Helping Staples use Lean Six Sigma
to drive process improvements that
enable high performance
Accenture’s ongoing High Performance Business
research initiative has revealed that market focus
and position, along with distinctive capabilities and
performance anatomy, make up the building blocks
of high performance. Market focus and position is
the “where and how to compete” aspects of busi-
ness strategy. High-performance businesses have
remarkable clarity when it comes to setting stra-
tegic direction. They are always found where the
market action is, and when one market matures,
they are ready with the next innovative idea.
Retail giant Staples, Inc. is clearly a company that
has mastered market focus and position. When
Staples invented the office superstore concept in
1986, it reshaped an entire industry sector. Today,
Staples is the world's largest office products com-
pany, with 95,000 associates, operations in 27
countries, and global sales of nearly $27 billion.
Business challenge
In a business environment marked by rapidly
changing customer expectations, escalating
costs, and emerging new markets, process
improvement has never been more important.
Staples understands this better than most.
Years ago, Staples established a sophisticated
Process Excellence Program responsible for driv-
ing sustainable process improvements across
the company. The program’s formal and dis-
ciplined approach to process improvement
drew from, among other things, principles of
Lean Manufacturing and Kaizen. These process
improvement efforts contributed significantly to
Staples’ year-over-year ability to meet
or exceed sales and earnings goals.
Building on its historical success at
eliminating process inefficiencies,
Staples set out in early 2006 to do
even more to drive process excellence.
Its competitive market, combined with
the company’s ambitious sales goals,
demanded even stronger performance.
Staples knew it needed to grow its top
line while keeping its costs in check.
This, in turn, called for eliminating
non-value-adding steps in its processes,
focusing on the right process improve-
ment projects from the start, and real-
izing value from them more quickly.
Staples believed that Lean Six Sigma,
which combines principles of both Lean
Manufacturing and Six Sigma, would
offer the methodology needed to further
improve the quality of its processes and
accelerate value.
For help in introducing the Lean Six
Sigma approach to its operations,
Staples turned to Accenture. With
deep skills and delivery capabilities in
operational strategy, operational excel-
lence, and fast innovation and growth,
Accenture is uniquely able to help
Staples achieve high performance by
developing breakthrough insights that
unify strategy and execution and by
creating lasting shareholder value.
How Accenture helped
The goal of Lean Six Sigma is straight-
forward: to reduce the variation in pro-
cess quality and accelerate the value of
process improvements. Lean Six Sigma
accomplishes this through a methodol-
ogy, commonly known by the acronym
DMAIC, which guides organizations
to Define the process quality issues,
Measure current process performance,
Analyze root causes of defects, Improve
the target processes and Control the
improvements to keep processes on the
right course.
Within this roadmap, discreet improve-
ment projects are directed and car-
ried out by individuals—commonly
referred to as “green belts” or “black
belts,” based on their expertise—who
are specially trained by “master black
belts” in all aspects of process improve-
ment, from facilitation and project
management, to quality management,
to problem solving and data analysis.
Black belts are full time and come
from middle levels of the company and
are usually assigned a stint of process
improvement that lasts two to three
years. Green belts are not as thoroughly
trained in the day-to-day mechan-
ics and technical aspects of process
improvement. They can come from any
level of the company and are charged,
primarily, with replication or smaller
scoped improvement initiatives.
Resources from Accenture’s
Management Consulting Process
and Innovation Performance practice
teamed with Staples’ Process Excellence
department to design and integrate
Lean Six Sigma into the Staples
environment and guide the cultural
transformation needed to ensure Lean
Six Sigma’s success. As a first step,
Accenture helped Staples understand
that identifying and training black
and green belts was a necessary, but
not sufficient, prerequisite for process
improvement. Equally important was
identifying and training project spon-
sors and champions—those leaders
charged with shaping and support-
ing process improvement opportuni-
ties across the company. Accenture
delivered a suite of training sessions
for these process owners, modified to
accommodate their busy schedules. This
training prepared them for their roles as
drivers of process change.
Next, the project team helped Staples
identify and select potential projects
that were aligned to the company’s
business objectives. The goal of this
effort was to choose process improve-
ment projects that would be meaning-
ful to sponsors and champions and
drive fast and meaningful value. The
team then turned its attention to help-
ing establish the criteria for black belt
or green belt recruitment from across
the organization, as well as the sup-
porting infrastructure, change manage-
ment practices, communications and
HR policies that would optimally sup-
port these individuals in their tenure as
process improvers.
With all these elements in place,
Accenture launched the first wave of
black belt training with 17 participants
from Staples’ US operations. Within just
a few months, this group had exceeded
expectations for process improvements.
Since that time, Accenture’s master
black belts have completed four more
black belt training sessions for more
than 50participants, including rep-
resentatives from Staples’ Canadian
and European operations. In addition,
Accenture has provided green belt
training to 50 Staples’ associates and is
currently offering its first training pro-
gram for master black belt candidates
within the Staples organization. These
ongoing training programs are meeting
Staples’ need for a pool of advanced-
level process professionals who are well
positioned to drive and manage a large
number of improvement efforts across
the enterprise.
High performance delivered
With Accenture’s support, Staples is
successfully integrating Lean Six Sigma
into its operations and culture. As a
result, the company is reducing costs
by streamlining processes, accelerating
value creation, and enabling employees
to focus on activities that matter most
to customers. Lean Six Sigma is also
driving revenue by improving the qual-
ity of targeted processes and is helping
the company achieve its aggressive
growth targets, largely by control-
ling the growth rate of its general and
administrative expenses.
Before the implementation of Lean Six
Sigma, Staples improved approximately
60 processes per year. In 2008, the
company is on track to improve more
than 300 processes. Among the suc-
cesses to date, the company has applied
Lean Six Sigma to:
• Rebalance lease negotiations and
improve architectural and construc-
 tion processes—efforts that shaved
four weeks off the time needed
to open a new store, leading to
increase in sales equivalent to eight
new stores annual sales.
• Streamline the item-order cycle and
have promotional items arrive at
stores closer to sale dates—efforts
that freed space (especially in small-
er stores) and generated inventory
savings of $3.3 million.
• Reconfigure the loading dock layout,
eliminate extra handling of mer-
chandise, and establish a “receiv-
ing and put away team” within
one fulfillment center—efforts that
improved On-Time to Due Date per-
formance by 21 percent..
• Consolidate freight moving from
suppliers to Staples’ distribution and
fulfillment centers, which achieved
50% of the budget reduction stretch
goal for the year.
The Lean Six Sigma program has been
the impetus for dozens of improve-
ments that, together, have generated
tens of millions of dollars in benefit for
Staples and produced a 10-fold return
on the company’s investment in the
process improvement program.
Quote from Christine Komola, SVP,
Corporate Comptroller
“Our process excellence program has
become an important tool for our busi-
ness units in creating sustainable pro-
cess improvements rather than just belt
tightening. It’s also been an important
part of developing people to tackle
business problems with a fact based
approach across our business. The
process combined with people devel-
opment in applying the processes will
create a sustainable approach for the
long term.”
Quote from Dan Marous, VP NAD
Supply Chain and Schoolkids
How did LSS help NAD Supply Chain?
[financially] “Overall the NAD supply
chain budget was ahead by $ 30M. I
attribute $ 13M of that to LSS; with
$5M - $ 7M being realized in FY2007.”
[culturally] “LSS brought discipline and
focus to executing projects. Before we
would put an idea into place and some-
times it wouldn’t stick, or take a solu-
tion that worked in one building and
assume it would work as it in another
building.”
What did Accenture do differently /
what sets them apart from others?
“Accenture gave us a roadmap to fol-
low that is proven successful in other
engagements so we didn’t have to cre-
ate our own, and then they allowed us
to “Staplize” it. They were flexible and
worked with our culture and constraints
to make LSS a success. Accenture
showed us the way and then let us
drive. They provided a good blend
of course correcting us when needed
and letting us get there our own way.
Accenture worked with us to develop a
customized program.”
Quote from Joe Mazzulo, VP, Business
Process
“As Process Excellence continues its
evolution at Staples, our leaders are
finding how these approaches and
capabilities help us achieve our objec-
tives more cost effectively. We are
learning that the solutions developed
by the Black Belts are often very dif-
ferent than expected. For example, in
several projects we have postponed or
eliminated a needed systems solution
because we now better understand and
have addressed the true root cause of
the problem. We have also found that
the benefits from the projects not only
sustain better than before, but also
improve further over time. Additionally,
as Black Belts move back into the busi-
ness after certification, they approach
business problems with more rigor and
fact based approaches.”
Accenture’s ongoing research reveals
that the building blocks of high per-
formance are market focus and posi-
tion, distinctive capabilities, and a
performance anatomy that represents
the common culture and mindsets that
enable companies to out-execute their
competitors. As Staples proves, Lean Six
Sigma can make each of these building
blocks stronger. A Lean Six Sigma pro-
gram generates significant savings that
allow companies to focus on building
and retaining their competitive edge.
Lean Six Sigma enables companies to
streamline processes and create capa-
bilities that are hard to replicate. It
infuses an organization’s culture with
the tools and capability to achieve con-
tinual process improvement and high
performance.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management
consulting, technology services and
outsourcing company. Combining unpar-
alleled experience, comprehensive capa-
bilities across all industries and business
functions, and extensive research on
the world’s most successful companies,
Accenture collaborates with clients to
help them become high-performance
businesses and governments. With more
than 186,000 people serving clients in
over 120 countries, the company gener-
ated net revenues of US$23.39 billion
for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2008.
Its home page is www.accenture.com.
About Process & Innovation
Performance
The Accenture Process & Innovation
Performance service line takes an end-
to-end, process-based approach to
address key business challenges such as
complexity reduction, lean manufactur-
ing and operations, process innovation,
strategic cost reduction, and growth
through innovation, in order to create
competitive advantage for clients glob-
ally. We help our clients become high-
performance businesses by enhancing
the internal capabilities needed to
continuously improve operational and
innovation performance. Accenture
enhanced its long-standing operations
and strategy expertise with the 2007
acquisition of George Group, a recog-
nized market leader in process, opera-
tional and business transformation, and
innovation strategy, whose capabilities
and offerings form the foundation of
this new practice.
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