Back in 2021, when businesses were just starting to open up and get back to normality, we received a phone call from the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce. It was Will Morgan our account manager, informing us that a business called CCPI Europe were interested in working with local training providers to help their business with the introduction of Lean & Six Sigma (Lean6) to support their operational excellence journey.
Do we deliver Lean & Six Sigma training? Yes! Are we a local training provider to CCPI Europe in Sheffield? Yes! With those two boxes ticked, we set up an initial meeting to scope the project and see how we could help.
You might be wondering… who are CCPI Europe? Well for starters they are part of the Marmon Group a Berkshire Hathaway Company. If you’re still wondering, Warren Buffet is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Need we say anymore?
CCPI Europe are a leading Thermocouple Manufacturer, founded in 1984 on the outskirts of Sheffield, more commonly known as the ‘Steel City’ famous for producing… you guessed it, steel! They have world-class manufacturing facilities which allow them to focus on lean manufacturing to provide high quality, reliability, accuracy, and short turnaround times on bespoke products to their customers.
Right, now you know who they are. Let’s talk about the partnership and the benefits Lean & Six Sigma can have on businesses. Unsure what Lean & Six Sigma is? Don’t worry we’ll explain this too.
What does ‘Lean’ mean?
To you and me, it might mean “Fat-Free” or “to be more efficient”. In this context, Lean is being referred to in a business sense and can be defined as “A business that maximises value whilst minimising waste”.
How is our Lean6 training solution helping CCPI Europe to achieve their objective we hear you ask? Well, at Whyy? Change we employ highly skilled practitioners who know a thing or two about Lean manufacturing. In fact, our CEO, Ray Byrne is a Black Belt in Lean & Six Sigma!
To answer the question, Ray spoke with Jonathan Golding, Managing Director at CCPI Europe Ltd about the challenges they were facing and arranged a number of Lean & Six Sigma yellow belt training sessions with their team across all business functions
Jonathan Golding, Managing Director of CCPI Europe Ltd added:
“I participated in the first group of 10 staff going through the Lean 6 Yellow Belt Training provide by Ray at Whyy? Change. The training introduced us to the specifics of Six Sigma, how and where to apply it. There was great engagement from Ray with the team and many examples of Lean operations or processes were presented to help put our lean journey into context. There were group workshops, and everyone joined in the problem-solving tasks.”
“I left with a newfound lean mindset, and importantly as the business leader and change agent, it is vitally important to sustain the change through developing a lean culture of continuous improvement and respect for people.”
Ray shared his thoughts on the importance of change and why it’s important that everyone is involved.
“We feel there’s a need to introduce the mindset of change, everyone is important, after all it’s the front line that make the business what it is.”
What is Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Training?
Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Training is a 2-day course introduction into business process improvement, Six Sigma tools and Lean methodologies such as; DMAIC, 5 Why’s, Kaizen, 8 wastes and 6’s. It aims to enhance your process performance and manage business transformation and is the first step to becoming a fully-fledged Black Belt practitioner.
Okay, enough about training, what about the partnership? After the first training session, CCPI Europe were inspired by our Lean6 logo and decided that it would look great on their uniform. At Whyy? Change each of the Lean6 logos represent the different course levels. For example, the Yellow Belt Training is Lean6 Yellow, Green Belt Training is Lean6 Green and Black Belt Training is Lean6 Black.
CCPI Europe have applied the logos to indicate which level their team are currently qualified to. With each belt requiring a different level of expertise, this is a great way to help people know who to speak to.
Upon completion of the Yellow belt training, all delegates received a highly regarded and industry recognised Lean & Six Sigma Yellow Belt certificate.
Here’s what they had to say:
“I would recommend this Lean6 yellow belt training course to other colleagues as it gives you a wide range of knowledge in reducing waste, making the flow of work more effective and efficient, therefore making work life easier as a whole.”
Keiron Taylor
“The Lean6 yellow belt training programme was useful as it allowed me to gain a better understanding of what LEAN is. I would also recommend this training course to other colleagues as it really helps with understanding why we are incorporating LEAN within the workplace.”
Jonathan Rockett
“Lean6 has improved working areas. The initial visual impact from my observations has been striking with areas being brighter, tidier, cleaner, and more organised. The quote by Benjamin Franklin: “A place for everything, everything in its place” is definitely being implemented. Teamwork is also being promoted across departments and the majority of people are engaging in the 6S events by coming up with ideas and suggestions on how to improve the work areas and flow. From my observations Motion waste is the main culprit of the 8 Forms of Waste that we are addressing by positioning day to day work items closer to workstations e.g. filing cabinets, tools, storage, scanners, printers etc…”
Diane Tipple, Quality Manager at CCPI
What are the benefits of Lean & Six Sigma?
- Lean & Six Sigma Increases Revenue
- Lean & Six Sigma Reduces Costs
- Lean & Six Sigma Improves Effectiveness
Lean & Six Sigma Increases Revenue
Who doesn’t like making more money? Streamlining business processes reduces the workload of each business unit making them more efficient. By increasing the efficiency more services and actions can be completed. Essentially, Lean & Six Sigma allows you to do more with less. That could be selling, manufacturing or providing more of what customers want with fewer resources.
Lean & Six Sigma Reduces Costs
Like most Yorkshire folk, we love to save money. Removing ‘waste’ from your processes such as activities that aren’t needed to manufacture products makes it cheaper. Lean & Six Sigma focuses on optimizing and removing unnecessary processes to save your business money.
Lean & Six Sigma Improves Effectiveness
Last but by no means least, Lean & Six Sigma improves effectiveness by defining and understanding who your customers are and what’s most important to them. It’s all about the voice of the customer and giving them the most value.
There are many other benefits to Lean & Six Sigma but the three most important ones are driving profits through increased revenue and reduced costs whilst being more effective. This ultimately enables you to achieve operational excellence.
To find out more, discover our Lean6 courses and apprenticeships.
