Responding to Genna's Question: How does one align the customer experience to the process improvement?

Process improvement is undertaken by an organization for the purpose of realizing benefits that will ultimately impact a customer’s bottom line goal. Alignment of customer experience with the improvement takes a back seat to the primary goal for which the improvement is being undertaken. Not that it is to be ignored, but, recognize that the process improvement must deliver the value for which it is being undertaken to the customer first. Given that, it is important to articulate that impact since it could potentially be included by the customer as part of the value of the process improvement. If so, the conventional tools can be used to elicit the requirement for the alignment of customer experience: stakeholder analysis (to determine all customers), VOC (to determine customer desires and priority), maybe QFD (to help the prioritization process for the improvements)

A case study is presented on this specific subject in a full article the following link:
http://www.sixsigmaiq.com/article.cfm?externalID=1138

Process Improvement using 6Sigma Handbook?

At my last assignment, a client asked me to create a 'cookie cutter' step-by-step for process improvement employing the 6Sigma approach. It took years of experience and Business Excellence training to model the 'common sense' techniques into a recipe I could implement (though no individual step in the process was new to me or even remotely revolutionary).

Sounded impossible at first. But, big ideas are usually many simple ideas ingeniously put together. I started out with a framework of 11 steps, then developed the individual ideas by example, employing a tool in my repertoire. I think, for straight-forward ideas, the recipe should work fine.

I may have just come up with my own version of the steps to improving process. I may elaborate on the idea and turn it into a handbook.