RPO, Six Sigma, Quality, Momentum, Kastner

Six Sigma and RPO, or Kaizen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Pete Kastner is a Six Sigma Black Belt who managed the Recruitment Process Outsourcing program for a Momentum Fortune 100 client. In this article, he shares his experiences from his most recent Six Sigma RPO journey.

In 1974, Robert Pirsig published a book about the metaphysics of quality entitled Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This book relates a father’s journey, delivering ideas of quality, philosophy and formal dialogue against the backdrop of a good old American road trip with his son, all from the seat of a motorcycle.  His allegory for process and quality are profound yet simply related and provide a wonderful vehicle, so to speak, for discussing the nature of Kaizen or, the philosophy of continuous improvement.

For anyone who travels the open road through the various states of Quality, Six Sigma, when properly used and maintained, is the vehicle of choice – the motorcycle.  Lean and fast, blazing along the highway of product cycles and deficiency, a set of tools strapped under your seat as you breeze from root cause to root cause like dusty little towns, the approach of Six Sigma is ideally suited for the trip.  It allows one to see the world not in frames, as one would from behind the safe window of a car, but to be surrounded by the feeling and flow of the process as it rushes on by.  And, like the disassembling of a motorcycle, the act of tearing apart a process in a short period of time and reforming it to run at full speed is equally alarming. 

But it isn’t for everyone, certainly not the faint of heart.  After putting everything back together, one inevitably finds that extra bolt on the floor and is left wondering exactly how crucial it will prove as they kick away from the curb.

My most recent Six Sigma trip was a cross-country journey across the end-to-end (RPO) Recruitment Process Outsourcing Process for a Fortune 100 company.  During the weeks on this winding RPO road, our team crossed through a number small process towns, found ourselves stranded between hypothesis and solution and enjoyed some truly incredible vistas that come only at dawn as one looks out from the top of a mountain of data. 

To download the full article, click here:  Kaizen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

About the Author
Pete Kastner is a Six Sigma Black Belt and managed the Recruitment Process Outsourcing program for a Momentum Fortune 100 client. Both Pete and Momentum focus on providing business consultation using Six Sigma methodologies to assist Momentum clients in improving recruitment ROI.   Used correctly Six Sigma enables organizations to become more agile in responding to fluctuating market conditions thereby capturing the best talent in the most effective manner. 

About Momentum
Momentum is the Recruitment Process Outsourcing division of Volt Information Sciences, Inc. (NYSE: VOL).  Volt is a $2.3 billion provider of global infrastructure solutions in technology, knowledge-based services, and human capital resources for its FORTUNE 100 customer base.  Momentum provides end to end RPO services for a Fortune 500 client base inclusive of both exempt and non exempt positions.  Momentum has been named to the HRO Bakers Dozen RPO providers in both 2005 and 2006.  Most notably in 2006 Momentum was named as one of six global Tier 1 RPO providers.

CONTACTS:
For Momentum contact Anthea Collier Regional Vice President at 212 704 2422 or email at acollier@voltmomentum.com.

Visit Momentum at www.voltmomentum.com.