Skip navigation
Navigation skipped
About BMO

News Releases

BMO Financial Group Wins International Quality and Productivity Awards Global Six Sigma Awards judge BMO among industry-leading companies worldwide: Process initiatives to provide $55 million in savings on just $5.3 million investments

BMO Financial Group collected two Global Six Sigma awards at a gala presentation in Las Vegas last month, the only company to win two of the nine organizational categories:

  • Best Achievement of Integrating Lean and Six Sigma; and
  • Best Achievement of Six Sigma in Financial Services.

The Global Six Sigma Awards recognize companies from around the world for outstanding organizational achievements through the application of Six Sigma methodologies. In choosing a winner for the awards, judges consider strategic relevance, value generation, innovation, implementation and leadership engagement. Judges characterized BMO's program as “one of the best integrated implementations documented” and noted BMO's “excellent deployment within the financial category and a strong project-selection process.”

Six Sigma, originally developed at Motorola in the 1980s, is a complete program for addressing how well an organization meets customer requirements and expectations by minimizing and reducing process variation that causes errors. The complementary Lean methodology focuses on providing products and services at competitive prices by eliminating waste and its drivers.

Lean Six Sigma is directly aligned with BMO's corporate imperatives to:

  • Improve the customer experience through service quality improvements
  • Increase pace through speed of delivery improvements
  • Drive growth by freeing up capital for reinvestment to increase BMO Financial Group's competitiveness

Using Lean Six Sigma methodologies, BMO's deployment, launched in 2005, has reduced errors, improved cycle-time, eliminated waste and is already anticipated to provide annualized savings of nearly $55 million over a five-year benefit period on just $5.3 million in investments.

“I am pleased with the financial benefits and breakthrough performance achieved by our Lean Six Sigma deployment to date. BMO has achieved an exceptional rate of return on its investment in fiscal 2007 – the best I have ever seen in any corporate investment programs.” says Richard Lam, Deployment Leader, Quality and Productivity Management Office, BMO Financial Group. “There is tremendous potential for Lean Six Sigma to achieve outstanding results as we apply these breakthrough industry-leading methodologies in other BMO businesses."

- 30 -

For information about The Global Six Sigma Awards, or to read BMO's award winning submission: http://www.tgssa.com/2007.html ; http://operations.bmogc.net/Documents/english/FinSvsandLean.pdf