Best Practices -- ITT Champions Six Sigma

Dec. 21, 2004

The multi-industry company outlines what makes its Six Sigma initiative tick.

Every day in more than two dozen countries from the U.S. to the People's Republic of China, ITT Industries Inc. is fielding teams of champions. They are black belts and other employees who are making a comprehensive performance-improvement initiative known as Value-Based Six Sigma (VBSS) work. In 2001 alone, the program produced about $135 million in cost savings for the $4.7 billion White Plains, N.Y.-based engineering and diversified manufacturing firm. Louis J. Giuliano, the company's chairman, president and CEO, believes VBSS, with its emphasis on projects that add actual economic value, is key to achieving his goal of ITT being "a premier multi-industry company." ITT's four lines of business are fluid technology, defense electronics and services, motion and flow controls, and electronic components. But, as with baseball, football, soccer and basketball teams in the sports world, world-class achievements by Six Sigma teams don't just happen. They require training and discipline and several key practices, practices that include not only the acquisition of tools and techniques but also the building of leadership skills, emphasizes Giuliano. Vince Fayad, ITT's director of VBSS, is the head coach. His play-book contains six best practices that he believes make ITT's Six Sigma program successful.

Link to the strategic plan. Figure out where you want your part of the business to be in the future, and pick projects that will help you get there. If there's "a strong correlation" between projects and the strategic plan, "you're going to get the results," says Fayad.

Go for quick wins. Put projects together so that quick successes are possible. "That excites people," stresses Fayad. Seeing things happen and being part of the process "energizes people."

Match projects and resources. There's a tendency to try to work on all projects all at one time, notes Fayad. "We've learned that you can't do that," he confesses. "You've got to release projects based on the available resources" to ensure projects get done and are successful.

Have management support. Senior management must be committed to the cause and willing to remove red tape, barriers, roadblocks and "political" problems. Assuring that the owners of the business processes that the VBSS teams are addressing are part of the solution and not part of the problem has "significantly improved our rate of change," relates Fayad.

Provide executive training. To increase their understanding of what the black belts and other VBSS agents of change are up to, ITT has trained key managers in its purpose and concepts. One result: executives are "perpetuating the approach," says Fayad. Indeed, as they travel to the company's various locations, ITT's general managers, unit managers, and division presidents, ask about performance improvement projects.

Recognize, reward and share success. Local recognition programs, a best practice symposium and a software tracking tool are three of the ways that ITT seeks to recognize and reward team accomplishments and share information. "It's kind of knowledge management, knowledge sharing, so that people are all of a sudden realizing that these improvements can be made elsewhere in the organization." Send submissions for Best Practices to Editorial Research Director David Drickhamer at [email protected].

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.