Customer Service Initiative and Six Sigma at Southern Polytechnic
Presented at the University System of Georgia Board of Regents meeting
By President Lisa A. Rossbacher
April 18, 2007
@ Georgia Southern University
Statesboro, GA
Southern Polytechnic has been engaged in Six Sigma for a number of years. It’s part of the coursework we offer in Industrial Engineering Technology and related fields. We provide training and certification programs through Continuing Education. Graduates of our programs have leadership roles in a number of companies, including Lockheed Martin, Delta Airlines, and Shaw Industries.
The University’s mission statement says, explicitly, that we apply knowledge to solve real world problems. So when we started thinking about how SPSU could support Governor Perdue’s Customer Service Initiative, applying Six Sigma just made sense.
The first thing we needed to do was ramp up our understanding of Six Sigma so that more of us on campus really knew what we were talking about. Many of us did the same thing that our colleagues in the System office did, when Chancellor Davis arrived…we read “Six Sigma for Dummies.” Then, on the Chancellor’s advice, we moved to “What Is Lean Six Sigma?” I think this was on the Regents’ reading list, too.
As a quick review – which I know all the Regents remember from reading the “What is Lean Six Sigma?” book – “Six Sigma” methods are focused on improving quality by being customer-focused and using a handful of powerful analytical tools.
“Lean” methods emphasize improving process flow and speed.
The combination of these two approaches to improving processes and service is what makes “Lean Six Sigma” such a powerful improvement tool.
But we really needed to understand the process in depth, so we arranged for three special offerings of a Six Sigma Green Belt Certification course. Last fall, 54 people – 41 from SPSU and 13 from the System Office – participated in this Green Belt training. (I’m happy to say I passed the test and am officially a Green Belt, as are many of my colleagues here at this meeting today.)
The class photos from the first two groups show an interesting transition. In the first group, you’ll see one person – Dr. Beheruz Sethna -- wearing a tie. By the second class, we were up to four people. And by the third class, you can see that every single person is wearing a tie. Clearly, Dr. Sethna is our fashion trend-setter.
I’d like to comment on the process of Six Sigma Green Belt training, which was as valuable as the outcome. Some of the important benefits are in the human dimension. The training was a wonderful opportunity to have colleagues from the System Office and the campus working together – learning together – and exploring how to apply this particular body of knowledge together.
Learning about Six Sigma was also a good reminder about the learning process – what we ask students to do every day. We talk about one of our goals, in the University System, being to develop lifelong learners. Efforts like this Six Sigma training put us in the position of modeling that behavior – of keeping us honest. And that’s valuable, too.
As we were learning about this approach to improving processes and changing outcomes, we all asked about what was happening in the application of Six Sigma in higher education.
The answer was “Not much.” Nationally, there were a few examples, but very few. Southern Polytechnic is one of these places.
The process of identifying projects is also valuable. One of the revelations, as we’ve looked for appropriate Six Sigma projects, is that we don’t always need to use a full-scale Six Sigma methodology to improve a process. Sometimes, the process of trying to identify and define a problem is what’s needed to be able to focus on it and just fix it. In fact, one of the Black Belts we’re working with has indicated that about 80% of problems can be solved in a relatively simple, direct way, by defining the problem, getting all the key people in the room, and just solving it together.
One of the major pieces of advice in Six Sigma is to start with the low-hanging fruit, but it’s also important to remember that what constitutes “low hanging” depends on how tall you are – and how high you can reach. What’s “low” for one organization might be a real stretch for another one.
How we select a project is also important. The types of projects – and their scope – can range from a very focused, grass-roots approach to departmental approaches to targeted efforts to ones that are enterprise-wide. The exact emphasis will depend on the organization, its culture and history, and its current needs.
Right now, for Southern Polytechnic, we are focused on targeted projects – ones that involve multiple offices and departments. These are interdisciplinary problems that need an interdisciplinary solution.
SPSU has benefited from Six Sigma projects in the past, many of which were student projects. Past projects have included:
· Changing the phone system, in response to concerns raised by students looking for information.
· In response to the unacceptably large number of transfer students who arrived at SPSU without having had their transfer credit evaluated, the process of evaluating transfer credit was streamlined. Currently, the Records Office is using “lean” techniques to further improve this process.
· In response to students wanting to know their grades as quickly as possible after their final grades are calculated, SPSU moved from mailing the grades to posting them electronically.
Now that we have faculty and staff involved in the projects, in addition to students, we can sustain the effort beyond a single semester.
As part of the Governor’s Customer Service Initiative, we’re now focused on a formal Six Sigma project being led by a Black Belt. The emphasis is to improve the application process for students. We know that 22% of students who start the application process don’t complete it. We don’t know why. Is there something about the forms that is too complicated? Is there an unacceptable lag time in our processing?
Whatever the reason – which we will find out – the failure to complete the application process is a customer service issue that we’re focused on addressing. By decreasing the percentage of students who fail to complete the process from 22% to 19%, we will increase the number who do complete their applications by 50 students.
Other current projects that support the Governor’s customer service initiative include decreasing the steps to enroll international student in health insurance, decreasing the time to process refunds for housing, decreasing steps and increasing accuracy in processing paperwork to hire new employees, and decreasing the time to process travel reimbursements.
Most of these are simpler to address than traditional Six Sigma projects. They fall into the “low-hanging fruit” category. They are all processes that involve multiple departments or offices, and they are all ripe for improvement. And all of these address the goal of improving customer service.
SPSU’s customer service champion, Dr. Ron Koger, and one of his staff members attended a Lean Six Sigma course two weeks ago, taught in part by Robin Gates, who worked with Chancellor Davis at Alliant Energy. After talking with the people from SPSU, Mr. Gates raised the question to the group, about applications of Six Sigma in higher education. No one in the group knew of any examples, but everyone had a suggestion. This was, truly, the Voice of the Customer…and they all had the same suggestion.
And we’re going to get back to you on what that was in a few minutes.
Higher education has a lot of processes that can benefit from Six Sigma’s type of structured, analytical, data-driven approach to improving customer service.
In summary, the process of learning about Six Sigma, of considering how to apply it in higher education, and of identifying projects has already had multiple benefits at Southern Polytechnic. We’re improving customer service, building our community, saving time and money as we streamline our processes, setting an example for other institutions, and also setting an example for our students of what it means to be engaged in “life-long learning” and “continuous improvement.”
I appreciate the opportunity to share some of these benefits with the Board of Regents today. I’ll get back to you in a few minutes about the “Voice of the Customer.”
I’d now like to introduce Tonya Kilpatrick, Special Assistant to the Associate Vice Chancellor for P-16 Initiatives for the University System
*****
(in the beginning of Jim Flowers’ part of the presentation)
A few minutes ago, we left SPSU’s Customer Service Champion at a Lean Six Sigma workshop, at which no one knew of higher education examples but where everyone had a suggestion. The same suggestion. From the perspective of the ultimate consumers – as students, as parents, or both – they uniformly said, “Financial aid needs to be fixed.”
This is, truly, the Voice of the Customer.
The issues include the application process, the notification process, and the award process. To be fair, many of the variables are not controlled by the colleges and universities, but this is a process that the customers have clearly identified as needing work – throughout higher education.
By addressing financial aid, we can have a major impact on customer service. At Southern Polytechnic, 52% of all students and 66% of all eligible students receive financial aid. We have an opportunity to have a huge impact in the area of customer service to a large number of students (and their families).
After the first Green Belt certification class at SPSU, Chancellor Davis offered some advice. They really echo the comments Mark Pelton has already made in his list of “keys to success.” Chancellor Davis’s guidelines include:
· Make sure all initial projects are real savings and not cost avoidance.
· Focus on low-hanging fruit first.
· Look for projects that are repeatable (within the institution or elsewhere in the University System).
· Focus initially on back-office projects that the public will understand.
· Celebrate all successes.
· Establish an atmosphere in which “getting better is not an option.”
At SPSU, we are doing well at following these guidelines, although we have room for improvement in the first one. We are still improving processes and eliminating unnecessary steps, and we have been able to identify only limited cost savings to date. But we have been improving the quality of our customer service, and that contributes to the bottom line in ways that Jim Flowers will address further….