Jim Sinur

A member of the Gartner Blog Network

Jim Sinur
Research VP
2 years at Gartner
42 years IT industry

Jim Sinur is a vice president in Gartner Research after a short stint with a BPM vendor. Prior to that, Mr. Sinur was with Gartner 15 years and helped establish the BPI/BPM areas at Gartner and is considered a thought leader. His research and areas… Read Full Bio

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Is Six Sigma Just About Rock Polishing?

by Jim Sinur  |  June 24, 2010  |  2 Comments

Riding on airplanes for a living puts you next to a number of interesting people. The most common neighbor I find are MBA spreadsheet jockeys and Minitab maniacs(minitab is a statistical package used by many six sigma devotees). These folks are usually characterized by intense stares that we usually see on vampires as they scope out their victims :)  Seriously, six sigma is more than quality  and statistical methods to squeeze processes.

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While six sigma techniques are helpful in the process coordination stage, that identifies performance metrics and manages processes to them, there is more. When combined with lean manufacturing techniques that also tracks increased value and looks for the better idea, lean six sigma is on the same path as BPM. When considering the advanced stages of BPM maturity are also about goal driven and business optimized processes, you find a consistent theme between BPM and lean six sigma.

My conclusion is that BPM and the green belts of the world should unite and organizations should really leverage green belts in their BPM efforts without taking away from the momentum that BPM has built. We all just want better processes for cost, time and quality improvements plus the opportunity to leverage dynamic and collaborative processes for better organization/corporate performance and creative leverage of processes,

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Category: BPM Business Process Improvement Optimization     Tags: ,

2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Tweets that mention Is Six Sigma Just About Rock Polishing? -- Topsy.com   June 24, 2010 at 11:08 am

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Theo and T.S. Li (李丹珊), Jim Sinur. Jim Sinur said: Is Six SIgma about polishing rocks? http://bit.ly/dapPYU #BPM #BRMS #Entarch [...]

  • 2 Jordan Berkley   June 30, 2010 at 10:01 am

    Jim
    I agree that the primary value of BPM is its enablement of continuous improvement initiatives such as Lean & Six Sigma. Making manufacturing / business processes explicit and visable are under reported values of value stream mapping and BPM. Everyone needs to know that as-it-is-now state. BPM is then used to enforce the process changes/improvements that the results of kaizen events and six sigma analysis have pain-stakingly discovered.