Six Sigma Team Building (Champion) - Part 2

Role of a Six Sigma Champion

In addition to identifying the attributes of a good Champion, we should also be aware of the specific responsibilites they should fulfill. In essence, the champion binds the entire team together.
One responsibility of a champion is to obtain funds and resources for the projcet. Another responsibility is to talk to other executives or members or senior management and get their go-ahead for projects.
Example:
Lets say you are the CEO and the Six Sigma champion of a fast food company. As the champion, you would be requered to get agreement from the other members of senior management when requered to transform processes or need to add on or remove steps from existing processes. Your position in the company would ensure few difficulties in getting senior mangement buy-in on the proposes process changes.

*) Foster Training
Champin should ensure the availability of training resources, tools, technologies, and methodologies to the Six Sigma team for implementing a Six Sigma project.
In our example, the Champion would ensure that all the team member are adequately trained and equipped to handle customer feedback and take corrective measures to ensure customer satisfation.

*) Pace mediation and roadblock removal
Champions also have the responsibility to put in place the support system and infrastructure requered to hanle all issues related to the process improvement. Overal, the champion is responsible for keeping the project work on track and ensuring that it runs at the desired pace. For this, the champion may have to mediate at different stages of the process change.

*) Project selection and funds estimation
Champion shoulder the responlibility of selecting the process for Six Sigma implementation. in the contesst of the Fast Food Company, the Champion may select the food delivery process as the process for Six Sigma implementation.
Having selected the process, the champion, with the consent of the Six Sigma team, would estimate the funds requerements and get it approved by senior management.

*) Confrontation resolution
A champion is instrumental in preventing confrontations and defusing any issues that may arise between employees and the Six Sigma team members. This allows the team to focus on the Six Sigma project.
For Example, to improve the customer satisfactin levels in the cas of the food delivery process, arguments would need to be resolved that might arise between the delivery team and the accounts team.

*) Budget allocation
In some cases, senior mangement can authorize the champion to allocate budgets for the project. For this, the budget allocation lomit is fixed and any investment or expenditure beyond this limit needs to be approved by management. For example, if you have decided to provide full refund of the food order cost in case the food delivery does not happen on time, you would need to have a sanction in terms of the budget that would be required to handle such extra expenses.

*) Result Measurement
Once the project is running, the champion needs to collect the detaialed infromation to evaluate the progress of the project.
In the present context, you could collect the information related to the number of unsatisfied customers for whom refund have been provided. You could also collect other information related to the increase in efficiency of the delivery team over a period of time, which can be measured by the number of unsatisfied customers over that period.