Third Lean Six Sigma Deployment Excellence Award for CS International Clients

During the recent iSixSigma Live! Conference held in Miami on February 1-4, EMCON Technologies was awarded “Best Lean Six Sigma Start-up Program.” This is a significant achievement for an automotive supplier in today’s economy, particularly when part of the judging criteria was a minimum 5X return on investment. Accepting for EMCON Technologies was Master Black Belt Hao Jin who graciously acknowledged the participation of their deployment partner CS International. The EMCON Technologies award was significant for CS International in that it was the third time in the last five years that a CS International client has won an award for Lean Six Sigma deployment excellence.

The previous two awards won by CS International clients were with their customer Lonmin Plc, a platinum mining company with operations in South Africa. Lonmin was recognized in two consecutive years as the “Best Achievement of Six Sigma in a Manufacturing Environment.” The Six Sigma awards in 2006 and 2007 made Lonmin the first company to be recognized in consecutive years, and the efforts at Lonmin were additionally rewarded when Archbishop Desmond Tutu visited the Lonmin mines to congratulate employees and see firsthand the process improvement efforts that were improving the lives of South Africans.

CS International was founded by President and CEO Mike Carnell in 2004 and is a consulting company focused on delivering business excellence deployments and redeploying underperforming programs. These deployments have ranged from small segments of companies to complete companywide deployments, such as the EMCON Technologies Lean Six Sigma deployment. Each deployment is designed to deliver on specific expectations of the client, such as the Lonmin deployment that targeted R 200,000,000 and 20 percent of projects addressing safety issues. According to CS International President Mike Carnell, “the size and location of the organization are important factors, but the key to success is understanding succinctly what the client wants to accomplish.”

Mike Carnell began his career in business excellence while working at Motorola. It was that experience that led to him being retained by Allied Signal in 1995 to deploy Six Sigma. The following year Gary Reiner, General Electric Chief Information Officer, retained Mr. Carnell to consult on the General Electric deployment. With high profile Six Sigma deployments such as Motorola, Allied Signal and General Electric as a foundation, the awards received by EMCON Technologies and Lonmin Plc are a continuation of the success that can be achieved by effectively integrating a business excellence strategy into a company.