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Six Sigma: Does It Fit Hospitality?

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Management

By Tina McCrossan

Six Sigma

Does it fit in hospitality?

Depending upon whom you talk to,
Six Sigma is either the most important new direction for change management in hospitality, or it’s a waste of time that has introduced armies of green and black belts getting in the way of doing business. Believers on both sides of the debate have a lot to say about why, in spite of this polarization, the methodology seems to be working in some organizations.
Six Sigma leads companies down some interesting paths. You take your best people away from what they did before. You tell them to find, quantify, fix and measure results in any aspect of the business operation which attracts their interest. That’s a formula for organizational anxiety. However if approached correctly, Six Sigma programs don’t have to breed conflict.
In hospitality many necessary projects never get funded because of the unique capital budget challenges in the industry.
Wolfgang Ebenbichler, the former VP of
F&B at the Gaylord Opryland, said, “Everyone has projects they know need to get done to achieve forecasted growth, but can’t seem to get corporate approval. Six
Sigma specialists are trained to quantify benefits and long-term effects on revenues and profitability – they can get those vital projects off the ground.”
Often an alliance is formed between operations teams who want projects funded and Six Sigma teams who can document the necessary ROI to get them approved. However this alliance can quickly get stressed when black belts stay focused for months and even years dash boarding the results or lack thereof.
The potential for conflict is based on the underlying intuitive

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