A Magnificent Journey to Excellence: Sixteen Years of Six SIGMA at Cummins Inc.

This book presents a model of organization transformation success. The model framework comprises a series of S-Curves (maturity curves) of planning and execution activities phased over time. The model is illustrated through description and analysis of an actual, two-decade, highly successful, global enterprise transformation Six Sigma program at a Fortune 200 company: Cummins, Inc. Lessons learned from the model and company case study are completely transferrable to other organizational culture, improvement and innovation transformation settings.

This insightful book:

- Documents a firsthand account of a successful transformation. The authors completely explain what was accomplished and the lessons learned from a 16-year deployment of Six Sigma at Cummins.

- Acts as a benchmark for those organizations interested in pursuing primarily a continuous improvement transformation, and more generally for other types of transformation efforts.

- Includes substantive interviews with ten key leaders and others who made the transformation possible.

- Helps organizations shorten the overall transformation timelines. The documentation of a transformation provides you a model for how to think about organization transformation maturity over time and plan for it.

- Recognizes the work of thousands of people involved in transforming a global company. The interviews provide extraordinary perspectives not only by executives who initiated and sustained the transformation program but also by program participants who themselves grew as managers and leaders in their careers through the program.

Essentially, this book helps early-career managers and executives see the broader picture of enterprise transformation, especially over time. This helps them be better managers and executives, and importantly, helps them better plan for and hasten their upward career trajectories. Lastly, the book describes a view of possibilities. It describes a clear, sustained success, the steps taken to get there and the measurement of progress. The result provides you with confidence that successful transformation is possible and worth the effort.

George Strodtbeck is currently a Vice President with SBTI, a leading consulting firm focused on the development and leadership of continuous improvement methodologies and change management systems.

George retired as the Executive Director of Quality at Cummins, Inc in May 2015. His change leadership responsibilities included:

• World-wide implementation and continuous improvement of Six Sigmabeginning July 1999. Six Sigma is a world-wide effort at Cummins. By January 2015 the company had trained 21,000+ belts, completed more than 45,000 projects, and eliminated more than ＄5.5B in costs.
• The Cummins Business Operating System Leadership and Practice. The Business Operating System is focused on cross-functional integration and continuous improvement of the flows and processes of the company.

Also included in George’s portfolio of responsibilities were:

• Measurement Excellence and Lab Operations
• Global Product Safety
• Quality Standards Integration (ISO/TS)
• Quality Functional Excellence
• New Product Development Processes
• Supplier Quality Functional Excellence

George graduated from West Point in 1976. He then served in the Army at various sites around the world until 1986, earning a MS in International Relations in 1984.

Following his Army service, George joined Pepsi in 1986 serving as a Fleet Maintenance and Distribution Area Manager until 1992.

At Cummins from 1992-2015 as a member of Corporate Quality, George led several change initiatives including the operational leadership of the 1997 Baldrige application and site visit, a sixteen-year Six Sigma deployment, and the deployment of the Cummins Operating System.

As a consultant with SBTI since 2015, George has applied the lessons learned from his wide-ranging career helping several companies in their quest to develop continuous improvement cultures.

George has written a book titled Making Change in Complex Organizations published in Apr ’16 by the American Society for Quality (ASQ).

George is married with 4 children and lives in Indianapolis.

Mohan V. Tatikonda is Professor of Operations Management at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, executive of the Indiana Clinical & Translational Sciences Institute, and Life Sciences Research Fellow. He previously served on the faculty at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). He received a B.S. in electrical engineering, M.S. in systems engineering and M.B.A. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He received his Ph.D. from the Boston University Questrom School of Management.

Mohan’s research addresses improvement, innovation and entrepreneurship in highly novel and complex technological settings, and has been published in Management Science, Journal of Operations Management, Production & Operations Management, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Industrial & Corporate Change and R&D Management. His research awards include Best Paper of the Year in the Journal of Operations Management and Best Dissertation from the Production and Operations Management Society. His teaching awards include the Eli Lilly Award for MBA Teaching Excellence (awarded by students to the top MBA faculty member) and the Schuyler F. Otteson Award for Undergraduate Teaching Excellence.

Mohan’s media commentary on international trade has appeared in New York Times, USA Today, Bloomberg, The Independent and Marketplace (NPR). He is an advisor to start-up firms and incubators, and has consulted for The World Bank, SAP, Pepsi, FedEx and Rolls Royce.

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