The American Society for Quality www.asq.org Page 1 of 4 Making the Case for Quality Six Sigma Green, Black Belts Help Manufacturer Save Nearly $1.5 Million The newest component • of Crown Equipment Corporation’s quality management program is Six Sigma. While lean is the systematized corporate effort, company managers apply Six Sigma to certain projects as needed and as resources are available. The company now has 18 • certified Six Sigma Green Belts and 15 Black Belts in its North American manufacturing facilities. To date, Green Belt efforts • have resulted in hard savings of $1.2 million for Crown, and Black Belt efforts have brought $285,000 in hard savings, with more expected as the projects proceed further. While the time requirement • for the first 12 Green Belts to undertake training was a whopping 2,400 hours (total for all 12), the company has calculated that it has saved a little more than $500 per hour for each hour spent in training. At a Glance . . . With a corporate commitment to helping customers lower costs and maximize productivity, it’s no surprise that Crown Equipment Corporation is itself dedicated to lean manufacturing and total quality management. Continuous improvement has been intrinsic to the company’s philosophy since its found- ing in 1945, as management has periodically adjusted product offerings and services to meet changing customer needs. Yet even with decades of success that has made the Ohio-based manufacturer the world’s top-selling producer of electric lift trucks, the company still recently found ways to use Six Sigma strategies to improve processes, reduce scrap and gas usage, and fine-tune operations. The company now has 18 certified Six Sigma Green Belts and 15 Black Belts in its North American manufacturing facilities striving to lead the corporation toward even further improvement. The Little Company That Could Crown Equipment Corporation began as a one-product, one-room operation in the small, rural commu- nity of New Bremen, OH. Started just after World War II by the late Carl H. Dicke and Allen A. Dicke, the company manufactured temperature controls for coal-burning furnaces. By 1949, the enterprising brothers followed changing technology trends and switched to producing antenna rotators—devices used to enhance television reception. Even after diversifying into electronic components manufactur- ing in 1951 and then adding lift trucks in 1957, Crown Equipment continued as a leading manufacturer of antenna rotators until late 2001, by which time changing technologies had rendered them virtually obsolete. Still privately owned and managed by descendents of the original founders, Crown’s full product line includes: • Manual propelled pallet trucks and stackers • Power pallet trucks and stackers • Sit-down and stand-up counterbalanced trucks • Narrow-aisle reach trucks • Very narrow-aisle turret trucks • Order-picking equipment The compa.

1. The American Society for Quality www.asq.org Page 1 of 4
Making the Case for Quality
Six Sigma Green, Black Belts Help Manufacturer
Save Nearly $1.5 Million
The newest component •
of Crown Equipment
Corporation’s quality
management program is
Six Sigma. While lean is
the systematized corporate
effort, company managers
apply Six Sigma to certain
projects as needed and as
resources are available.
The company now has 18 •
certified Six Sigma Green
Belts and 15 Black Belts
in its North American
manufacturing facilities.
To date, Green Belt efforts •
have resulted in hard
savings of $1.2 million
for Crown, and Black
Belt efforts have brought
$285,000 in hard savings,
with more expected as the

2. projects proceed further.
While the time requirement •
for the first 12 Green
Belts to undertake
training was a whopping
2,400 hours (total for all
12), the company has
calculated that it has
saved a little more than
$500 per hour for each
hour spent in training.
At a Glance . . .
With a corporate commitment to helping customers lower costs
and maximize productivity, it’s no
surprise that Crown Equipment Corporation is itself dedicated
to lean manufacturing and total quality
management. Continuous improvement has been intrinsic to the
company’s philosophy since its found-
ing in 1945, as management has periodically adjusted product
offerings and services to meet changing
customer needs.
Yet even with decades of success that has made the Ohio-based
manufacturer the world’s top-selling
producer of electric lift trucks, the company still recently found
ways to use Six Sigma strategies to
improve processes, reduce scrap and gas usage, and fine-tune
operations. The company now has 18
certified Six Sigma Green Belts and 15 Black Belts in its North
American manufacturing facilities
striving to lead the corporation toward even further
improvement.
The Little Company That Could

3. Crown Equipment Corporation began as a one-product, one-
room operation in the small, rural commu-
nity of New Bremen, OH. Started just after World War II by the
late Carl H. Dicke and Allen A. Dicke,
the company manufactured temperature controls for coal-
burning furnaces. By 1949, the enterprising
brothers followed changing technology trends and switched to
producing antenna rotators—devices
used to enhance television reception. Even after diversifying
into electronic components manufactur-
ing in 1951 and then adding lift trucks in 1957, Crown
Equipment continued as a leading manufacturer
of antenna rotators until late 2001, by which time changing
technologies had rendered them virtually
obsolete.
Still privately owned and managed by descendents of the
original founders, Crown’s full product line
includes:
• Manual propelled pallet trucks and stackers
• Power pallet trucks and stackers
• Sit-down and stand-up counterbalanced trucks
• Narrow-aisle reach trucks
• Very narrow-aisle turret trucks
• Order-picking equipment
The company’s electric lift trucks are used throughout the world
for transporting materials and goods
in warehouses, distribution centers, and manufacturing
environments.
Still headquartered in the same, though renovated and expanded,
offices in New Bremen, Crown is now
a multinational corporation with regional headquarters in

4. Munich, Germany, and Sydney, Australia.
The company has 11 manufacturing facilities in seven U.S.
locations and also has strong international
by Jeanne Chircop
July 2008
http://www.asq.org
manufacturing capabilities, building lift trucks in Sydney,
Australia; Roding, Germany; Queretaro, Mexico (two plants);
and
Suzhou, China. Crown also owns branch sales and service cen-
ter operations in Australia, Belgium, England, Germany, Korea,
Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, and more
than 40 locations in the United States. In addition to the
company-
owned branches, a network of independent U.S. and
international
Crown dealers operates in nearly 100 cities.
Despite this diversification and
global spread, Crown designs
and manufactures 85 percent
of its lift truck components.
The company also assembles
its own products and provides
maintenance services to
customers.
Such vertical integration cre-
ates a strong competitive
advantage, according to Mark
DeGrandchamp, Crown’s

5. director of quality and Lean/
Six Sigma. “We know our
products better,” he says, “because we design and build our own
motors, cylinders, electronic assemblies, wire harnesses, and
masts [the part that lifts the pallet].”
This intimate product knowledge significantly reduces client
downtime due to maintenance, repair, and parts replacement.
Crown’s multidisciplinary teams also have the ability to quickly
adjust concepts during the design stages and provide supporting
tools that lead to increased productivity, operator comfort,
safety,
and better fleet management.
“We have one of the lowest life-cycle costs in the industry,”
DeGrandchamp says, claiming customers are willing to invest in
the quality of Crown trucks and service because they feel it will
benefit them with cost avoidance in the long term.
Flexible Enough to Change
Crown’s impressive history of growth stems from its leaders’
keen awareness of changing technology and market trends com-
bined with a corporate culture that has embraced flexibility and
challenge. A continuous focus on effectively satisfying
changing
customer needs is a hallmark of total quality management.
The company’s commitment to using formal quality tools
and strategies dates to the mid-1990s. Traditionally engaging
conventional production-line manufacturing, Crown manage-
ment became interested in the concept of “focused factory”
manufacturing in 1996 as a way to increase productivity and
competitiveness. Focused factory strategies enable plants to
focus on limited, specific tasks. Utilizing a “cellular” model,

6. this
manufacturing approach arranges production facilities and floor
labor into work cells, or multiskilled teams, that manufacture
complete products or complex components rather than single
parts. Cellular manufacturing is an integral part of lean
manufac-
turing, as it drastically reduces waste and duplication of effort.
Properly trained teams can manage processes,defects,
schedul-
ing, equipment maintenance, and other manufacturing issues
more efficiently and thus reduce waste of all kinds.
Crown’s focused factory initiatives paved the way toward a
formal commitment to lean manufacturing in 1999. A pilot
project in the company’s New Knoxville motor plant brought
such significant benefits that the company has since applied
lean
strategies to every process in every one of its facilities.
Six Sigma: A Winning Strategy
The newest component of Crown’s quality management pro-
gram is Six Sigma. While lean is the systematized corporate
effort, company managers apply Six Sigma to certain projects as
needed and as resources are available.
“When you’re in a lean system,” explains Jeff Caudill, Crown’s
main manufacturing leader for the New Bremen campus, “it
may be that you have a problem that requires a more powerful
problem-solving tool, and Six Sigma provides that tool.”
In general terms, Six Sigma enables a company to address
specific areas targeted for improvement by providing:
• A structure to identify root causes

7. • Advanced tools to achieve desired outcomes
Six Sigma supports lean manufacturing by reducing variation
and waste. Data-driven strategies focus on defect prevention,
with no more than 3.4 defects allowed per million opportunities.
Some quality experts refer to Six Sigma as a philosophy, while
others consider it a methodology. ASQ identifies four basic
themes common to Six Sigma:
• Use of teams that are assigned well-defined
projects that
have direct impact on the organization’s bottom line.
• Training in “statistical thinking” at all levels
and providing
key people with extensive training in advanced statistics and
project management. (These key individuals are designated
as either Green or Black Belts.)
• Emphasison the “DMAIC” approach to problem
solving—
define, measure, analyze, improve, and control.
• A management environment that supports these
initiatives as
a business strategy.
Every Six Sigma project needs organizational support, and tar-
geted Six Sigma training enables professionals at every level of
a company to assist with implementation. At the organizational
level, specially trained “champions” and “executives” set the
direction for selecting and deploying projects. At the project
level, those professionals actually conducting projects and
implementing improvements are “Green Belts” or “Black Belts,”
depending on the level of training they have received.

8. The American Society for Quality www.asq.org Page 2 of 4
Like nearly all large manufacturers,
Crown Equipment owns production
facilities in several countries; however,
the majority is still found stateside:
New Bremen, OH (five plants)•
Connersville, IN•
Greencastle, IN•
Kinston, NC•
Celina, OH•
Fort Loramie, OH•
New Knoxville, OH•
U.S. Manufacturing Operations
http://www.asq.org
Crown initiated its Six Sigma program in 2005 with four-day
“Champion” training for key upper-level managers. Rather than
addressing any particular challenge, the training was a natural
extension of the ongoing improvement philosophy championed
by company management.
Green Belt Training
In late 2005, all of Crown’s U.S. business unit managers were

9. invited to submit names of potential candidates for Green Belt
training. Managers were directed to consider candidates who
were:
• Personally motivated to do their best
• Recognized to have a mathematical mind that
would be
well-suited to the statistical nature of the improvement effort
• Willing and able to pass an internally developed
test on
quality tools and statistics
Each candidate was required
to suggest a project that would
bring improvement to the com-
pany. Members of a Six Sigma
steering committee ultimately
selected 12 Crown employees
to participate in the company’s
Green Belt training and cer-
tification, basing selection
primarily on the potential long-
term benefits of the projects.
The Green Belt training was conducted at company headquarters
by a certified American Society for Quality (ASQ) trainer. Six
Sigma Green Belt training is typically conducted in two week-
long increments one month apart. The Crown sessions were
held in October and November 2005. At about the same time, a
half-dozen Crown employees from the company’s Kinston, NC,
facility attended similar training conducted at North Carolina
State University.
Both the ASQ and NC State training sessions followed similar

10. formats. All of the Green Belt candidates presented basic details
of their proposed projects to the group, and work
began. Projects
ranged from general process improvement to scrap reduction,
improved machine operation, and more efficient gas usage,
among others.
The first week of training was devoted to strategizing how to
organize resources and eliminate roadblocks; the second week
was devoted to creating PowerPoint presentations
about each
project that participants could take back to their local manage-
ment to begin actual on-site implementation. At the end of the
second week, participants took a four-hour 100-question exam
about Six Sigma concepts and received certification upon pass-
ing. Group participants continued to meet via teleconference
every couple of weeks thereafter to ensure each of the projects
remained on track. Each Green Belt was tasked with completion
of a project within the following six months.
Black Belt Training
The next phase of Crown’s Six Sigma effort occurred the fol-
lowing year, with 15 individuals moving on to take Black Belt
training. As in the Green Belt program, each participant sug-
gested an improvement project for the group to undertake. Black
Belt projects focused on:
• Elimination of defects
• Optimization of processes
• Elimination of nonvalue-added steps, such as
secondary
handling of goods
• Improvement of overseas operations in order
to eliminate

11. secondary handling of goods in the United States
Also like the Green Belt program, participants represented
varied
experience levels and a range of disciplines:
• Manufacturing engineers
• Quality engineers
• Quality management system (QMS) trainers of
machinists
• Quality technicians
• Plant managers
Six Sigma Black Belts lead problem-solving projects by training
and coaching project teams at their facilities. Black Belts must
thoroughly understand and use all aspects of the DMAIC model
in accordance with Six Sigma principles. In addition, Black
Belts
must understand and use other key Six Sigma tools, such as:
• Quality function deployment (QFD)
• Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA)
• Basic robust design process tools,
including noise strategies,
tolerance design, and process capability tools
• “Design for X” strategies
Crown’s Black Belt training occurred in the New Bremen facili-
ties during December 2006 and January 2007. Two certified
ASQ trainers led the effort, which culminated with a four-hour
150-question written exam for the 15 participants.
Million-dollar Results

12. Every successful quality improvement program has both
tangible
and intangible results—concrete, measurable results (tangible),
and beneficial though impossible to measure results
(intangible),
such as improved morale, increased loyalty, higher employee
self-esteem, and enhanced customer satisfaction. Crown has
cho-
sen to focus on tangible, hard savings for measuring the success
of its Six Sigma efforts.
To date, Crown’s Green Belt efforts have resulted in hard sav-
ings of $1.2 million for the company. The company’s Black Belt
efforts have brought $285,000 in hard savings so far, with more
expected as the projects proceed further. While the time
require-
ment for the first 12 Green Belts to undertake training was a
whopping 2,400 hours (total for all 12), the company has calcu-
The American Society for Quality www.asq.org Page 3 of 4
The Six Sigma perspective views
all work as processes that can
be defined, measured, analyzed,
improved, and controlled. Processes
require inputs (x) and produce outputs
(y). If you control the inputs, you
will control the outputs, generally
expressed as y = f(x).
Design for X
http://www.asq.org
The American Society for Quality www.asq.org Page 4 of 4

13. lated that it has saved a little over $500 per hour for each hour
spent in training.
“Strongest Tool”
Crown’s results indicate Six Sigma is the “strongest improve-
ment tool you can use,” according to John Daeger, quality
engineering manager of the New Bremen headquarters facili-
ties. Company managers learned one important lesson, however:
Timing is everything. While the Green Belt training rendered an
almost immediate $1.2 million in savings, the Black Belt effort
has moved at a much slower pace because of its timing and
because participants weren’t assigned to the effort full time. As
the Black Belt candidates didn’t have the opportunity to focus
on
their Six Sigma projects full time, the timelines languished.
Now that demands have stabilized, Crown management is re-
energizing the Black Belt effort. The team’s plan is to move the
15 projects from the process development stage into the imple-
mentation and control phases. Budgets have been approved to
include full-time commitment to the Black Belt program. Full-
time dedicated positions are currently being filled for a Master
Black Belt and a Black Belt.
The company also has plans to train a minimum of 10 Green
Belts each year, with the intent that the growing number of
Green Belts will help spread training throughout all branches of
the company. In the broader scope, the company is also evaluat-
ing how its Six Sigma and lean programs should work together
for total ongoing quality improvement.
In the meantime, Crown has been recognized with numerous
awards, including outstanding achievement in waste mini-
mization and pollution prevention. The U.S. Environmental

14. ProtectionAgency has designated Crown as a
“Waste
Minimization Partner,” one of only 27 in the
country. The award
recognizes the company’s success in substantially reducing
the amount of hazardous waste involved in manufacturing by
eliminating the chromium from paint formulations. Additional
waste minimization occurred because of installation of a power
painting operation. This equipment has reduced the generation
of
waste paint sludge and air emissions.
Crown has also received the Governor’s Award in Ohio for
Outstanding Achievement in Pollution Prevention.
One of only
eight award recipients, Crown earned the nomination not only
because of its actual achievements in pollution prevention, but
also for serving as a role model for other industrial generators
by
demonstrating the feasibility of pollution prevention.
For More Information
For more information about Crown Equipment Corporation,
visit
http://crown.com.
For more information about Six Sigma and other quality tools,
visit the American Society for Quality Web site, www.asq.org.
Contributing to this Article
• Mark DeGrandchamp is director of quality and Lean/Six
Sigma for Crown Equipment. With a bachelor of science
degree from Purdue University and a master’s
degree from the

15. University of Indiana, he has more than 23 years of experience
working with quality initiatives. DeGrandchamp, an ASQ
certified quality engineer, has been with Crown for eight years
and can be reached at [email protected]
• John Daeger is quality engineering manager for Crown
Equipment, responsible for all New Bremen facilities. He
joined the company in November 2004. Daeger holds ASQ’s
quality manager, quality engineer, and quality auditor
certifications and has completed ASQ’s Six Sigma Green
Belt and Black Belt training programs. He holds a bachelor’s
degree from Concordia University and a master’s degree
from Indiana Wesleyan University. He can be reached at
[email protected]
• Jeff Caudill is Crown’s New Bremen operations lean
leader
and has specific expertise in analyzing data and statistics.
Though a relative newcomer to Crown—joining the company
in 2006—he has long-standing career involvement with lean
and Six Sigma activities and is an ASQ certified quality
engineer. He can be reached at [email protected]
About the Author
Jeanne Chircop has been helping organizations share their suc-
cesses for more than 20 years. She has written about quality
efforts in the education, manufacturing, and natural resources
sectors. She holds a master’s degree in journalism and resides in
the Washington, DC, metropolitan area.
http://crown.com
http://www.asq.org
mailto:[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
http://www.asq.org
This course focuses on “learning by doing.” In that spirit, you

16. must complete 6 case study assignments (1 per module; see
schedule) and develop management recommendations.
For each case that we will discuss, you are required to submit
an executive summary briefing not exceeding 10 pages (1 ½
spaced, one inch margin on all sides) that contain your
reflection, recommendations and the rationale for your
reflection and recommendations. You must also reflect on the
key tools and concepts used in the case and if you think these
tools/concepts were appropriate and why you think so. You
must also outline what you may have done differently if you
were the project manager in charge of the project.
You may use an additional 3+ pages for an appendix that may
contain tables and figures. These case write-ups are due on
Moodle by the end of the module as per the schedule.
This should be handed in as an executive memo/executive
briefing, addressed to your manager. The format should answer
the following question:
· What is the problem that is being solved?
· What is the goal of the case study?
· Reflection and brief synopsis of key facts (Not a repeat of the
case)
· What tools and concepts were used in the case? Do you think
these tools/concepts were appropriate and why you think so?
· Brief reflection on the tool(s) and/or concept(s) used in the
case.
· Supporting arguments and analysis that lead to your rationale.
· What additional tools would you include in this project and
why?
· Supporting arguments and analysis that lead to your rationale.
· Was the project goal achieved? Why/Why not?
· What you may have done differently if you were the project
manager in charge of the project?
· What are your ideas for next steps?

17. · Supporting arguments and analysis that lead to your rationale.
· Appendices: Any supporting backup material that would be
needed to follow/support the recommendation.
Remember: Your opinion does NOT count; your
recommendation and the support that your analysis provides
does.