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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

Workforce Development Receives Grant to Develop Corporate Efficiency Training


Monroe Community College is offering Lean Six Sigma training to nine women- and minority-owned companies that are suppliers to Eastman Kodak Company as a result of a $32,471 grant from the State University of New York.

Lean Six Sigma Champion Training for company presidents and chief executives rolled out in early February. Key staff from the nine companies will receive Green Belt and Black Belt training beginning in March and running through August. Lean Six Sigma offers a synergistic blend of two business efficiency concepts that improve speed and eliminate waste while reducing defects, improving quality and eliminating variation.

“From TQM to Six Sigma to Lean Six Sigma, quality methods continue to have an impact on the way companies do business with their customers and their suppliers,” said Charles Caples, program director for MCC Workforce Development. “Together, Lean and Six Sigma can provide companies with a powerful toolkit for business process improvement, one that could mean the difference between success and failure in the global marketplace.”

MCC collaborated with Kodak’s Worldwide Purchasing organization and Transformation Partners Company, L.L.C., MCC’s Lean Six Sigma partner, to adapt the curriculum into a 260-hour program benefitting some of Kodak’s small suppliers. In writing the grant proposal, Caples noted that exposure to this curriculum will expand these companies’ views of quality and will play a vital role in their sustained success – with not only Kodak but with many other companies as well.

Lean Six Sigma is a combination of Lean and Six Sigma. Lean training is designed to bring about rapid, dramatic improvements to the performance of an organization through an overhaul of the value stream. Six Sigma offers a business-driven, multi-faceted approach to process improvement, reduced costs and increased profits. “Lean Six Sigma is the application of lean techniques to increase organizational speed, while combining the tools and culture of Six Sigma to improve efficiencies and focus on customers’ issues,” Caples said.

An early adapter to the usage of Six Sigma, Kodak was one of a consortium of five equipment manufacturers to train at Motorola University, an offshoot of the Six Sigma pioneer, in the early 1990s. Since, Kodak has trained thousands of its employees throughout the world in the Six Sigma concepts and practices.

Dianne E McConkey
Public Affairs
03/07/2005