subject: Major Six Sigma Roadblocks and How to Handle Them [print this page] Major Six Sigma Roadblocks and How to Handle Them
The Six Sigma has been widely accepted and used as a methodology since the 1980's. It took some years for companies to realize the importance and effectiveness of Six Sigma, and now it is counted among the most reputed methodologies to enrich organizational skill set and productivity. However, many companies fail to successfully implement Six Sigma within their corporate cultures due to various causes, commonly known as the Six Sigma roadblocks.
One of the most common Six Sigma roadblocks is employee resistance. There might be many reasons why employees of a certain enterprise could resist to new systems and processes. It is often found that the employees are apprehensive that the new changes might result in creating difficulty in their work processes, and some also feel that they might lose their jobs on account of this. There is another category of people who are not ready to learn anything new; they prefer following the same work-process that they have been doing since years.
It is observed that employees feel that they have lost control or ownership of a particular assignment due to the new changes implemented in a process. Such psychological issues tend to lower the confidence level and positivity of the teams in an organization, and hence are considered to be major Six Sigma roadblocks.
One of the Six Sigma roadblocks that are quite common is team selection. The authorities should be very careful while selecting the members for a Six Sigma team. Putting the wrong set of people on board can render the complete project unfruitful. Skill set, personality and experience are important factors to judge a person while selecting him for a Six Sigma team.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the skill sets and characteristics of the team members must be diverse in order to form the best team. A team of people with similar skill sets does not reap long term results. Hence, team selection is counted among the critical Six Sigma roadblocks.
Financial constraint is counted among the most hindering Six Sigma roadblocks. Continuous training and education are imperative to the growth of an enterprise. This enriches the quality of the existent human resources, thus fostering a great professional ecosystem and increasing overall productivity of the company.
Training is a cost that an organization pays for increasing the efficiency of its manpower, and it helps elimination the Six Sigma roadblocks to a good extent. However, some companies do not agree to take up that extra expenditure due to internal financial constraints, or sometimes only because they don't find the investment worthwhile. It is unjust to expect employees to adapt to a new system without a prior training or knowledge transfer. Hence financial constraint is considered as one of the major Six Sigma roadblocks.
One of the toughest Six Sigma roadblocks is Change Management. If the changes within an organization are not handled efficiently, there could be potential chances of the failure of a project in the long run. The Six Sigma Black Belt in an organization must take the initiative to build a change management department dedicated to improve the various aspects of process change in order to ensure Six Sigma success.
