Extra guidelines for entries in the category, “Best Operational Excellence Project in Financial Services”

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Projects must display a pragmatic use of Lean and/or Six Sigma to achieve lasting business improvement. The winning project must have a quantifiable business improvement as its foremost criterion, with the secondary, but very important, prerequisite being the practical application of Lean and/or Six Sigma.

Extra Entry Guidelines|Projects will be assessed against the following requirements:

• Business result: It must be demonstrated beyond question that the project has created a measurable, significant business improvement. From a baseline established in the Define/Measure phase, there must be a sustained, controlled Improvement in the targeted process. The improvement can be of any nature, e.g. customer satisfaction, productivity, volume sales, etc. as long as it is of material and demonstrable importance to the business.
• Customer focus: The project must have a clear identification of the customer and of customer requirements (CTQs). The customer can be internal or external. In the event of any difficulty in differentiating between two projects, the award would go to the project that had the greatest impact on an external customer.
• Application of Lean and/or Six Sigma tools and methodology: In addition to having a strong customer focus, a successful project must also display the practical application of Lean and/or Six Sigma tools and methodology. There must be strong evidence that the decisions taken within the project were based on the clear collection and use of data and fact rather than on other influences. The conclusions drawn in each phase must have been robust and the next steps taken will have been those that allowed the quickest route to gaining the earliest capture of business benefit. Any usage of tools that is considered unnecessary (excessive) in the progression of a project will be judged negatively, as will any progression of a project without the necessary rigour.

It’s impossible to be completely prescriptive in how projects should be assessed as all projects differ and will require great discretion and business understanding on the part of the judges. However, the winning project should display a tangible and rapid business result, achieved through the application of a pragmatic approach to the use of Lean and/or Six Sigma tools, with strong evidence of customer focus as the project driver.

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