Problem Solving before Lean

This mindmap predates my commitment to Lean Thinking and particular to the PDCA and A3 processes. This Problem Solving mindmap is still useful as an effective reminder of a few of the errors that we me make during the problem solving process. A good reminder even for a member or the facilitator of a problem solving team.

Related Information:
Pair Problem Solving in the Workplace
Lean Sales and Marketing Cycles are Knowledge Building Tactics
Why use A3 in Marketing
Marketing with A3

Driving Market Share Special Offer

Organizations need to change from a customer satisfaction focus to a customer value focus. The Five Cs of Driving Market Share serves as the template for this transaction. 5 Cs of Driving Market Share is not a project-by-project approach for reducing the costs of marketing activities, but rather an approach that seeks to enhance marketing’s effectiveness and efficiency. For organizations that have deployed other quality initiatives, the 5 Cs approach provides a user friendly bridge for moving the quality focus from the manufacturing floor to the marketplace. Those seeking to become best in market must shift their focus from a product orientation to a market orientation, from an internal efficiency focus to an external focus. Best in market companies will be those that can make this transformation and make it soon.

Customer Identification Program Content: The first step in the 5 Cs of Driving Market Share is identifying specific products/markets that offer the organization its best options for growth. You will learn how to evaluate products and markets using metrics such as current market share, market growth rate and competitive intensity to assess the best targets for the organization. When completed, you will eschew the notion that a company can be everything to everybody, and instead focuses on key market opportunities. This occurs in the Define/Identification stage and differs from the more project-oriented approach that traditional Six Sigma uses.

Customer Value Program Content: In the Value (Measure) stage of Driving Market Share, you will create a value model for each of your targeted product or markets. This value model is the voice of the market (VOM) that drives all operational and strategic initiatives undertaken by the organization. The VOM replaces agendas, hunches and strategic guessing as the guiding factor in growing market share. Value has been shown to be the best leading indicator of market share and top-line revenue growth. Learn how to use superior value creation and delivery to propel growth within the targeted product or markets.

Customer Acquisition Program Content: In the Acquisition (Analyze) stage you will use primarily the Competitive Value Matrix to guide you through the delivery of value delivery. An organization’s value is relative to that of its competitors. This is part of the buyers’ comparative calculus in assessing where to buy. The buyer is asking a simple question: “Is this brand worth it?” By understanding your organization’s competitive value proposition, leaders can make better decisions regarding market share growth.

Customer Retention Program Content: The Retention (Improve) stage could also be called the Enhancement stage. For value leaders, the focus should be on enhancing value to sustain their leadership position. Extending the gap between the value an organization provides and the value provided by the nearest competitor can lead to best in market status. Value followers will want to improve those elements of the value creation and delivery system that will close the gap. This is when organizations need to enhance or improve their competitive value proposition in accordance to the directives of the market place.

Customer Monitoring Program Content: The Monitoring (Control) stage is where you learn how to put monitoring systems into place to ensure that their competitive value proposition accomplishes what is intended. This control effort focuses not only on the more strategic value proposition, but also can be set up to monitor specific transactions such as sales, repairs, inquires and other customer experiences. This monitoring process acts as a trip wire, providing information where there are potential people, product of process issues that require intervention.

For 72 Hours, March 4th to 7th you can receive a special offer, a $200 savings. on the digital download of this program. 

Driving Market Share Program

Can Six Sigma and Marketing Co-exist

In my journey over the past few years to bring a Continuous Improvement philosophy to marketing, I have primarily focused on Lean and identifying the individual Value Streams though segmentation. Lean was a much easier methodology to implement and utilize. As I continued with a customer, I found the Six Sigma toolbox provided me a stronger set of analytical tools that was needed in handling the vast amount of data. In any case, I practice a mixture of Lean and Six Sigma. Transferring this philosophy to other marketers and Lean/Six Sigma Practitioners has been very difficult with each side very skeptical of the other.

Working the past several months with Dr. Eric Reidenbach of Six Sigma Marketing Institute to develop the program the 5Csof Driving Market Share has provided a much clearer path or the bridge between the two methodologies. In the program, we challenge the way both the Six Sigma community and the marketing area think about business and the way they currently do business. It does so by providing a detailed and structured approach one that is entirely data driven to unleash the power of Six Sigma on the crucial need of Customer Value for revenue growth. An outline of that bridge between Marketing and Six Sigma is provide in the table below.

Related Posts:
Lean your Marketing by Dominating with Customer Value
Value Stream Mapping differs in Lean Marketing
Can Voice of Customer deliver?
Unclear Customer Value leads to Failure

The Strategy of the Fighter Pilot Revisited

The recent resurgence or maybe recognition of the use of the The OODA Loop has resurfaced recently as a basis for much of the current ideas surrounding Iterations, Rapid Development Cycles and Decision Making. What makes the OODA Loop such a popular subject? When we first think of the OODA Loop we think of fast competitive cycles needed by a fighter pilot to gain a differential advantage.  Is that the reason?

A little more insight was provided several years ago in an article, The Strategy of the Fighter Pilot written by: Keith H. Hammonds for Fast Company several years ago. An excerpt of the article:

Business is a dogfight. Your job as a leader: Outmaneuver the competition, respond decisively to fast-changing conditions, and defeat your rivals. That's why the OODA loop, the brainchild of "40 Second" Boyd, an unconventional fighter pilot, is one of today's most important ideas in battle or in business.

Bower and Hout's classic example -- and one that Boyd also studied -- was Toyota, which designed its organization to speed information, decisions, and materials through four interrelated cycles: product development, ordering, plant scheduling, and production. Self-organized, multifunctional teams at Toyota, they observed, developed products and manufacturing processes in response to demand, turning out new models in just three years compared with Detroit's cycle of four or five.

Systems like Toyota's worked so well, Boyd argued, because of schwerpunkt, a German term meaning organizational focus. Schwerpunkt, Boyd wrote, "represents a unifying medium that provides a directed way to tie initiative of many subordinate actions with superior intent as a basis to diminish friction and compress time." That is, employees decide and act locally, but they are guided by a keen understanding of the bigger picture.

In effective organizations, schwerpunkt connects vibrant OODA loops that are operating concurrently at several levels. Workers close to the action stick to tactical loops, and their supervisors travel in operational loops, while leaders navigate much broader strategic and political loops. The loops inform each other: If everything is clicking, feedback from the tactical loops will guide decisions at higher loops and vice versa.

It has been noted in the latest work by such authors as Bll Dettmer,  The Logical Thinking Process: A Systems Approach to Complex Problem Solving and Don Reinersten, The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development. Even more popular use of Boyd’s OODA Loop is the Lean Startup by Eric Reis and his influential writings on the Customer Development Cycle utilizing the OODA Loop as a basis.

Dr. Terry Barnhart, the Senior Director Strategy and Continuous Improvement at Pfizer Global R&D discusses the OODA Loop in the Business901 Podcast this week and we expand this theory into some practical applications. One of the takeaways from the conversation is using the OODA Loop outside of rapid deployment. The use of it he expresses is in the adaption of it through the uses of various time cycles. 

In the most common use of the OODA Loop, adaption is rather direct. At the strategic level it involves around adjusting procedures, systems, processes and ideology.  Boyd advocated an agile cellular organization with some explicit control mechanism and feedback loops but one more reliant on common frames of reference and shared ideas. He always contended that Command was about clarity of ones goals and philosophies versus the traditional form of command and control thought of in a hierarchy structure. I enjoy the description that Frans Osinga discusses in his book Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd (Strategy and History), highly recommend – not an easy read though) is that “Higher Command must shape the Decision Space of subordinate commanders.“  Actually, that is a pretty good description of Standard Work, is it not?

Related Posts:
Key Marketing Concepts from the Korean War
If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts!
Boyd’s Law of Iteration: Speed beats Quality :
Iterative Process Gaining Steam – Proof it works :

Agile, Scrum, Kanban, or a Marketing Funnel?

Do you think it is Scrum? Do you think it is Kanban? Do you think it is a Marketing Funnel? …or is it all three? Or maybe Agile? This is an empirical view of Value Stream Marketing.

The drawing is reflective of a Scrum sprint. Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework for project management and agile software development. The sprint is typical a two to four week process with the large loop representing the overall process and the smaller (top) loop representing a twenty-four period and the daily scrum meeting. In the Value Stream Marketing Process, I use the loops to demonstrate a higher level of intimacy with a prospect. The top loop is for existing customers to nurture an even stronger relationship.

The three separate areas of the diagram will have their own Kanban board, if there are separate teams working on them, or you could visualize each as a separate swim lane. Separating these three processes apart allow you to better identify the process steps and the tools needed to facilitate the value stream flow. And, of course, using a Kanban board for this process will help you identify where the process is not working or where the bottleneck is occurring.

The Kanban board is where the actual work gets done. We want to limit unnecessary work in process to be no higher than it needs to be to match the control point or pacemaker of the process (bottleneck). We will use these boards to limit Work in Process into each stage and as a result create a smoother work flow(Heijunka) with a goal of eliminating what Lean refer to as the 3 M’s, Muda (Waste), Mura (Unevenness or Inconsistent) and Muri (unreasonable). This way we maximize your marketing efforts to the fullest extent.

Scratching your head a bit? We will develop our Kanban Boards in later posts which will clarify things a bit. Don’t get hung up on process. All you really need to do is break down your present marketing systems onto a Kanban board and start.

Related Posts:
Pull: The Pull in Lean Marketing
Value Stream = Involve-Influence-Interaction- Intimacy-Commit: Value Stream Marketing and the Indirect Marketing Concept
Marketing Kanban: Marketing Kanban

Product Development at Xerox with Agile

This is a transcription of the podcast that I had with Helen DeNero and Patrick Waara, both an integral part of the training team at Xerox Corporation on Agile Product development and the Lean Six Sigma Process. A great short read on the basics of Agile, but some key facts are included on just how a large company would go about the implementation of Agile in conjunction with DFSS. 

Instead of reading you can choose to download the podcast at the Business901 ITunes store or listen to it in the above player. 

Agile Product Development at Xerox -

Related Posts:

Design for Lean Six Sigma, The Xerox Way

The Kaizen Event, A Critical Component of Xerox’s Customer Experience

Learn more about the Xerox Design for Lean Six Sigma

E-book on Lean Six Sigma Advocacy at Xerox

Lean Six Sigma Advocacy at Xerox

 

Technorati Tags: agile,agile product development,scrum,lean six sigma,dfss

Best in Market using Six Sigma in Marketing

Eric Reidenbach author of several books on Six Sigma Marketing, the most recent being Six Sigma Marketing: From Cutting Costs to Growing Market Share, has allowed me to offer my readers a complimentary copy of his newly published book, Best in Market.

I think the book incorporates the overall essence of Six Sigma in marketing today. It takes the DMAIC structure and applies it in a simple easy to read structure that will be beneficial to a Black Belt that may not be all that familiar with marketing and/or to a marketing team that has limited exposure to Six Sigma. It is a readable book that it is not filled with Six Sigma terminology and methodology that typically takes away from the message. So many Six Sigma sales and marketing books seem to labor on the point of making sure that they are what I would call a "methods" book and spend way to much time on Six Sigma versus a learning tool for people to take a practical message away. The points that are made on value and quality through out the book and on how to acquire them through proper techniques provided me some additional insights into my own marketing methods.  

An overview of the book:

Chapter 1 examines the state of U.S. manufacturing – the myths, the realities and most important, the challenges. Much has been written about the challenges from new tax laws to enterprise zones to cost cutting. These are what I call enabling factors that will provide organizations with an environment to excel. Enabling factors alone are insufficient to sustain a leadership position. Value creation and delivery are the sustaining factors – those factors that will enable U.S. manufacturing to achieve this dominance and sustain it.

Chapter 2 examines the old business model and how it must change to accommodate a new set of exigencies that populate a global market place.

Chapter 3 takes an in depth look at the element that calls for a new set of tools that will be required to excel in a global environment. At the heart of these tools is value – an idea that is not new but one that has received new attention because of our ability to measure it and manage it.

Chapter 4 provides the foundation for the new value strategy. Targeting markets will be crucial to any effective strategy in the global environment. Buyers in different countries and even different regions of different countries will define value in different ways. Identifying targeted product/markets and being able to assess their utility to the organization is a critical first step – one that will eliminate much waste and insure greater productivity.

The Voice of the Market (VOM) and how to capture it is the subject of Chapter 5. For each targeted product/market the organization will have to create a value model that identifies and prioritizes the importance of both quality and price and then identifies and prioritizes the importance of the CTQs (critical – to – quality factors) that make up quality. The VOM becomes the information platform that informs all subsequent aspects of SSM.

Understanding your organization‟s competitive value proposition, how the market evaluates your value relative to that of your key competitors is essential. Failing to do so relegates all subsequent activities to guesses and your strategic planning becomes strategic guessing – an all too often occurring activity in many manufacturing organizations. This is the subject of Chapter 6.

Since market share is the focus of this new value strategy, a tool for managing customer loyalty is provided in Chapter 7. Trying to outsell customer defections or running faster to simply stay in place as suggested by the Queen of Hearts in Alice in the Looking Glass is not an option. Customer retention is a crucial component of market share management.

Chapter 8 describes a value tool for identifying where your competition is vulnerable and how to attack that vulnerability. Customer acquisition is another component of market share and in most maturing industries, taking customers from competitors is a capability that must be mastered. Simply waiting for your competition to make a mistake is too passive and relies on serendipity rather than strategy.

Improving the three factors that impact market share gains – people, product and processes is the focus of Chapter 9. Value is delivered through the organization‟s capacity to manage these three value adding elements.

Finally, Chapter 10 offers a model of monitoring changes made to the people, product and process improvements undertaken. To simply assume that the changes are doing what they were intended to do is delusional. They must be monitored to assess their efficiency and effectiveness.

As myself, this is a subject that is near and dear to Eric’s heart and would love to see the idea migrate through the manufacturing and quality world. I encourage you to download the book and take advantage of this offer. Download the book: Best in Market.

If you would like to learn more about Eric or his company visit: 6SigmaMarketing.com

Technorati Tags: 6Sigma Marketing,Six Sigma Marketing,Lean Sigma Marketing,Value Stream

Xerox drives Agile Processes thru Lean Six Sigma

Does Agile need Lean Six Sigma type metrics to work? How do you obtain Voice of Customer in Agile processes when you are the size of Xerox? How does pair programming work? In the Business901 podcast, we asked these questions to a couple of the leading experts from Xerox Corporation’s Lean Six Sigma Software team. And they did not disappoint me with the answers.

Helen DeNero is the Program Manager for Design for Lean Six Sigma for Software at Xerox Corporation and is responsible for the training of Lean/Agile tools and methods across the corporation. While at Xerox, Helen has held numerous positions within product development, including software development on the DocuTech products, Product Integration Management on FreeFlow Print Server, and Manager of Customer and Service Support for the Production Systems Group products.

Patrick Waara has been with Xerox for nearly 25 years holding a variety of jobs at Xerox, including developing user interface systems for Xerox's DocuTech and Systems Architect for Xerox's iGen3, all dealing with software development and systems. He is currently a Software Design for Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt Candidate and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Candidate where he is teaching Lean, Six Sigma, and Agile techniques to Xerox's software development community improving software development capability.

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Related Posts:

Design for Lean Six Sigma, The Xerox Way

The Kaizen Event, A Critical Component of Xerox’s Customer Experience

Learn more about the Xerox Design for Lean Six Sigma

E-book on Lean Six Sigma Advocacy at Xerox

Lean Six Sigma Advocacy at Xerox

 

Technorati Tags: Technorati Tags: agile,agile product development,scrum,lean six sigma,dfss,six sigma,lean

Value Stream Marketing Webinar

Value Stream Marketing

This webinar will discuss utilizing the Value Stream Marketing Concept and how to apply Lean Sigma Principles to your marketing process. I found using Lean techniques not only improves the process but offer a substantial cost savings.

You will receive the E-Book "The Lean Marketing House!"

EVENT REGISTRATION : http://valuestreammarketing.eventbrite.com/

Time: 1:00 PM on March 11, 2010

Business901 introduces the Value Stream Marketing Concept as it is the first actionable step with the Lean Marketing House; we want our participants to learn how to utilize a Sales and Marketing Value Stream which is an entire different procedure than your typical Marketing Funnel. A few of the ideas are so radical from your present day thinking that we will ask you to try them only on your worst performing marketing segment. Joe Dager, a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Marketer will present these topics.

Dager says, "Marketing Segmentation is an integral part of the Lean Marketing House concept. Applying Lean and Theory of Constraints to this practice opens up a completely different understanding of the Marketing Funnel, so different that we had to call it something different. It opens up and simplifies it for many individuals and companies that have difficulty looking at marketing as a system. And as many of us know most marketing systems don’t work. We will take the Value Stream created and walk you through the theory and into practice. I have not found a quicker and easier method from converting a stagnate and non-systematic marketing effort into a flood of increased sales. Not only will this method increase sales but typically it will decrease your marketing cost in a relatively short period. The end result also includes a continuous improvement process to keep your marketing ahead of the competition.”

Implementing Value stream Marketing is a 60-minute webinar based specifically on addressing these issues:

1. Lean Sigma Marketing Principles
2. Creating a Current State Map
3. Simplifying and removing waste in your marketing
4. Segmenting your Customer Base
5. Creating a Customer Centric Budget
6. Creating the PDCA Cycle
7. Determining your Constraint
8. Why your Marketing will fail without this!

Reliable and Measurable Marketing! 

Technorati Tags: Lean Makreting,Agile Marketing,Lean Sigma Marketing,Six Sigma marketing,Value stream Mapping

Using Kanban in Marketing?

Kanban is any signaling device that gives authorization for a supplying process to know what to produce, or for a material handler to know what items to replenish. For example: a physical paper card placed in a container of parts. When stored items are actually used, the Kanban card gets "freed" (perhaps it was in the bottom of the container), and gets put back into a Kanban stand where the Kanban "requests" are fulfilled.

Kanban is a way of limiting work in process and the amount of new work that is introduced into the process. As a result, work would be pulled from the previous stage as work is completed and levels demand. It emphasizes throughput rather than numbers. If you have read my previous posts, you would recognize the emphasis I put on throughput and the need for this to be monitored in the sales and marketing process.

The Reasons for a Kanban can be summed up in these previous posts:

Improve your Marketing Cycle, Increase your Revenue : Speed is important in the buying process. Your total cycle time can be improved. However, it seldom can be done without more feedback loops in your system.  Develop process blitzes to reduce these non-value times. Go to Gemba or the customer’s place of work and find out what happens during this time. See what is stopping them from moving forward. It may be an internal constraint within their company. However, the constraint may be yours. You may not be responding to the customer’s latest needs. Your ability to focus your resources on the customer needs may provide the overall clarity he needs this to make a more rapid decision.

Improve throughput, cut your customers in half!: In a manufacturing system cutting WIP just about always will increase throughput. Why? You end up working only on what is needed and when it is needed. You also will have less waste, less material to handle and fewer mistakes. Good things happen when you are not handling excessive amount of material. In a marketing system cutting the amount of customers in half works very much the same way. You end up working on what a customer truly needs and wants. Your marketing will become more personal, more direct, and fewer mistakes.

Using the Six Sigma Tollgate in your Marketing Funnel: Have you thought of using DMAIC as a way of defining your marketing funnel? We looked at Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control and utilized these basic principles to walk a customer through the marketing funnel. In other posts, I discussed the ability to create a shorter cycle time by decreasing the non-value time in between each of these stages. One of the methods of doing this is to have a strong call to action for a prospect to move from one stage to the next. However, how do you know if a customer is ready to move from one stage to the next?

What kind of questions would you ask at a tollgate?: In a recent post, using the Six Sigma Tollgate in your Marketing Funnel I went through the concept of using a tollgate in your marketing funnel. Below is a list of questions that might help general a few ideas that you may want to consider. (Review Post)

The essential points needed in a Kanban system are:

1. Stock points
2. Replenishment Signal
3. Quick Feedback
4. Frequent Replenishment

 

If you would consider the typical marketing cycle as a prospect moves from one stage to another, you typically imagine it as step by step process and certain events taking place within that stage. With a Kanban method or a tollgate you could have certain trigger points for each phase with that stage allowing one marketing effort to pull from the previous. The method would also limit the number of prospects within that cycle so that the proper amount could be managed or more importantly satisfied! Or, you could have an unlimited supply of leads flowing into each stage? You probably wish you had the latter. However, which would prove more effective?

Photo Courtesy of Systems2win.

Technorati Tags: Kanban,Lean,DMAIC,Lean-Marketing,Lean-Sigma-Marketing

Lean Starter Toolkit released by Systems2win

Systems2win a supplier of Excel Templates for Lean Kaizen Continuous improvement tools has introduced the Lean Starter Toolkit that includes a selection of downloadable templates, videos and instructions. This is a free downloadable trial package that covers 5S, A3, Kaizen, Project Management, Flowcharts, Six Sigma, Value Stream Mapping, Standard Work and Lean Training. This offering is part of the larger series of templates and visuals offered by Systems2win and our relevant to any type of organization pursuing a continuous improvement effort.

The overall goal of the Lean Starter Toolkit is to educate how lean tools and concepts can be adapted and used in the user’s environment. Users will self-validate their knowledge, raise awareness on which and how the tools are utilized, and be introduced to Lean and other continuous improvement tools. There are eleven different categories that your Lean journey takes from an Excel Starting page to customization. These categories are:
1. Get Started
2. 5S
3. A3
4. Kaizen
5. Project
6. Flowcharts
7. 6Sigma
8. Value Stream Mapping
9. Standard Work
10. Lean Training
11. Customize

Dean Ziegler, founder of Systems2win says, “If you are new to Excel or the Tools of Lean, Systems2win offers one of the largest collections of on-line training resources free during your trial period. This is the strength behind our product offerings and there is even built in support features each and every time you open a document. So don’t hesitate, use the training if nothing else to start or expand your Lean Journey.”

“We want you to know that many of our Systems2win templates are just plain simple. However these template create add tremendous value in our product offering but they were just so simple that we hesitated giving them away as a trial. You may have created a small portion of these already and know the amount of time it takes to do this. The advantage of having a single flexible model will create clarity for your staff and better execution. Utilizing these templates will ensure that you spend your time on the application versus creating or updating a document. Well, we are giving a few away and review the list about, it is only 20% of our total package. If you would like, you can test drive the whole package for 30 days,” added Ziegler.

This is part of a News Release that I have just completed for Systems2win so it is promotional but the Trial offer is pretty cool just if you just choose to use it for 30 days to get a feel for Lean Tools and how to use them. By the way, I use this product everyday!  

Technorati Tags: Value stream Mapping,Lean Development,Lean Healthcare,Lean Toolkit,Standard Work,A3 Reporting

Simple, Easy to use Lean Six Sigma Software tools

When talking to most Lean Six Sigma Consultants they will tell you the 2 lean tools that you start with are 5S and Standard Work. Looking for a simple way to describe the Standard Work process, I ran across this software company and their set of tools. I found them quite interesting and have started "Testing" them out. I wonder has anyone else tried them?

Here is a description and a picture of their template. Tools for standardized work are the most important tools in your Lean toolkit - because they avoid backsliding into old habits

The Standard Work Sheet Excel template is 5 tools in 1:

1. Value Add Analysis (auto-calculates pie chart)
2. Work Balancing (auto-draws work load balancing bar chart in relation to Takt Time)
3. Standard Work Instructions & Analysis
4. Quick Changeover tool for setup reduction.
5. Standard Work Combination Sheet visual time chart.

What makes these templates unique is that they are built on Excel spreadsheet platform.

You have options to:

• Auto-draw a Standard Work Combination Sheet with a single click of a button.
• Create a separate time chart for each operator, or display all operators in a single chart.
• Use either stopwatch or video Time Observation to observe and time your standard work procedures
• Split your Value Add Pie Chart into your own user-defined types of waste
• Plot as many as 4 chart lines - for Takt Time, Target Cycle Time, Cycle Time, and even a 4th user-defined chart line (perhaps for out of cycle work?)
  
  Draw the chart with or without labels
• Include up to 200 lines of work elements on a single chart
  (and spread even larger processes over multiple charts - perhaps with summary data rolling up to each higher level)
• Define your own header data field labels
• Link to or from another worksheet for calculations such as Working Time Available, product mix, or master scheduling...
• Paste a picture of your Spaghetti Diagram on the same page with your Standard Work Combination Table!
• Use this as a Quick Changeover tool for Lean SMED setup reduction

I think it is a pretty unique product. You can download a free trial but I think it will ake a commitment to use these templates so if it is free, you may just never commit.

Technorati : 6sigma, Consultants, IT, Lean, Quality, Six Sigma, software