Seylan Bank staff awarded Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt certification

Seated from left: Deputy General Manager Human Resources Jayantha Amarasinghe, Deputy General Manager Operations Malik Wickramanayake, Director/Chief Executive Officer Kapila Ariyaratne, Deputy General Manager Branches Chitral De Silva, Chief Financial Officer Champika Dodanwela

Standing from left: Suhanniya Dias – LSS Yellow Belt, Roshan Grero – LSS Yellow Belt, CLSSBB Head of Business Process Re-engineering Ruchith Liyanage, Nilan Wickramasinghe – LSS Yellow Belt, M.F.H.M. Fazlan – LSS Yellow Belt, Ayesha Thennakone – LSS Yellow Belt

Seylan Bank recently awarded five staff members with the globally recognised Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt certification. These staff members completed an accreditation process which included classroom training and successful delivery of a project to reduce overheads, increase efficiency, and eliminate waste or non-value adding activities from operational processes.

The inaugural certification ceremony of the Operational Excellence Programme was held recently under the patronage of Seylan Bank PLC Director/Chief Executive Officer Kapila Ariyaratne, Deputy General Manager – Operations Malik Wickramanayake and other members of the corporate management team. 

Speaking at the ceremony, Director/Chief Executive Officer Ariyaratne stated, “It is important that we empower our staff at all levels to be a part of the transformation journey Seylan Bank has undertaken. I would like to thank the Business Process Re-engineering team for driving the Operational Excellence Programme and enabling our employees with the required knowledge and tools to identify inefficiencies and waste within the current processes and come up with sustainable solutions to eliminate those in the future.”

Seylan Bank aims to expand the Operational Excellence Programme to accredit more Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belts and extend the certification to Green Belts from next year to foster a culture of continuous improvement within the organisation. Lean Six Sigma is a structured problem-solving methodology that relies on various quality and statistical tools to identify, measure and analyse inefficiencies in processes and come up with lasting improvement strategies by systematically reducing waste and variation, which creates a positive impact on the overall quality of products and processes. 

This is expected to yield in reduced defects, lower operational costs, improved bottom-line, enhanced customer experience and a positive shift in the organisational culture towards change.