Typical examples would be HR professionals who glean data effectively while evaluating people; or software companies that complete projects within a short time span; or manufacturing companies which save costs and improve efficiency by applying statistical techniques. The change, both visible and effective is attributed to the implementation of Lean and Six Sigma.

Amitabh, a jet setter, who admittedly spends only 30% of his time in India, was preparing to leave to London and UAE to visit his clients, when we met him at his residence in a posh gated community in Bangalore.

Early Days

Amitabh was gainfully employed in a petrochemical company in Thailand and earned a very handsome dollar salary in late 1990s. Somewhere along the line, he heard about Lean and Six Sigma and decided to enroll for a course. As he completed the course, he shared the experience in a newspaper in Bangkok. Surprisingly, many readers wrote in, some were curious and others expressed their thoughts.

Amitabh was quick to realize that he had all the qualities required for a career in this new field. He spoke many languages, was humourous and a poet by inclination. He decided to fall back on these attributes along with his expertise in analytics and statistics - key essential elements of Lean and Six Sigma - while selling the concept to industries.

Amitabh and his pediatrician wife Varsha shrugged off their comfort zone and returned to Mumbai. Though Amitabh never had a job on hand, he managed to find a footing, worked briefly in various metros including Bangalore before establishing his India presence in HSR Layout office in Bangalore. Though he took time to settle down as a full-fledged Process Excellence professional, he integrated its essence into training modules conducted in the companies where he worked. He experimented with European professionals, implemented hard core savings initiatives and even trained freshers.

During his stint in Bangalore, he sensed untapped potential in multinationals, banking and IT companies. He knew it was time to make the right move, and exited corporate life to start Anexas.

Lean Six Sigma De-Coded

Anexas has trained more than 25,000 persons, and the training for Lean and Six Sigma is provided through the belt based training system similar to that of martial arts. Like in the case of karate, the belt personnel are designated as white belts, yellow belts, green belts, black belts and master black belts.

Amitabh’s idea is to empower and make people self sustainable so that he can exit from the scenario and explore newer domains. Just to given an example, in a healthcare conglomerate having many hospitals, it was found that time taken to discharge a patient took around three hours. The delay was too long and when he asked the reason for delay, the hospitals said they were short staffed. Strangely, when hospital staff was in full attendance, it was the same situation. Upon probing it was found that the billing process itself was cumbersome and had nothing to do with employee strength. Several procedures were eliminated to reduce the billing process to just 10 minutes. That in short, is Lean Six Sigma. It simply means the company eliminates all frills including unnecessary processes, overstaffed environments, variation and excessive waste. So the organization just focuses on what it wants and looks for means to achieve that goal. Amitabh goes to that particular industry and trains the people. It’s a five-phase training programme titled DMAIC, an acronym for define, measure, analyze, improve and control. It turns out that by getting to the root cause of the problem, errors are reduced and processes are systematized.

Though Amitabh and his team follow the broad guidelines of Lean and Six Sigma, they tweaked it to make it market-savvy. A case in point is human resource (HR) practice. It’s a known fact that HR professionals are deluged with resumes and staff data. With information overload, it becomes difficult to trace even basic details. Amitabh stepped in to fix the problem. He realized that the company had many procedures within the system which was the root cause of the problem. As he mentions, it is easy to fix a process than to fix people. By changing the processes the professionals trained by him improved the HR processes manifolds.

He recalls how the then Head of Quality of L & T Infotech, Dr. O.P. Jain in 2003 commented that he fell in love with statistics after Amitabh’s training. Amitabh has many testimonials and awards to his credit, which are proudly displayed in his Bangalore office. Basudeb Roy, Additional Director with Colgate Palmolive mentions in a video testimonial that Amitabh brilliantly trained and consulted a group of engineers, immersed all of them into a single pool and brought them to a common denominator of high level statistics. Gautam Majumdar, DGM, Steel Authority of India mentions about the crores of rupees of savings the steel plant has seen after following the advice Amitabh gave regarding correct usage of control charts.

Word Spreads

Initially hesitant companies were introduced to a free Six Sigma training. A pilot project followed, during which they got hooked on. After that a word-of-mouth publicity took over. Today, Amitabh’s Facebook and LinkedIn page does the necessary marketing. Lean and Six Sigma has grown into a community of two lakh certified individuals. While many of them have evolved into independent entities, some of them returned to Amitabh to join him in his endeavour. Amitabh too needed that support as Anexas, an Indian company grew to include franchises overseas in Denmark, UAE, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Singapore, UK and Canada. He gratefully acknowledges the huge contribution made by Pradeep Sharma, one of the Master Black Belts who got trained in 2006, and now a partner handling Middle East Operations. As Anexas has spread and Lean Six Sigma has generated a fair share of awareness, Amitabh plans to ramp up his presence by expanding operations in the US and Australia.

Keen to explore new vistas, Amitabh lapped up the idea when a company wanted him to implement best practices from the Jim Collins book 'Good to Great'.

Lessons learnt in Life

Amitabh spent his childhood in Nagpur and his mother had a great influence in shaping him up. Herself a Ph.D. in three subjects, she inculcated in him the habit of studying well during childhood, which made him a topper in his school and an NTSE scholar. Also Amitabh’s literary inclination and poetry skills are her contribution. Similarly, Amitabh’s wife Varsha has been a pillar of support and strength and as he says that without her contribution, nothing would have been possible, as she has very well taken care of the India office, home and children as he hops around the world.

Amitabh's success has not come without its share of failures. He says that though some people will ditch you, but still we should continue to trust. At different stages, many persons blatantly broke promises and even stabbed in his back, but by continuing to trust people he came across some of the most wonderful persons who walked with him through thick and thin. He values these people.

Amitabh is also very well known poet in Bangalore literary circles and regularly recites his poetry in Hindi and Urdu poetry forums. He has also authored a book which has collection of poems which he wrote since his childhood starting from the age of nine!

He is a regular speaker in world-wide global conferences on Process Excellence, Lean and Six Sigma and won many reputed awards in various national and international forums.

All this and much more have helped Amitabh evolve into one of the most successful and well known Lean and Six Sigma specialist, partly created by circumstances and partly by passion. He’s now looking forward to a new dimension whereby he plans to train economically backward individuals in Lean and Six Sigma and try to link it with job opportunities.

Amitabhh's success story is truly inspiring and deserves to be told to the nation .

We wish 'the Amitabh of Lean and Six Sigma', the very best.