So I’m job hunting, talking to recruiters, look at job boards. Lean Six Sigma, baby. Right? That should bring the HR-people to the yard.
If you’re in the manufacturing or development business, you probably know what I’m talking about. It’s a quality and problem-solving “system” that companies have been implementing. I’ve been exposed to numerous Quality program acronyms in the past twenty years, but there’s one thing that is never really spoken about them: They’re not magic; they’re just tools.
A screwdriver is a tool. So is a hammer. So is a five-axis waterjet metal-cutter. So is a time-domain reflectometer. So is a bit-error rate detector. So is Lean Six Sigma.
I know how to use a screwdriver, so do you. However, sometimes you’ll watch someone use a kitchen knife as a screwdriver. That’s using the wrong tool for a job, but it usually works out OK, right? No severed fingers, no destroyed screwhead, just a father running into the garage, returning with the Proper Tool, and then staring in dismay as his services are not needed.
Lean Six Sigma can be very useful, but sometimes you just need a kitchen knife.
“We need a fishbone diagram to determine the root causes of why this server keeps crashing!”
No, we just need to see that the power cable is falling out because of a loose clamp. The screw is fine, but the screw hole is stripped.
“But Lean Six Sigma tells us…”
My kitchen knife tells us that a zip-tie will work in place of the screw. Fix the cable, get back to work.
I have experience with Lean Six Sigma, it’s on my resume, and recruiters tell me that companies are going to like seeing that. I just wish I could put on my resume that I also know how to use a kitchen knife when its appropriate.
Much along the same lines, I’ve been tinkering with my resume for writing-related purposes, and have been pondering a way to include “Can avoid beginning every paragraph with the same word.”
I’m sure I can fit it in there somewhere…
Sick Stigma! /cower
There are times it’s useful, but I agree – sometimes you only need a kitchen knife…
I think 6 Sigma looks good on your resume…..if a company doesn’t employ that methodology, it’s hard to introduce it. 99% of the companies I’ve worked for employ the butter knife technique. But in these times, employers look for 6 Sigma versus the “Butter Knife”….
Good luck in your job hunting!
Lean Six Sigma (and related “problem solving frameworks”) are what happen when common sense has died and left the building. It’s problem solving by committee, only the committee is a group of retarded monkeys.
Over the last several months of unemployment, I’ve seen a lot of positions wanting Six Sigma certification/experience. I’ve 23 years Distribution/Operations experience, 17 as a manager, and have come to realize two things:
1) I wish I’d developed my methodology 20 years ago into a veritable cottage industry so I could be retired by now.
2) Anyone, or any company, that knows only one way of doing things is using a crutch and I’m not working for them, much less staking my future on them.
the perfect committe should be made up of no more than 3 persons, two of whom are absent.
I 100% agree with the “Lean Six Sigma” being a tool you only need in some circumstances. It works for some, but it isn’t automatically the best tool in the shed.
My company’s CEO talks about it this way: “We like to think of [our way] as six Sigma without all the bovine residue that can creep in and get spread around when you indiscriminately adopt someone else’s system and try to fabricate martial art distinctions for non-martial art applications… we don’t have squads of designated teenage mutant ninja turtle six sigma experts rolling in and out of offices conducting group gropes for relevancy.”
I’ve been introduced to Six Sigma and such in the past, but thankfully the company still trusts me to use a butter knife when it works better. You are spot-on with HR people being drawn to those key words, and hopefully in an in-person interview you’ll be able to tell them how it is only a tool. Happy hunting!
Source: http://www.investor.expeditors.com/fd/8-k_03-17-09.pdf in reponse to question 41.
I’ve been trained in, waht has been described as Six Sigma in reverse, Red-X engineering, moving effect back to cause.
But it too is just a tool, not a glorious fix all that management wants it to be, especially when your problems are far away and occur over long periods of time:
“We received damaged parts again today!”
“OK, did you isolate them?”
“No, we scrapped them.”
“Did you isolate the containers or record their sequence numbers?”
“No, we shipped them back to the suppler.”
“Did you get the trailer numbers at least?”
“No.”
“OK, then… Talk to you next time you see damaged parts then.”
/facepalm
Kinda makes me glad I am in Finance now…
Skarlarth and Co.
It’s SEVEN sigma now, and companies get a free set of kitchen knives and screwdrivers if they buy early. (Sigma Eight to come out in the fall)
(just joshing – great blog)
But without Six Sigma, and other buzzwords like it, people would need to read resumes to see if the person might match the skills the job demands. In this economy with the large amount of resumes for every job, how can we expect the poor people in HR to send a readable amount to the hiring manager by doing more than skimming for the buzzwords. At least we have developed search algorithms that will do the buzzword skimming and condense the list. Fortunately, the hiring managers, within their limited time and when constantly needled, have learned to provide a set of buzzwords as requirements to get HR off their backs (we’ll talk about annual reviews next time). We know that every human resources department is a money sink and should have budgets commensurate with their profit generating abilities. That they have been able to find a way to get some semblance of set of resumes out of the dump truck full of them for the QA Engineer IV position is a testament to their abilities to get their jobs done (not well, but done). So what if a 20 year QA veteran working for a small company not running a six sigma program, who never let a bad product out of a company, solved many manufacturing problems over the years, and is respected by QA, engineering, manufacturing, and finance is on the street because no one wants buggy whips anymore is overlooked because he or she didn’t have the right buzzwords on their resume. That’s a small price to pay for the efficient running of the corporation.
p.s. I hope I managed to strip all the “period space space”s out of the text. Trying to override years of finger conditioning is tough.
Does your resume have an objectives section something like:
Build teams that ……
Run programs that…..
Keep management thrilled.
with each paragraph in a bolded larger font.
It will make some look at you more thoughtfully.
The guy that handled my software upgrade where I work is a Lean Six-Sigma Black-belt.
I wanted to stab him with the butterknife.
As you said it’s a tool unfortunately, so was he
I got hauled into several weeks of a six sigma project. 3 cross country round trip flights. 6 nights of hotels. What felt like an eternity of meetings with 15 people in the room. I figure labor costs alone wasted in meetings ran upwards of 50 grand.
Prior to the project I could sum up the problem in one sentence.
We stored data in two databases that were not programmed with a key between them.
At least I collected some frequent flyer miles.
I have experience with Lean Six Sigma, it’s on my resume, and recruiters tell me that companies are going to like seeing that. I just wish I could put on my resume that I also know how to use a kitchen knife when its appropriate.
That’s what a cover letter is for. Write it like an “Airman Howell” story and you’re golden.
@Eric – most web browsers do not render to spaces after a period. I put two spaces between that last sentence and this one. This time, I only used one space. This time I tried to use nonbreaking spaces to force two spaces after the last period. Assuming I didn’t break the messageboard system, can anybody see a difference?
*sigh*
All my grammar and internet nerdery, and I still misspell “two.”
I need to Six Sigma my posts.
There’s a six sigma guy in my department (Operations) where I work as well. He provides alternate views to some of our problems, nothing more or less. And I definitely get the impression he knows how to use a kitchen knife when necessary or appropriate.
But maybe I just like him because I’m an ANALytical bastard myself, albeit one without the credentials.
I hear ya…
The absolute last list of qualifications on your resume should be titled something like:
Miscellaneous Skills I possess which don’t fit anywhere else but are as invaluable as all those other skill sets that get fancy titles:
This is where you’ll put your Misc. Skills, like:
I can partly disassemble the engine of a 350Z then put it back together and still have it run.
All the things that will make prospective interviewers say, “I think we need to talk to this guy. At least to ask him about the 350Z.”
Get your foot in the door any way you can, then sell, Sell, SELL! yourself.
My brother-in-law is a Six Sigma Black Belt for a major insurance company. For the last 2 months, I’ve been doing some home improvement work for him and my sister. One of the things I fixed was a crooked front door (100 year old house, things get crooked). My brother-in-law helped me to fix the door.
Thanks to Six Sigma training, a 20 minute job of shimming a couple of hinges turned into a 2 hour project of measuring, cutting strips of wood, resetting hinges, etc. And the end result was that I shimmed a couple of hinges. It’s a good thing the Six Sigma training means bigger salaries, because that man should never pick up a hammer… or a butter knife.
Just goes to show, it’s better to work smarter, not harder.
A story about six sigma
A car drives up to a shepherd tending his folk, a man in a suit gets out.
Man – I can help you with your business
Shepherd – O.K.
Man – I bet I can tell you the exact number of sheep in your folk.
Shepherd – O.K.
Man – If I do will you give me 1 of your sheep as payment
Shepherd – O.K.
The man walks over to his car, pulls out his laptop, attaches his satellite phone to it. He hoots up to a satellite and retrieves and photo taken only a few moments agao of the Shepherd and his folk. He then smiles.
Man – 42, you have 42 sheep
Shepherd – You are correct, you may take one of my sheep.
The man loads the animal into the car.
Shepherd – May I have a chance to get my animal back
Man – Sure
Shepherd – If I guess what you do will you give me my animal back?
Man – (smugly) Sure go ahead.
Shepherd – You are a Six sigma agent
Man – (shocked) Yes how did you know.
Shepherd – You came out of nowhere, offered me help when I did not need it and told me something I already knew and you know nothing about my business, now give me back my dog.
@ David.
Great story…spot on.
Six Sigma is THE thing right now at my work. It seems that everyone is either going for a green or black belt. And all they do is find a process that has one minor flaw (which is known and work arounds have been made) and turn it into a 6 month long project involving bi-weekly conference calls and a commitee of 16. Not to mention countless man-hours, paperwork, graphs, and statistics. All so they can say, “Hey, look at me!! I fixed this problem” leaving out the fact that it took 16 other people and 1000′s of man-hours along with a dozen new issues that weren’t there before.
I’ve been trying to work in, “I can learn anything, if someone takes the time to teach me,” into my resume for years. I have an Education degree from college, but I was an Oracle PL/SQL programmer for years, and am most recently a DBA.
Back when I was applying to colleges, there was a aptitude exam attached to a scholarship that I applied for. The last question asked a rather complex physics problem. I got to a point where I knew I needed a well-known formula, but could not for the life of me remember it. I carefully wrote out all my work up to that point, and then wrote in plain English:
“I cannot remember the formula for this. If this were my job, I would turn around to my office bookshelf, pull a reference manual off the shelf, look up the formula, and continue working. I’m assigning the constant “C” to the value I would get from applying the formula here.”
Then I proceeded to solve the rest of the problem in terms of “C”.
I got the scholarship.
If you figure out how to put it on your resume, please publish it. I’m trying to find people who know when to use a kitchen knife, and having rotten luck coming up with interview questions that translate to “can you think your way out of a paper bag?”
I’ve rejected entire batches of candidates for *all* answering questions with vaguely worded platitudes that sound good, but have no substance.
Sadly, I’m looking for accountants in CA, not systems engineers in Florida.
i say put it on the resume the same way you put it on your blog.
i think we (the readers) have learned a lot about you from your blogs and your ability to just freaking use a butter knife is one of your best qualities.
if nothing else you will get interviews just because the hr guy wants to know what the hell you are talking about.
I like that analogy!
Also, is it just me, or do more of the people that comment on you new blog make much longer comments?
Ah Six Sigma I hated that course. It is all about over analyzing, my company worships it like the end-all be-all of things. It has its uses but sometimes you don’t need a 6 month project to inact a 2 minute fix.
say just that on the resume: “knows how to identify situations when using a metaphorical butter knife in place of a metaphorical screwdriver will work just fine.”
why? well, it makes the resume stand out in a good way. i expect the resume reader to have this inner monologue: “this DPH knows some of that ‘common sense’ stuff. he also knows how to make a joke. might be interesting to meet this person…”
My experience with six sigma boils down to this:
1)Someone makes a mistake
2) There are dozens of meetings where people try to use complex statistical analysis to discover why what happened did indeed happen.
3) You discover that it happened due to some freak occurrence (Maintenance left a door open during a smoke break because he left his key in his car that was in the shop. Bird flew in door and into machine. Machine broke.)
4) Solve the problem using butter knife.
5) Make a presentation to management with massive dizzying charts full of numbers, followed by two pie charts, one “Before” and one “After”. The pie charts must only have a red part and a green part, on the “After” chart the green must be larger.
6) Management smiles and congratulates you on a good application of six sigma.
Hmm…..Sigma SIx….what???…..bull-hockey!….I’m an auto tech for a living……when diagnosing a vehicle…grab a hammer…..give the offending bit a sharp “whack!”…..if that doesn’t fix it…..grab a bigger hammer…..apply the same as before…..if THAT doesn’t fix it…it is more than likely broken, replace as needed!
lol…..better than the Six thing hehe
Reminds me of a saying I heard once, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, pretty sure everything starts looking like a nail.”
Err… pretty soon, that is
It’s because of Lean Six Sigma that I have a job. I ain’t knockin’ it.