M.B.A. Students Benefit From Professional Development Activities

Students in the master of business administration program at the Sam M. Walton College of Business had the unique opportunity to learn concepts used to grow profits during a Six Sigma professional development workshop on the University of Arkansas campus. 

Greg Hayes and Steven Bradt are Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belts and members of the Global Continuous Improvement team at Walmart. They taught the White Belt – Introduction to Lean and Six Sigma course to the Walton M.B.A. students, which covered a base understanding of Lean and Six Sigma concepts.

Lean is the methodology developed by Toyota with a customer-centric view to reduce waste in processes and not allow defects to pass, improving quality and reducing costs. Six Sigma was employed initially at Motorola to understand and control variation within the manufacturing processes in order to identify and reduce defects. The resulting exercises at Motorola significantly improved process performance, reducing the number of defects and as an additional benefit reducing costs associated with defective processes such as rework, labor, administration and write-offs of bad parts.

The core concepts behind a Lean Six Sigma strategy is to identify and reduce process variation using the DMAIC methodology: Defining the issue, Measuring the process, Analysis of data, Improving the process and Controlling the new process ensuring adherence to the new standard of performance. The combination of methods provides a foundation for tactical and strategic problem solving and process improvement. Lean and Six Sigma practitioners (Green, Black and Master Black Belts) are found in the world’s most successful organizations including Walmart, GE, 3M, Accenture, Johnson and Johnson, Xerox, Bank of America, NCR, Amazon and throughout the U.S. government.

The Six Sigma workshop is one of many professional development activities that the Walton College provides to its M.B.A. students.

“Our professional development activities provide necessary skill sets to our M.B.A. students that traditional classes cannot,” Vikas Anand, associate professor and faculty director of the Walton College M.B.A. program, said. “The Six Sigma workshop is one that the students rave about.  In fact, several of our alumni have highlighted the extent to which the workshop benefited them in the workplace.”

Apart from Six Sigma, the M.B.A. program offers a variety of other workshops that are focused on developing students’ skills that will be beneficial to them at their workplace, Anand said.

These programs include resume review, interview boot camp, technology trainings, and go as far as presentation skills training, dining etiquette and business dress, Deb Williams, associate director of graduate programs at the Walton College, said.