadership will be implicit in how people are evaluated - how are they, in the context of their job, demonstrating Six Sigma leadership?" 7. News: "We continue to witness dramatic changes in our ever-shrinking world, with a political, cultural, and economic landscape characterized by uncertainty and volatility. More recently, in Canada, we have witnessed the tragedy of SARS, the dramatic impact of a remote case of BSE or "Mad Cow" disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy), continued growth in off-shore competition, and the challenge to exporters of a strengthening dollar that has shot past the seventy cent mark and severely eroded the profits of many companies that, for years, have relied heavily on a weaker dollar for 'competitive advantage'. Notwithstanding the successes witnessed by Canadian companies like Maple Leaf Foods, Cott Corporation, and Magna International, is there a more significant role Six Sigma can play in helping Canada compete in the global market, in light of the fact that a majority of Canadian business is comprised of smaller companies that fall well-outside of the community of larger corporations that have traditionally benefited from Six Sigma?" 7. Bruce: "Yes. I still think there are many large companies who have not jumped into the (Six Sigma) pool, if you will, and they, and more significantly, their suppliers who are often smaller organizations, would be well served to take a look at (Six Sigma)… Again, IF the conditions are right, going back to my previous comments on leadership. (The majority of Canadian businesses) have either not deployed Six Sigma… or have merely sent a few people on course and that is their version of Six Sigma - well that's not what we're talking about here. When we start talking about BCE, CP, CN, Suncor, the Banks… some of the big, big players - there's a lot (of opportunity) there. As you progress up and down the supply chain, as we discussed earlier, you are going to reach a lot of other companies as well. There is a long-standing point of debate, which is whether or not the Canadian economy and business sector is as subject to competitive pressures as the United States. Many would argue that it is not as competitive - that it is sheltered. Let's, for argument sake, say that we are not sheltered… then my belief, in a Darwinian-type of logic, is that certainly one element of getting people motivated to improve… is that level of pure survival, in which case, it would be in your enlightened self-interest would be to gravitate to those tools that could help you - Six Sigma, used properly, being one of the most powerful. I would agree that the adoption of Six Sigma by Canadian industry has been slower, and the reason for that, I can only ascribe to a less competitive environment. …It would also be interesting to see how many Canadian companies are rooted in the agricultural and other commodity industries where the prevailing belief may well be that you can't do anything about that - the markets go up, the markets go down - when the cycles are good, you make money, when they're bad, you don't. What a great excuse - what a great out. So, to the extent that the Canadian sector is more resource based, there might be a long tradition of riding commodity waves. It comes back to business leadership, and that's what Six Sigma can't do anything about: leadership."
Rod Morgan, e-Zsigma, Inc. --------------------------------
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