November 2009 Issue

Quality is on the way

to become

the way of life for students to study, employers toinvest and employees to practice and excel. Six sigma or CMM (Capability Maturity Model) areconcepts known to all, but the maturity levels of CMM or DMAIC approach of Six Sigma are worthtaking a look at.There are growing concerns regarding the quality of technical graduates produced every year.NASSCOM’s prediction of a shortfall of half a million professionals by 2010 certainly alerts us of thedecline in the employability rate. Recession has slowed down the recruitment at entry level relativeto the preceding boom period. Organizations place a great emphasis on quality of the employees tobe hired. Preparing for the skills in demand, to beat the competition and to remain at a cut above therest has become more important than ever. This perhaps is the right time to concentrate on theimprovement of the quality of the workforce.The business world has seen the emergence of a number of quality related initiatives like- Total Quality Management (TQM)- Just in Time (JIT)- Statistical Process Control (SPC)- Quality Circles (QC)- Benchmarking- QS 9000- ISO 9000 QMS standards- Total productive maintenance (TPM)- Six Sigma, and- SEICMM levels‘Six Sigma’ is a latest quality trend introduced to improvise the processes in business. BillGalvin of Motorola and Jack Welch of GE have used this approach and have witnessed significantimprovements in their market share, customer satisfaction and performance of their products andservices.Six Sigma embodies a systematic, data driven, analytical approach for reducing variation inany process and thereby eliminating defects. The central idea behind this methodology is that if wecan measure the number of defects in a process, we can systematically figure out how to eliminatethem and get close to ‘zero defects’ as much as possible.

From the Editor's Desk

Six Sigma as a qualitystrategy for students!!

“Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.”William Foster

Let us have a look at how this concept can be applied to students to improve their quality.The DMAIC approach of Six Sigma has five steps:

Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control

.In the First step, it is important that a student

‘defines’

his problem (poor results in a particular course, class or discipline, poor performance in programming, poor designing skills, poor communicationskills etc). Having identified the student CTQs (critical to quality), these can now be treated as projectCTQs. Writing down a problem statement, a mission statement and developing a project charter (whatneeds to be done, determine goals, key deliverables, benefits of the project etc) can bring more clarityon the focused improvement project. They can do a survey on what exactly the industry needs andwhat exactly they need in the form of resources.In the Second step

‘Measure’

, the symptoms of the problem have to be analyzed, a baseline of current and recent performance is established and accordingly confirm or modify the mission statement.This might perhaps reveal to a student that the project needs to be broken into more manageable partsor the problem is some what different from the one that was originally described.During the Third step ‘

Analyze’

, the root causes of the problem need to be identified, documentedand organized in the form of cause and effect diagram. Alternatives for removal of causes of defectsin our performance levels should be figured out.The Fourth step

‘Improve’

is when one needs focus on a design of improvement plan andimplementing it. The solutions should be tested and the results need to be measured.The Fifth step

‘Control’

is a way to ensure that the gains which have been achieved will continueand problem will not recur, the improvement is foolproofed. Standard measures to monitor one’sperformance should be established. This could be a wholesome process to improve on problems thatstudents might be facing during their academic pursuit.Six Sigma philosophy has produced champions, master black belts, black belts and green beltsin the industry and perhaps an introduction of a similar methodology into academic arena can fetch us