How to Enable a Six Sigma

Methodology with SAP – Quality

Management, Projects, and
Analytics

Applies to:
SAP ERP => QM, cProjects 4.5, Six Sigma Analytics.

Summary
SAP provides integrated Project Management capabilities to support six sigma DMAIC methodology. Learn
from this article what ERP QM, cProjects and Six Sigma Analytics have to offer together to maintain and
execute six sigma projects.
Author: Swati Gupta
Company: SAP Labs India
Created on: 12 March 2008

Author Bio
Swati Gupta did her Bachelors in Chemical Engineering. After working for 4 years in Quality
and production Department of Aluminum Production Industry she joined SAP in 2007. She
had hands on functional experience in ERP QM, cProjects, Quality Inspector, Six Sigma and
Audit Management.

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 How to Enable a Six Sigma Methodology with SAP – Quality Management, Projects, and Analytics

Table of Contents
Introduction .........................................................................................................................................................3
Six Sigma............................................................................................................................................................3
SAP Offerings .....................................................................................................................................................6
QM with SAP ERP ..........................................................................................................................................6
cProjects .........................................................................................................................................................6
Project Charter.............................................................................................................................................................7
Metrics Definition .........................................................................................................................................................8
Six Sigma Analytics.........................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................................9
Related Content................................................................................................................................................10
Copyright...........................................................................................................................................................11

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 How to Enable a Six Sigma Methodology with SAP – Quality Management, Projects, and Analytics

Introduction
To reduce process variability, Six Sigma focuses firmly on data and measurements. The aim is to establish
metrics that align an organization’s strategic goals and values with customer needs and expectations. To
help measure progress, Six Sigma employs a data-driven quality strategy known as DMAIC, an acronym for
five interconnected phases: define measure, analyze, improve, and control. Each step in the DMAIC process
is required to ensure the best results. SAP helps you to execute these steps with powerful support for project
management, resource and portfolio management, quality management, and analytics. The result is a solid
basis for continuously tracking and implementing Six Sigma–based improvements.
SAP provides integrated project management capabilities to support all phases of a DMAIC project. The
Collaboration Projects suite, in particular, is useful for defining the scope of a Six Sigma initiative. With
increased visibility and improved collaboration capabilities, you’ll be able to define and assign tasks, manage
the relevant documentation, carry out audits to identify exceptions, and track progress. Improved visibility
also extends to the portfolio level, allowing managers to prioritize projects and allocate resources to
maximize return on investment and make strategic decisions that increase the value of the overall product
portfolio.
SAP’s ERP Quality Management, cProjects and Six Sigma Analytics, provides unprecedented access to the
data from ERP system. Whether you want to consolidate, analyze, simplify, or synchronize data, Integration
between these applications allows you to access and analyze these data.

Six Sigma
Six Sigma is a disciplined, data-driven, multi-faceted approach and methodology for process improvement,
reduced costs, and increased profits. With a fundamental principle to improve customer satisfaction by
reducing defects, its ultimate performance target is virtually defect-free processes and products (3.4 or fewer
defective parts per million (ppm). The statistical representation of Six Sigma describes quantitatively how a
process is performing.
The Six Sigma drive for defect reduction, process improvement and customer satisfaction is based on the
"statistical thinking" paradigm

• Everything is a process
• All processes have inherent variability
• Data is used to understand the variability and drive process improvement decisions

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 How to Enable a Six Sigma Methodology with SAP – Quality Management, Projects, and Analytics

The fundamental objective of the Six Sigma methodology is the implementation of a measurement-based
strategy that focuses on process improvement and variation reduction through the application of Six Sigma
improvement projects. This is accomplished through the use of two Six Sigma sub-methodologies: DMAIC
and DMADV. The Six Sigma DMAIC process (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) is an improvement
system for existing processes falling below specification and looking for incremental improvement. The Six
Sigma DMADV process (define, measure, analyze, design, verify) is an improvement system used to
develop new processes or products at Six Sigma quality levels. It can also be employed if a current process
requires more than just incremental improvement.

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 How to Enable a Six Sigma Methodology with SAP – Quality Management, Projects, and Analytics

The roadmap for actualizing the statistical thinking paradigm, the key steps in the Six Sigma improvement
framework are:

Define - Measure - Analyze - Improve – Control

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 How to Enable a Six Sigma Methodology with SAP – Quality Management, Projects, and Analytics

SAP Offerings
QM with SAP ERP
SAP offers a comprehensive and flexible quality management functionality as integral part of its SAP ERP
application. Quality management is the foundation of any Six Sigma initiative. That’s why SAP enables
quality management capabilities such as statistical process control, root cause analysis, quality notifications,
Test Equipment Management, Quality Certificate, advanced product quality planning for product
development, Batch Management, Stability Study (Process stability for product quality), Quality Control and
quality manual support. With these capabilities, you’ll be able to analyze and document processes and detect
systematic deviations from quality characteristics. The end result is greater control over process quality.
SAP QM provides the following advantages:
• Quality Management system covers all your company processes.
• Employees play a central role. They can access important information and thereby perform a wide
variety of tasks quickly and efficiently.
• Direct communication and controlled data exchange with employees and business partners is always
possible.
• Single point for quality data and related information for project data collection, analyze and
synchronization.
• Audit Management for Product and Process Compliance, EH&S and Quality Systems Audit.
• FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis)
o Identify the potential failures and the associated relative risks designed into a product or
process
o Prioritize action plans to reduce those potential failures with the highest relative risk, and
o Track and evaluate the results of the action plans.
• Control Plan gives an overview about all inspections for a final product including all components.
• Process control plan is to control the product characteristics and the associated process variables to
ensure capability (around the identified target or nominal) and stability of the product over time.

cProjects
cProjects (Collaboration Projects) is the SAP web-based application for project planning, scheduling,
resources management and costing across internal and external partners. cProjects is part of a suite of
applications powered by SAP® NetWeaver™ that integrate project management, knowledge management
and resource management in collaborative inter-enterprise and intra-enterprise environments.
cProjects provides a broad set of project planning and management, resource management, and task
execution capabilities in a secure web-based collaborative environment. Predefined templates, project
versioning, project reporting and analysis are all provided along with time reporting that can be integrated
into your enterprise financial system to maintain separate projects.
cProjects enables robust project management and collaboration capabilities to support all phases of Six
Sigma projects. Using cProjects, you define the DMAIC phases of your Six Sigma project and the related
tasks for every phase. Define criteria and checklists for passing the quality gates between one phase and the
next. It can be planed and maintain the resources (employees, black belt) needed for executing the tasks.
Various roles can be created and assigned to various tasks to execute the tasks successfully.
cProjects have the functionality to create Project Template for Six Sigma and copy the same while creating
any project. It reduces the effort to create a basic format for any Project, specially, when any company
follows the same format for all the projects under going.

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 How to Enable a Six Sigma Methodology with SAP – Quality Management, Projects, and Analytics

Project Charter
The project charter is the basis of any project. It contains problem statement (Project title), scope and goal
statement. These data are defined after a lot of study and history data analysis for process and product.
Projects execution (process) depends upon these statements as this analysis direct the project.

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 How to Enable a Six Sigma Methodology with SAP – Quality Management, Projects, and Analytics

Metrics Definition
A user-specific key figure for which you can define different metrics value types, such as planned, actual, or
target. Metrics can be entered manually or calculated by the system. You can mention the various phases or
tasks and maintain their time frame to keep the record of the progress. SAP provides standard Metrics for
Financial Data and Key Figures. You can maintain “ROI” and “Savings” detail for individual project. You can
change the key figures name according to your project KPIs. You can enter the detail benefit at the end of
project, either to resume the project or for completion of project. The complete description may be in a
document attach to the project.

You can create folders and upload documents related to the task, in the form of data, charts and
presentations, to keep all the relevant information at single point. Anyone related to the project can access
these.
You can Link few of the predefined Objects from the ERP Backend system, to any of the project. For
Example you can link any FMEA created in backend, with the FMEA of your project created under Analyze.
Now you can directly access all the information of the backend system FMEA and can utilize it for your
project execution. Other then FMEA, Audit, Control Plan, Inspection Lot and Inspection Plan can be attached
to the project.

You can display the Key Figures (Only Six Sigma Value), Savings and ROI (Basic, Target, Actual and
Currency) data from Metrics on Dashboard to have an overview on the Project Status and progress.

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 How to Enable a Six Sigma Methodology with SAP – Quality Management, Projects, and Analytics

Six Sigma Analytics

You use this analytic composite to analyze quality data as required in a Six Sigma project e.g. critical
material, Cpk value (Process Capability), Sigma Value (Standard Deviation), Critical to Quality data, etc. This
tool helps in selecting a set of data matching the mentioned search criteria, e.g. Time interval, vendor,
material, plant, batch, inspection type etc. This tool helps to narrow down the search for specific data.

The download link for SAP Six Sigma Analytical Composite sample application is mentioned here as a piece
of overall offerings.
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/webcontent/uuid/7046be6d-cf8d-2910-67bc-
89c0e64bed0f
SAP offers predefined business content for quality management with his SAP NetWeaver Business
Intelligence application. Ease of use, flexibility and company wide availability in an open and modern
infrastructure help you to access your quality related information when needed - anywhere and anytime.

Conclusion
Although SAP does not provide a full fledged solution for Six Sigma with all the statistical tool sets required,
the existing functionality and the integration between the single applications can nevertheless help
customers to effectively run Six Sigma projects. As another matter of fact, SAP NetWeaver is an open
technology platform to integrate complementary 3rd party tools to cover the requirements of Six Sigma.

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Related Content
Here you’ll find additional information about similar topics.
• http://www.isixsigma.com/
• http://www.sei.cmu.edu/str/descriptions/sigma6_body.html
• https://portal.wdf.sap.corp/irj/portal?NavigationTarget=navurl://243c0ef3e5037cf6950e4311126fc50d

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