Instantis, a provider of software
for managing top-down performance improvement initiatives like Six Sigma,
announced on March 26 that it has completed and made available for immediate
download on www.instantis.com the results of a ground-breaking study on Six
Sigma adoption patterns and maturity levels within large
enterprises.
The study was conducted via an
online survey during a four-month period starting in October 2006. A total of
105 organizations responded to the survey. The respondent pool consisted of Six
Sigma professionals (master black belts, black belts and Six Sigma experts),
senior directors and functional managers of quality assurance, operations and
supply chain, as well executives and deployment leaders. In addition,
respondents represented all major industries and geographies
(
Among the key findings of the
study:
- The Six Sigma community is less than
halfway through its collective journey. On a scale of 1 to 5, the average
maturity level of respondent organizations was 2.7 with a standard deviation of
1.25.
- The level of leadership support for
Six Sigma is highly correlated with overall maturity level (Pearson Coefficient
of 0.74).
- It takes at least four years for
organizations to achieve Six Sigma "institutionalization."
- Crossing the chasm from Scale
Replication to Institutionalization and Cultural Transformation typically
involves a dramatic acceleration in the number of black belts (from an average
of 30 to hundreds or even thousands).
- As Six Sigma maturity level
increases, so does the adoption and/or integration of Lean manufacturing
principles.
Instantis published the original
Instantis Six Sigma Maturity Model (iSSMM) in September 2006, which defines five
commonly experienced stages of Six Sigma maturity including Launch, Early
Success, Scale & Replication, Institutionalization and Cultural
Transformation. The intent of the model is to help Six Sigma practitioners,
deployment leaders and executives to benchmark their progress against industry
norms, assess implementation strengths and performance gaps and anticipate
common adoption pitfalls.
A key goal of the Six Sigma maturity
model study was to provide Six Sigma practitioners with real-world data from
their peers regarding Six Sigma deployment critical success and failure factors
across industries. A further goal was to validate and further refine the model
in order to help guide organizations on their Six Sigma journey. The findings of
the study will be incorporated into Version 2.0 of the
model.
"In general, the hypothesized state
of maturity described by the iSSMM model for each of the five levels of maturity
was validated by the study results," said Wayne Caccamo, marketing vice
president at Instantis. "We also found areas where companies were generally more
mature or less mature than what the iSSMM model predicts. This will help us
fine-tune our model and make it an even more powerful benchmarking and
assessment engine."
Instantis is the leading provider of on-demand software for managing top- down initiatives to improve financial performance and achieve operational excellence. Leading global corporations like Credit Suisse, France Telecom, Eli Lilly, McKesson, Motorola and Xerox rely on Instantis software to manage strategy and project portfolio execution for initiatives like Six Sigma, lean, IT, new product development and others.
