Once upon a time, in a real, live U.S. corporation, top management decided that Six Sigma was a good idea. They trained up many Black Belts to lead projects to produce documented savings as defined by the existing accounting system. To encourage people to be successful, the Black Belts—not the project teams—were slated to receive substantial bonuses for producing these savings.One such project involved a Black Belt who found that many of the tests on one particularly complex product were duplicates of one another. He eliminated the duplicate tests and was able to claim $800,000 in annual savings. He was a happy man. He got a nice bonus.

Here’s the rest of the story. It just so happens that the eliminated tests were automatically run in parallel with other tests. Production was based on a constant week-to-week contract, so running an inventory ahead was very risky. Labor was unchanged. Scrap was unchanged. Production was unchanged. Our happy Black Belt got a nice bonus for savings that didn’t actually occur. Not his fault. Systems error.

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