Financial Services
Experienced with investment and retail banking as well as third-party financial services, we have helped our clients with all aspects of operations. Realizing dramatic improvement in client-facing processes, IT operations, risk management, and service delivery, Woodside Quality Solutions has delivered exceptional results.
Repair Queue Reduction
Pre-Project Situation
Percentage of transaction wires going to the repair queue was running at above 12%
Original estimates of cost of handling: about $340K per year
Project chartered to cut repair volume to 4%,
Project Highlights
Analysis of repairs by a Six Sigma DMAIC project team revealed several opportunities for reducing the number of repairs.
At the same time, lean techniques streamlined the handling of the queue, eliminating batch handling.
Results
Project was completed in four months
Goal was to reach 4%; project actually cut the percentage of repair wires to 2%.
One discovery: the cycle time and cost estimated by the project champion at the beginning (340k/year) was very low; resulting savings came to over $500,000 per year.
Consolidation of Retail/Commercial Loan Processing
Pre-Project Situation
Processing for Commercial and Retail Loans had been handled in two offices, with two completely different processes.
Project Highlights
Six Sigma Project Team Mapped processes, work flows and value streams for each center.
Discovered commonalities, unique processes and synergies in each of the two processes.
Designed one common value stream that covered 90% of the flow for both types of loan.
Results
Cut overall cycle time for processing each type of loan by over 65%
Combined the two offices, reducing staff costs by approx. $530k/year, and overhead by over $1m/year.
Reduce Server Costs
Pre-Project Situation
This project was a spinoff from an earlier Six Sigma project that had reduced the cycle time for installing new servers.
The original team thought there might be larger additional savings available
Project Highlights
Historical data analysis and examination of upstream acquisition processes revealed several inefficiencies and promising new technology options.
Six Sigma Black Belt conducted simulations comparing old/new processes and technology alternatives revealed an optimum mix.
Results
Six Sigma Project was completed in 5 months.
Managers felt that the documented savings did not capture unknowable significant reductions in maintenance costs, downtime and other advantages of the new technology.
Team was able to realize $285,000 per year in direct cost savings.