How to become a BBQ champion

There are a few opportunities during the summer months to dust off the BBQ and eat outside, and with the temperatures plummeting before you know it there will be even less nights spent eating Al Fresco in the garden.

As you probably know barbecuing takes a lot of finesse, and is most certainly a process, one that you will always be trying to perfect. Unless you're living in warmer climates, there are too few times to practice enough to become a BBQ black belt, so we’ve put together a Six Sigma approved barbecuing technique to ensure that you get it right first time. This implements the DMAIC method, a mainstay of Six Sigma.

Define – The first step is to clarify the facts, explore any problems, goals and potential resources. In order to host the perfect barbecue think about what happened last time, did it all run smoothly or did you have problems with heat, meat, was there enough to eat?
Measure – Having the correct metrics is a very important part of the measure phase. It's vital that you understand your numbers and that they're reliable during this stage. When applying it to barbecuing think about the weather conditions, can everyone sit outside, the number of people that will be attending and therefore how much food you'll need, duration of marinading / cooking time. Then you need to think about how much coal or gas you'll need to be able to cook the food.
Analyse – This is where you look at what happened, did anything go wrong during the barbecue, were there any errors? This stage isn't just about focusing on the negatives though, look at which conditions worked best. Are there any trends you can take from this? For example, look at whether it was best to serve the food as soon as everyone arrived, or whether it was best to wait. What was the most popular dish and so forth.
Improve – This stage is pretty simple, try and get all of the best conditions together to find the optimum combination - sunshine, barbecue, plenty of food, friends and laughter.
Record – We're heading towards the end of BBQ season, so make a note of this year's barbecuing achievements ready for next year. Write down what happened during the best barbecue of the year, take pictures! Get the record out next summer and continue to improve and make your barbecues better and better each year.

As you can see from the above, Six Sigma is a set of tools and techniques for process improvement. Six Sigma is generally applied to business strategy but the theory can be used to improve the process of almost anything.

Six Sigma certification and implementation aims to reduce failures, control costs and schedules and manage risks by looking at specific problems and providing specific solutions. Unlike other methodologies, the Six Sigma training course provides you with the tools and techniques to measure performance and achievement before and after your actions so you can constantly make improvements to processes. We offer a range of courses based on the Six Sigma training programme, for more information about these courses click here.