Rehman M. Khan

I graduated in 1990 with a degree in Chemical Engineering from Swansea University. Shortly after that I joined British Nuclear Fuels working at the Risley design office for a short time. After which I moved to the fuel manufacturing site called Springfields. I was lucky enough to gain a lot of valuable experience at Springfields and this included being a member of a management team for a nuclear chemical plant. This role required me to be Duly Authorised under the conditions of the Nuclear Site License. In 1997 I was selected for a two month secondment with the International Atomic Energy Agency. This gave me the intense experience of working as a Nuclear Weapons Inspector in Iraq.

I left the nuclear industry to work in the cosmetics industry for a short period of time and then returned to Springfields about two years later. In that time BNFL was no more and Springfields was being operated by Springfields Fuels Limited for Westinghouse. My main role was process improvement but it was not until 2006 that I was introduced to Six Sigma by Westinghouse trainers, it was a moment of enlightenment. I managed to complete my green belt training but did not get certified as I again left Springfields.

In 2006 I started working for British Gypsum (BG) at their flagship plant, East Leake. BG were using World Class Manufacturing as their business improvement process rather than Six Sigma. However, I immediately started pushing the statistical tools of Six Sigma. These could easily be used within the WCM framework as long as you did not mention Six Sigma. In fact, it was easier to get training directly from Minitab than get Six Sigma training. Working with my manager I managed to get the Black Belt training that I wanted and became Black Belt Certified in 2010.

Whilst honing my problem solving and data analysis skills I recognized that there was a huge gap in the availability of the appropriate training materials and yet there was a huge demand from numerical professionals to learn the skills. I was disappointed not to be able to find the right sort of books to help me learn and understand how to use Minitab. It was at that point that I decided to write my own course which taught the statistical Six Sigma toolset using Minitab. I felt there were many books that taught the easier ‘soft’ skills effectively but there was not much out there for the statistical tool set for numerical professionals.

Exciting times. It's now 2016 and I have just released my second book ' Six Sigma Statistics using Minitab 17 '. The feedback I got from the last book and the course was that there was need to split the material and produce two editions; one focused on Green Belts and then one which would be much more detailed and does not cover the basics again for Black Belts. The Green Belt Edition has only just come out so I will start writing the Black Belt edition soon. If you want to see content from either book please visit my website at www.rmksixsigma.com.

Apart from writing the new book I left British Gypsum in November 2013 and Joined FMC Chemicals Ltd in Bromborough, UK as the Head of Manufacturing Excellence. The ideal role to bring together Six Sigma and Chemical Engineering skills. Whilst working for FMC I have completed my Master Black Training with Sigma Pro. I highly recommend their Master Black Belt program which is taught my Doug Mader, the first Motorola Master Black Belt. Earlier this year FMC Chemicals won the Chemical Industry Association Award for Resource and Manufacturing Efficiency sponsored by ABB and the Environment Management Award. Both were great achievements for our site.