Businesses must continually improve processes, reduce costs and cut waste to remain competitive, and many are turning to Six Sigma and Lean principles to achieve these goals. A process-improvement methodology, Six Sigma can help businesses cut costs while improving quality, customer satisfaction and cycle times. Lean, with its emphasis on reducing waste, is an excellent complement to Six Sigma. To help clients integrate and implement both methodologies, CSC has developed a robust Lean/Six Sigma program, which trains, develops and deploys certified experts across the globe.

"CSC is constantly looking for ways to improve the quality of our processes and sharpen our focus on serving clients. This program is an integral part of this effort, and a testament to CSC’s commitment to building process improvement into every one of our client engagements," says Mike Laphen, CSC’s chairman and CEO.

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"Lean/Six Sigma tools and concepts have sparked performance improvements in practically every division of our company, while helping us deliver substantial cost savings to CSC clients across industry lines," adds Rob Bryant, a Six Sigma Program master black belt and vice president of Six Sigma and Quality Assurance for CSC’s Global Infrastructure Services group.

Improving service delivery

Lean principles, used initially in manufacturing environments, have found increased use in all areas of business. Lean is a systematic approach to identifying and eliminating waste through continuous improvement. Similarly, the Six Sigma methodology uses data and statistical analysis tools to identify, track and reduce problem areas and defects in products and services, ideally resulting in near-perfect results. Its name derives from a statistical process control model that measures defects per million and assigns a "sigma value" from one to six. Six is the ideal number—indicating only 3.4 defects per million, or 99.99966% perfect. This figure can apply to any range of processes, products or services—from software to back-office business processes—and often translates into cost savings. According to the Six Sigma Academy, certified Six Sigma black belts can save companies approximately $230,000 per project.

To be certified as a black belt, the highest certification level, or as a green belt, CSC employees undergo rigorous training in Lean/Six Sigma processes and tools. CSC currently has more than 150 black belts and 1,500 Six Sigma green belts throughout North America, Europe, Australia and Asia. Black belt candidates receive in-depth instruction in Lean/Six Sigma processes and tools, including the Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC) and Define-Measure-Analyze-Design-Verify (DMADV) methodologies.

Bryant notes that CSC employs Lean/Six Sigma practices internally to reduce costs while increasing revenue and customer and employee satisfaction. Externally, CSC has improved service delivery, often measured by Service Level Agreements (SLAs), which are mutually agreed upon milestones and goals built into a contract.

"With Lean/Six Sigma, we’re improving customer satisfaction and reducing missed SLAs," Bryant says. "We’re also improving account-level processes to increase customer satisfaction."

He points to CSC’s life insurance IT outsourcing organization, which provides transaction-processing services to CSC’s life and annuity clients worldwide. As its business grew, the organization found it increasingly challenging to meet all of its SLAs during month- and quarter-end cycles. Instead of increasing mainframe capacity, the group implemented Six Sigma tools, identifying process deficiencies using the DMAIC methodology. As a result, the Life ITO group not only reduced deficiencies, it eliminated deficiencies completely.

"Reducing the number of missed SLAs to zero from one quarter to the next was something I’m sure the team believed to be an impossible task at the beginning of the project," says Jim Cook, CSC’s president of Financial Services Group. "But by working together across organizational boundaries using the Six Sigma tools, that is exactly what they accomplished—and in less than three months."

Bottom-line results

CSC uses Lean/Six Sigma throughout the company in support of a wide range of government and commercial clients. CSC has helped a U.S. government agency increase customer satisfaction and save approximately $2.8 million through a continuous service improvement program, including Quality Management System (QMS) document control, quality assurance processes, information assurance certification and delivery coordination.

For another client, a global leader in communications and electronic solutions, a joint CSC-client team reduced the cycle time for service requests by 20 percent, slashed the defect rate of data from 22 percent to 2.5 percent, and raised the percentage of billable requests meeting scheduled completion date from 38 percent to 78 percent. In all, the client realized annualized efficiency savings exceeding $1 million.

"We have a strong Lean/Six Sigma program that delivers results," says Bryant. "Ultimately, Lean/Six Sigma principles help us reduce costs, and as we reduce costs, we pass those savings on to clients."

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