Six Sigma
As Kaisen was used and developed in Toyota. Six Sigma was developed by Motorola.
Six Sigma is quality management based using statistical methods and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organisation, “Black Belts”, who are experts in this methodology.
Each Six Sigma project follows a defined series of steps each with quantified financial targets (cost reduction/profit increase).
In Six Sigma a defect is defined as anything that would lead to customer dissatisfaction.
Six Sigma is based on quality improvement methodologies – quality control, TQM (total quality management) and zero defects.
The elements of Six Sigma are:
1. Continuous efforts to achieve stable and predictable process results ‐ minimise variations.
2. Manufacturing and business processes that have characteristics that can be measured, analysed, improved and controlled.
3. Commitment from the entire organisation, particularly from top – level management.
4. A clear focus on achieving measurable and quantifiable financial returns from any six sigma project.
5. An increased emphasis on strong and passionate management leadership and support.
6. A special infrastructure of “champions” such as “Master Black Belt”.
7. A clear commitment to making decisions on the verifiable results rather than assumptions.
“Six Sigma” comes from a field of statistics called “process capability studies.” It is based on the ability of the manufacturing process to produce a high proportion of output within specification – a target level of 34 defects per 10 million opportunities, Six Sigma’s implicit goal is to reach this level
or better.
Motorola has registered Six Sigma as a service mark and reportedly have saved over £ 17 billion since inception (as at 2006).
More recently Six Sigma has been combined with Lean Manufacturing to yield a methodology called Lean Six Sigma.
Sigma – The Greek letter σ is used to represent standard deviation in statistical analysis. The Six Sigma comes from the idea that if one has six standard deviations between the mean of a process and the nearest specification limit when that will fail to meet the specifications practically no items will fail to meet the specifications.
Implementation
One of the key innovations of Six Sigma in the professionalization of quality management functions. Six Sigma is now not confined to the shop floor but the responsibility of a management hierarchy using Martial Arts titles to embrace all business functions.
Six Sigma is not a methodology in its own right but a process that embraces established quality management methods in a controlled and systematic environment. As such, software packages have been developed to monitor the systems and procedures in order to produce quantifiable results and reporting.
The concept of Six Sigma is extremely technical and its implementation can only be carried out by experienced quality management professionals.
The measurement of manufacturing and business processes, the analysis of results and the reporting of variances is assisted greatly though the use of PDA’s at the workplace.
