Aug 19 2013

There’s heavy demand in all sectors for ‘lean’ specialists | The Globe and Mail

See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
“When Sun Life Financial goes to market to bolster its growing team of “lean” business specialists, it faces wide-ranging competition – jostling on job boards with companies as varied as Telus, Bombardier, Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, Shoppers Drug Mart, Kraft Foods and the City of Vancouver.

On any given day, there are hundreds of postings on Canadian online job sites for people with formal certification in techniques known as Lean and Six Sigma, as well as the strong managerial skills needed to lead organizational change.”

Michel Baudin‘s insight:

The quotes around Lean in the title are certainly appropriate.

As discussed before, Lean is not a standard body of knowledge that people can be certified on the way you get a driver’s license. Six Sigma has nothing to do with Lean and has been abandoned at GE, the company the article mistakenly quotes as having originated it. It was Motorola, not GE.

According to the article, management in the quoted companies views “managing a portfolio of transformation and improvement efforts” as a job for which it hires specialists. It’s not. Instead, it is a skill every manager should have.

Wait another three years, and my bet is that we will see an article in the same paper describing how disappointed these companies have been with the certifications, and how little their performance has improved.

See on www.theglobeandmail.com

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