If every business ran perfectly there would be no need for process excellence. Lean and Six Sigma are based on the idea that getting to the root cause of problem and incrementing small, daily, improvements will lead to big changes. So why would you pretend your process excellence program gets everything right?
Sanjay Gupta, Director of Operational Excellence at SWM, the world’s biggest producer of cigarette paper, says that communicating failure is an important part of managing your process excellence program. "At the end of the day," he explains. "We're in the business of process improvement and failures are a place where we can improve."