Quality Quandaries: Deploying Operational Excellence at a Financial Service Provider

The article examines the transformation of a financial service provider in The Netherlands toward operational excellence and driven by a Lean Six Sigma program. An organization, whether a business enterprise or a not-for-profit organization, could be conceived as a collection of routine operations. A process consists of a number of operations that turn input into output. Manufacturing, sales, back office processes, marketing, and nursing are functions performed in a routine manner. Lean Six Sigma projects are about the improvement of these routine operations, seeking to make them more effective and more efficient, striving for processes that run like clockwork. By addressing product and service quality, making delivery more reliable, and better focusing marketing and sales processes, superior customer satisfaction can result in growth of revenue or market share or in reduced price sensitivity.