UNDERSTANDING SIX SIGMA:

AN OVERVIEW

PRATHAMESH SURESH PARDESHI

HPGD/AP16/XXXX
SPECIALIZATION: SERVICE EXCELLENCE

WELINGKAR INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

DEVELOPMENT AND RESEARCH
YEAR OF SUBMISSION: APRIL 2018

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to WELINGKAR INSTITUTE OF

MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT AND RESEARCH who gave me the golden
opportunity to do this wonderful project on the topic “UNDERSTANDING SIX SIGMA –
AN OVERVIEW”, which also helped me in doing a lot of Research and I came to know
about so many new things I am really thankful to them.
Secondly I would also like to thank my parents who helped me a lot in finalizing this project
within the limited time frame.

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 UNDERTAKING

I declare that the project work entitled ―UNDERSTANDING SIX SIGMA – AN

OVERVIEW‖ is my own work conducted as part of my syllabus. I further declare that the
project work presented has been prepared personally by me and it is not sourced from any
outside agency. I understand that, any such malpractice will have very serious consequence
and my admission to the program will be cancelled without any refund of fees. I am also
aware that, I may face legal action, if I follow such malpractice.

XXXX XXX XXXXX

Signature of Candidate

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Sr.No. CHAPTERS Page No.

1 Introduction 6

2 Brief Overview of Six Sigma 6

3 Etymology of Six Sigma & Implementation 7

The 6 Critical success factorsw that are essential for the effective
implementation of Six Sigma
4
4.1. Leadership Commitment.
4.2. Training and Development.
4.3. Shared Vision and Goals. 12
4.4. Measuring and monitoring report.
4.5. Teamwork.
4.6. Genuine focus on the customer need is key.

5 DMAIC Methodology 14

6 Organizational Benefits of Six Sigma 22

7 Belts in Six Sigma 23

Benefits of Six Sigma

8 8.1. Advantages 27
8.2. Disadvantages

FMEA Tools of Six Sigma

9 9.1. What is FMEA 30
9.2. Process of FMEA

10 Eight Step Map for Successful Six Sigma Implementation. 35

11 Benefits of Six Sigma in Career 41

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12 What is Six Sigma Certification? 43
12.1. What is involved in Six Sigma Certification?

Application of Six Sigma

13.1. Manufacturing.
13 13.2. Engineering and Construction.
13.3. Finance. 47
13.4. Supply Chain.
13.5. HealthCare

14 LEAN Manufacturing / Production. 52

15 LEAN Overview
15.1. Frederick Winslaw Taylor. 53
15.2. Henry Ford.

16 LEAN Services. 59

17 Design for Six Sigma. 60

18 DFSS as an approach to design. 61

19 Distinction from DMAIC 62

20 LEAN Methodology
20.1.What is Lean 63
20.2.What is Value

21 The Five Principles of LEAN. 67

22 Goal of Six Sigma & DMAIC Roadmap 69

23 Conclusions & Recommendations 81

24 Limitations of Six Sigma & References. 83

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1. INTRODUCTION

Six Sigma (6σ) is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement. It was
introduced by engineer Bill Smith while working at Motorola in 1986. Jack Welch made it
central to his business strategy at General Electric in 1995.

It seeks to improve the quality of the output of a process by identifying and removing
the causes of defects and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes. It
uses a set of quality management methods, mainly empirical, statistical methods, and creates a
special infrastructure of people within the organization who are experts in these methods.
Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organization follows a defined sequence
of steps and has specific value targets, for example: reduce process cycle time, reduce
pollution, reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction, and increase profits.

The term Six Sigma (capitalized because it was written that way when registered as a
Motorola trademark on December 28, 1993) originated from terminology associated with
statistical modelling of manufacturing processes. The maturity of a manufacturing process can
be described by a sigma rating indicating its yield or the percentage of defect-free products it
creates. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of all opportunities to produce some
feature of a part are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defective features per
million opportunities). Motorola set a goal of "six sigma" for all of its manufacturing
operations, and this goal became a by-word for the management and engineering practices
used to achieve it.

2. BRIEF OVERVIEW OF SIX SIGMA

• The roots of Six Sigma as a measurement standard can be traced back to Carl Friedrich
Gauss (1777-1855) who introduced the concept of the normal curve.

• Six Sigma as a measurement standard in product variation can be traced back to the
1920‘s when Walter Shewhart showed that three sigma from the mean is the point
where a process requires correction.

• Many measurement standards (Cpk, Zero Defects, etc.) later came on the scene but
credit for coining the term ―Six Sigma‖ goes to a Motorola engineer named Bill Smith.

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 • Motorola developed this new standard and created the methodology and needed cultural
change associated with it. Six Sigma helped Motorola realize powerful bottom-line
results in their organization – in fact, they documented more than $16 Billion in savings
as a result of our Six Sigma efforts.

3. ETYMOLOGY OF SIX SIGMA

The term "six sigma process" comes from the notion that if one has six standard
deviations between the process mean and the nearest specification limit, as shown in the
graph, practically no items will fail to meet specifications. This is based on the calculation
method employed in process capability studies.

Capability studies measure the number of standard deviations between the process mean and
the nearest specification limit in sigma units, represented by the Greek letter σ (sigma). As
process standard deviation goes up, or the mean of the process moves away from the center of
the tolerance, fewer standard deviations will fit between the mean and the nearest
specification limit, decreasing the sigma number and increasing the likelihood of items
outside specification. One should also note that calculation of Sigma levels for a process data
is independent of the data being normally distributed. In one of the criticisms to Six Sigma,
practitioners using this approach spend a lot of time transforming data from non-normal to
normal using transformation techniques. It must be said that Sigma levels can be determined
for process data that has evidence of non-normality.

Graph of the normal distribution, which underlies the statistical assumptions of the Six
Sigma model. In the centre at 0, the Greek letter µ (mu) marks the mean, with the horizontal
axis showing distance from the mean, marked in standard deviations and given the letter σ

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(sigma). The greater the standard deviation, the greater is the spread of values encountered.
For the green curve shown above, µ = 0 and σ = 1. The upper and lower specification limits
(marked USL and LSL) are at a distance of 6σ from the mean. Because of the properties of
the normal distribution, values lying that far away from the mean are extremely unlikely:
approximately 1 in a billion too low, and the same too high. Even if the mean were to move
right or left by 1.5σ at some point in the future (1.5 sigma shift, coloured red and blue), there
is still a good safety cushion. This is why Six Sigma aims to have processes where the mean is
at least 6σ away from the nearest specification limit.

Experience has shown that processes usually do not perform as well in the long term
as they do in the short term. As a result, the number of sigmas that will fit between the process
mean and the nearest specification limit may well drop over time, compared to an initial
short-term study. To account for this real-life increase in process variation over time, an
empirically based 1.5 sigma shift is introduced into the calculation. According to this idea, a
process that fits 6 sigma between the process mean and the nearest specification limit in a
short-term study will in the long term fit only 4.5 sigma – either because the process mean
will move over time, or because the long-term standard deviation of the process will be
greater than that observed in the short term, or both.

Hence the widely accepted definition of a six sigma process is a process that produces
3.4 defective parts per million opportunities (DPMO). This is based on the fact that a process
that is normally distributed will have 3.4 parts per million outside the limits, when the limits
are six sigma from the "original" mean of zero and the process mean is then shifted by 1.5
sigma (and therefore, the six sigma limits are no longer symmetrical about the mean). The
former six sigma distribution, when under the effect of the 1.5 sigma shift, is commonly
referred to as a 4.5 sigma process. The failure rate of a six sigma distribution with the mean
shifted 1.5 sigma is not equivalent to the failure rate of a 4.5 sigma process with the mean
centered on zero. This allows for the fact that special causes may result in a deterioration in
process performance over time and is designed to prevent underestimation of the defect levels
likely to be encountered in real-life operation.

The role of the sigma shift is mainly academic. The purpose of six sigma is to generate
organizational performance improvement. It is up to the organization to determine, based on
customer expectations, what the appropriate sigma level of a process is. The purpose of the
sigma value is as a comparative figure to determine whether a process is improving,

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deteriorating, stagnant or non-competitive with others in the same business. Six sigma (3.4
DPMO) is not the goal of all processes.

The Japanese word kaizen simply means "change for better", with inherent meaning of
either "continuous" or "philosophy" in Japanese dictionaries and in everyday use. The word
refers to any improvement, one-time or continuous, large or small, in the same sense as the
English word "improvement". However, given the common practice in Japan of labelling
industrial or business improvement techniques with the word "kaizen", particularly the
practices spearheaded by Toyota, the word "kaizen" in English is typically applied to
measures for implementing continuous improvement, especially those with a "Japanese
philosophy". The discussion below focuses on such interpretations of the word, as frequently
used in the context of modern management discussions. Two kaizen approaches have been
distinguished:

 flow kaizen;
 Process kaizen.

The former is oriented towards the flow of materials and information, and is often
identified with the reorganization of an entire production area, even a company. The latter
means the improvement of individual work stands. Therefore, improving the way production
workers do their job is a part of a process kaizen. The use of the kaizen model for continuous
improvement demands that both flow and process kaizens are used, although process kaizens
are used more often to focus workers on continuous small improvements. In this model,
operators mostly look for small ideas which, if possible, can be implemented on the same day.
This is in contrast to traditional models of work improvement, which generally have a long
lag between concept development and project implementation.

Kaizen is a daily process, the purpose of which goes beyond simple productivity
improvement. It is also a process that, when done correctly, humanizes the workplace,
eliminates overly hard work (muri), and teaches people how to perform experiments on their
work using the scientific method and how to learn to spot and eliminate waste in business
processes. In all, the process suggests a humanized approach to workers and to increasing
productivity: "The idea is to nurture the company's people as much as it is to praise and
encourage participation in kaizen activities." Successful implementation requires "the
participation of workers in the improvement." People at all levels of an organization
participate in kaizen, from the CEO down to janitorial staff, as well as external stakeholders

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when applicable. Kaizen is most commonly associated with manufacturing operations, as at
Toyota, but has also been used in non-manufacturing environments.[9] The format for kaizen
can be individual, suggestion system, small group, or large group. At Toyota, it is usually a
local improvement within a workstation or local area and involves a small group in improving
their own work environment and productivity. This group is often guided through the kaizen
process by a line supervisor; sometimes this is the line supervisor's key role. Kaizen on a
broad, cross-departmental scale in companies, generates total quality management, and frees
human efforts through improving productivity using machines and computing power.

While kaizen (at Toyota) usually delivers small improvements, the culture of continual
aligned small improvements and standardization yields large results in terms of overall
improvement in productivity. This philosophy differs from the "command and control"
improvement programs (e g Business Process Improvement) of the mid-twentieth century.
Kaizen methodology includes making changes and monitoring results, then adjusting. Large-
scale pre-planning and extensive project scheduling are replaced by smaller experiments,
which can be rapidly adapted as new improvements are suggested.

In modern usage, it is designed to address a particular issue over the course of a week
and is referred to as a "kaizen blitz" or "kaizen event".[10][11] These are limited in scope, and
issues that arise from them are typically used in later blitzes.[citation needed] A person who makes
a large contribution in the successful implementation of kaizen during kaizen events is
awarded the title of "Zenkai".

The small-step work improvement approach was developed in the USA

under Training Within Industry program (TWI Job Methods).[12] Instead of encouraging large,
radical changes to achieve desired goals, these methods recommended that organizations
introduce small improvements, preferably ones that could be implemented on the same day.
The major reason was that during WWII there was neither time nor resources for large and
innovative changes in the production of war equipment.[6] The essence of the approach came
down to improving the use of the existing workforce and technologies.

As part of the Marshall Plan after World War II, American occupation forces brought
in experts to help with the rebuilding of Japanese industry while the Civil Communications
Section (CCS) developed a management training program that taught statistical control
methods as part of the overall material. Homer Sarasohn and Charles Protzman developed and

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taught this course in 1949-1950. Sarasohn recommended W. Edwards Deming for further
training in statistical methods.

The Economic and Scientific Section (ESS) group was also tasked with improving
Japanese management skills and Edgar McVoy was instrumental in bringing Lowell
Mellen to Japan to properly install the Training Within Industry (TWI) programs in 1951. The
ESS group had a training film to introduce TWI's three "J" programs: Job Instruction, Job
Methods and Job Relations. Titled "Improvement in Four Steps" (Kaizen eno Yon Dankai) it
thus introduced kaizen to Japan.

For the pioneering, introduction, and implementation of kaizen in Japan, the Emperor
of Japan awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure to Dr. Deming in 1960. Subsequently,
the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) instituted the annual Deming
Prizes for achievement in quality and dependability of products. On October 18, 1989, JUSE
awarded the Deming Prize to Florida Power & Light Co. (FPL), based in the US, for its
exceptional accomplishments in process and quality-control management, making it the first
company outside Japan to win the Deming Prize.

IMPLEMENTATION

The Toyota Production System is known for kaizen, where all line personnel are
expected to stop their moving production line in case of any abnormality and, along with their
supervisor, suggest an improvement to resolve the abnormality which may initiate a kaizen.

The cycle of kaizen activity can be defined as: "Plan → Do → Check → Act". This is
also known as the Shewhart cycle, Deming cycle, or PDCA.

Another technique used in conjunction with PDCA is the 5 Whys, which is a form of root
cause analysis in which the user asks a series of five "why" questions about a failure that has

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occurred, basing each subsequent question on the answer to the previous. There are normally
a series of causes stemming from one root cause, and they can be visualized using fishbone
diagrams or tables. The Five Whys can be used as a foundational tool in personal
improvement, or as a means to create wealth.

Masaaki Imai made the term famous in his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan's
Competitive Success.

In the Toyota Way Fieldbook, Liker and Meier discuss the kaizen blitz and kaizen
burst (or kaizen event) approaches to continuous improvement. A kaizen blitz, or rapid
improvement, is a focused activity on a particular process or activity. The basic concept is to
identify and quickly remove waste. Another approach is that of the kaizen burst, a specific
kaizen activity on a particular process in the value stream. Kaizen facilitators generally go
through training and certification before attempting a Kaizen project.

In the 1990s, Professor Iwao Kobayashi published his book 20 Keys to Workplace
Improvement and created a practical, step-by-step improvement framework called "the 20
Keys". He identified 20 operations focus areas which should be improved to attain holistic
and sustainable change. He went further and identified the 5 levels of implementation for each
of these 20 focus areas. 4 of the focus areas are called Foundation Keys. According to the 20
Keys, these foundation keys should be launched ahead of the others in order to form a strong
constitution in the company. The four foundation keys are: Key 1 - Cleaning and Organising
to Make Work Easy, which is based on the 5S methodology. Key 2 - Goal
Alignment/Rationalising the System Key 3 - Small Group Activities Key 4 - Leading and Site
Technology.

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4. The 6 critical success factors that are essential for the effective
implementation of Six Sigma. They are:

1. Leadership commitment and involvement.

2. Training and development.

3. Shared vision and goals.

4. Measuring and monitoring performance.

5. Teamwork.

6. Genuine focus on the customer‘s need is key.

#1. Leadership commitment and involvement.

He‘s ongoing support of senior leadership and management is the most

important factor for successful implementation of Six Sigma. From the literature,
it is evident that behind most of the major success stories of Six Sigma
implementation is a very supportive and committed CEO.

#2. Training and development.

Training and education of team members is very important, top management

must ensure effective Six Sigma training programs to ensure successful
implementation of Six Sigma.

#3. Shared vision and goals

The executive team must share the vision and goals with employees to ensure
successful implementation of Six Sigma.

#4: Measuring and monitoring performance

Top management must follow up on the progress of Six Sigma implementation

and the progress of the projects to ensure successful implementation and returning
on investment.

#5: Teamwork

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 Top management must ensure the spirit of teamwork among all team members
to ensure the successful implementation of Six-sigma.

#6: Genuine focus on the customer’s need is key

Continuous improvement initiatives should begin and end with the customer. At
the heart of operational excellence is the identification of the customer and key
stakeholders‘ needs.

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5. DMAIC METHODOLOGY

What is DMAIC Methodology?

Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control. Incremental process improvement using Six
Sigma methodology. See DMAIC Methodology

Pronounced (Duh-May-Ick).

DMAIC refers to a data-driven quality strategy for improving processes, and is an

integral part of the company‘s Six Sigma Quality Initiative. DMAIC is an acronym for five
interconnected phases: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control.

Professionals seeking leadership opportunities in business may be interested in

developing a more in-depth understanding of Six Sigma‘s DMAIC methodology. Used to
improve the effectiveness and efficiency of organizational processes across industry,
―DMAIC‖ is an acronym indicating Six Sigma business performance guidelines used to
Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control business performance. Collectively, the
process becomes a powerful tool to lead an organization to stronger performance standards
and can be skillfully used to streamline resources and clarify business goals.

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DMAIC is an acronym for five interconnected phases they are as follows:

 Define

 Measure

 Analyze

 Improve

 Control.

Each step in the cyclical DMAIC Process is required to ensure the best possible
results.

The Process Steps:

 Define the Customer, their Critical to Quality (CTQ) issues, and the Core
Business Process involved. The main objective of this stage is to outline the
borders of the project.

The main objective of this stage is to outline the borders of the project.

o Stakeholders agree on the parameters that will define the project

o Scope and budgetary items, as well as customer needs, are aligned with project
goals

o Team development takes place as the project begins to take shape

 Measure the performance of the Core Business Process involved. The main
objective is to collect data pertinent to the scope of the project.

The main objective is to collect data pertinent to the scope of the project.

o Leaders collect reliable baseline data to compare against future results

o Teams create a detailed map of all interrelated business processes to elucidate

areas of possible performance enhancement

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 Analyze the data collected and process map to determine root causes of defects and
opportunities for improvement. The main objective is to reveal the root cause of
business inefficiencies

The main objective is to reveal the root cause of business inefficiencies.

o Analysis of data reveals areas where the implementation of change can provide
the most effective results

o Groups discuss ways that the data underscores areas ripe for improvement

 Improve the target process by designing creative solutions to fix and prevent
problems. The main objective at the end of this stage is to complete a test run of a
change that is to be widely implemented.

The main objective at the end of this stage is to complete a test run of a change
that is to be widely implemented.

o Teams and stakeholders devise methods to address the process deficiencies

uncovered during the data analysis process

o Groups finalize and test a change that is aimed at mitigating the ineffective
process

o Improvements are ongoing and include feedback analysis and stakeholder

participation

 Control the improvements to keep the process on the new course. The objective of
the last stage of the methodology is to develop metrics that help leaders monitor
and document continued success.

The objective of the last stage of the methodology is to develop metrics that help
leaders monitor and document continued success.

o Six Sigma strategies are adaptive and on-going.

o Adjustments can be made and new changes may be implemented as a result of the
completion of this first cycle of the process.

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 DEFINE

CONTROL DIMAC MEASURE

IMPROVE ANALYZE

Six Sigma‘s DMADV processes:

The Six Sigma processes that look at the customer service aspects of a business
are outlined in the acronym ―DMADV‖ which refers to Define, Measure, Analyze,
Design, and Verify.

The application of DMADV is used when a client or customer requires product

improvement, adjustment, or the creation of an entirely new product or service. The
application of these methods is aimed at creating a high-quality product keeping in mind
customer requirements at every stage of the game.

Some Six Sigma methodologies are aimed at reducing the errors in a product line by
looking at all the processes contributing to the completion and delivery of an item or

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service. Improving the effectiveness of these processes and omitting redundancies are
ways to make the entire manufacturing process more efficient. This leads to shortened
lead times, improvements in gross margin and more reliable production lines.

Coupling improvements in the manufacturing processes with those that govern customer
service can help to deliver a more complete and profitable product or service. The Six
Sigma processes that look at the customer service aspects of a business are outlined in
the acronym ―DMADV‖ which refers to Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, and Verify.

In general, the process can be outlined as:

 Define: Project leaders identify wants and needs believed to be considered most
important to customers. Wants and needs are identified through the historical
information, customer feedback, and other information sources.

 Teams are assembled to drive the process

 Metrics and other tests are developed in alignment with customer information

 Measure: The second part of the process is to use the defined metrics to collect data and
record specifications in a way that can be utilized to help drive the rest of the process.

 All the processes needed to successfully manufacture the product or service are assigned
metrics for later evaluation
 Technology teams test the metrics and then apply them

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 Analyze: The result of the manufacturing process (i.e. finished product or service) is
tested by internal teams to create a baseline for improvement.

 Leaders use data to identify areas of adjustment within the processes that will deliver
improvement to either the quality or manufacturing process of a finished product or
service

 Teams set final processes in place and make adjustments as needed

 Design: The results of internal tests are compared with customer wants and needs. Any
additional adjustments needed are made.

 The improved manufacturing process is tested and test groups of customers provide
feedback before the final product or service is widely released

 Verify: The last stage in the methodology is continuous. While the product or service is
being released and customer reviews are coming in, the processes may be adjusted.

 Metrics are further developed to keep track of continuous customer feedback on

the product or service

 New data may lead to other changes that need to be addressed, so the initial process may
lead to new applications of DMADV in subsequent areas

The applications of these methodologies are generally rolled out over the course of many
months or even years. The end result is a product or service that is completely aligned
with customer expectations, wants and needs.

Leadership opportunities are abound for Six Sigma professionals in today‘s competitive
business environment. As an in-house expert or as an independent consultant, those with
Green Belt, Black Belt, or Master Black Belt certification can be on their way to a more
rewarding career path.

Sigma process has several reach out objectives in industry

• Develop a comprehensive infrastructure that goes well beyond the narrow confines of
quality to encompass all areas of business excellence.

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 • Maximise all stakeholder loyalty – customer, employee, supplier, distributor/dealer and
investor.

• Maximise business results – profits, return on investment, asset turns, inventory turns,
sales/value added per employee, etc.

• Minimise employee turnover and bring joy to workplace, especially to the line worker.

• Go beyond modest and mediocre quality standards / systems to devise

an ideal yet practical quality system.

• Introduce powerful problem solving tools.

• Implement solutions that are low in implementation costs and high in business results.

• Conduct periodic audits and self-assessments to achieve continuous, never-ending

improvement.

The perception of the marketplace of the value of an enterprise is indirectly measured

by market share, shareholder value and the willingness of customers to recommend these
processes, products and services to other potential customers.

The critical success factors of Six Sigma

• Customer loyalty and long-term retention

• Quality of leadership to provide vision and inspiration for employees to reach their full
potential

• Quality of organisation to revolutionize the ways people are hired, trained, evaluated,
compensated and promoted

• Quality of employees to provide empowerment on the road to industrial democracy

• Quality of metrics to assess business excellence

• Quality of tools to achieve quality, cost and cycle time break-through

• Quality of design to maximise customer value and ― wow‖

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 • Quality of supplier partnerships to improve customer quality, cost and cycle time while
enhancing supplier profits

• Quality of manufacturing to improve overall effectiveness

• Quality of field reliability towards zero field failures

• Quality of support service and

• Quality of results

6. Organizational Benefits of Six Sigma

The Six Sigma methodology uses data, measurements and statistics to identify
process inefficiencies and then applies strategic tools to eliminate defects by decreasing
process variation. The name Six Sigma comes from the statistical term that refers to a
process that allows for no more than 3.4 errors per one million opportunities.

Organizations that have used the Six Sigma methodology have reduced waste,
increased profit and enhanced shareholder value. For example, General Electric used
Six Sigma techniques to increase profits by $2 billion in a one-year period.

Investing in Six Sigma training for employees at all levels within a company can
be a catalyst to increasing productivity and profitability. The foundation of a successful
Six Sigma program is a thoroughly trained base of empowered employees. Once the
number of employees with Six Sigma training reaches a critical mass in the company,
productivity can begin to improve without increasing capital costs.

A company benefits from Six Sigma the most when a significant number of its
employees are trained in the methodology. When employees have adequate Six Sigma
training they become much better problem solvers and can continue to increase the company‘s
productivity for the remainder of their careers. As more employees are trained in the Six
Sigma process, the company gains more professionals to help alleviate issues, more minds to
solve problems and more hands to help execute the solution.

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7. Belts in Six Sigma

Six Sigma‖ management has several levels of certification, they are: Champion,
Yellow/Green Belt, Brown/Black Belt, and Master Black Belt. Each level of certification is
described below. A Six Sigma Champion is the most basic form of Six Sigma certification.

Master Black Belt – This role is filled by an employee who has completed Black Belt
training and typically leads between five and ten different Six Sigma projects. This employee
must have strong quantitative skills and highly-developed leadership skills. Master Black
Belts are experts responsible for the strategic deployment of Six Sigma within an

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organization. They promote and support improvement activities in all business areas of their
organization as well as at suppliers and customers.

A Master Black Belt takes on a leadership roles as keeper of the Six Sigma process,
advisor to executives or business unit managers, and leverages, his/her skills with projects that
are led by black belts and green belts. Frequently, master black belts report directly to senior
executives or business unit managers. A master black belt has successfully led ten or more
teams through complex Six Sigma projects. He or she is a proven change agent, leader,
facilitator, and technical expert in Six Sigma management. Master Black belt is a career path.
It is always best for an organization to grow its own master black belts. Unfortunately,
sometimes it is impossible for an organization to grow its own master black belts due to the
lead time required to become a master black belt. It takes years of study, practice, tutelage
under a master, and project work.

Master Black Belts have the following responsibilities:

 Counsel senior executives and business unit managers on Six Sigma management.
 Help identify and prioritize key project areas in keeping with strategic initiatives
 Continually improve and innovate the organization‘s Six Sigma process.
 Apply Six Sigma across both operations and transactions-based processes such as Sales,
HR, IT, Facility Management, Call Centers, Finance, etc.
 Coordinate Six Sigma projects from the dashboard.
 Teach black belts and green belts Six Sigma theory, tools, and methods.
 Mentor black belts and green belts.

Black Belt – This professional works full time on quality improvement projects. The Black
Belt has completed all Six Sigma coursework and has led several projects.

A Six Sigma Black Belt is a full-time change agent and improvement leader who may
not be an expert in the process under study. The ideal candidate for a black belt is an
individual who possess the following characteristics:

 Have technical and managerial process improvement / innovation skills.

 Has a passion for Statistics and Systems Theory.

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  Understands the psychology of individuals and teams.
 Understands process improvement tools and methods.
 Has excellent communication and writing skills.
 Works well in a team format.
 Can manage meetings.
 Has a pleasant personality and is fun to work with.
 Communicates in the language of the client and does not use technical jargon.
 Is not intimidated by upper management.
 Has a customer focus.

The responsibilities of a black belt include:

 Help to prepare a project charter.

 Communicate with the champion and process owner about progress of the project.
 Lead the project team.
 Schedule meetings and coordinate logistics.
 Help team members design experiments and analyze the data required for the project.
 Provide training in tools and team functions to project team members.
 Help team members prepare for reviews by the champion and executive committee.
 Recommend additional Six Sigma projects.
 Lead and coach Green Belts leading projects limited in scope.

A black belt is a full-time quality professional who is mentored by a master black belt,
but may report to a manager, for his or her tour of duty as a black belt.

A Master Black Belt takes on a leadership roles as keeper of the Six Sigma process, advisor
to executives or business unit managers, and leverages, his/her skills with projects that are led
by black belts and green belts. Frequently, master black belts report directly to senior
executives or business unit managers. A master black belt has successfully led ten or more
teams through complex Six Sigma projects. He or she is a proven change agent, leader,
facilitator, and technical expert in Six Sigma management. Master black belt is a career path.
It is always best for an organization to grow its own master black belts. Unfortunately,
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sometimes it is impossible for an organization to grow its own master black belts due to the
lead time required to become a master black belt. It takes years of study, practice, tutelage
under a master, and project work.

Master Black Belts have the following responsibilities:

 Counsel senior executives and business unit managers on Six Sigma management.
 Help identify and prioritize key project areas in keeping with strategic initiatives
 Continually improve and innovate the organization‘s Six Sigma process.
 Apply Six Sigma across both operations and transactions-based processes such as
Sales, HR, IT, Facility Management, Call Centers, Finance, etc.
 Coordinate Six Sigma projects from the dashboard.
 Teach black belts and green belts Six Sigma theory, tools, and methods.
 Mentor black belts and green belts.

Green Belt – This professional typically works part time on projects and has been trained in
Six Sigma methodology.

A Six Sigma Green Belt is an individual who works on projects part-time (25%),
either as a team member for complex projects, or as a project leader for simpler projects.
Green belts are the ―work horses‖ of Six Sigma projects. Most managers in a mature Six
Sigma organization are green belts. Green Belt certification is a critical prerequisite for
advancement into upper management in a Six Sigma organization. Managers act as Green
Belts for their entire careers, as their style of management. Green belts leading simpler
projects have the following responsibilities:

 Refine a project charter.

 Review the project charter with the project‘s champion.
 Select the team members for the project.
 Communicates with the champion, master black belt, black belt and process owner
throughout all stages of the project.
 Facilitate the team through all phases of the project.
 Schedule meetings and coordinate logistics.
 Analyze data through all phases of the project
 Train team members in the basic tools and methods of Six Sigma.

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 In complicated Six Sigma projects, green belts work closely with the team leader
(black belt) to keep the team functioning and progressing through the various stages of the Six
Sigma project.

Yellow Belt – This person assists part time on project teams and has received minimal
training in Six Sigma.

A Six Sigma Yellow Belt is an individual who has passed the Green Belt certification
examination but has not yet completed a Six Sigma project.

8. Benefits of SIX SIGMA

Advantages:

1. Six Sigma is driven by the customer and thus aims to achieve maximum
customer satisfaction and minimizing the defects. It targets the customer delight
and new innovative ways to exceed the customer expectations.

2. Implementation of Six Sigma methodology leads to rise of profitability and

reduction in costs. Thus improvements achieved are directly related to financial
results.

3. Six Sigma is successfully implemented in virtually every business category

including return on sales, return on investment, employment growth and stock
value growth.

4. Six Sigma targets Variation in the processes and focuses on the process
improvement rather than final outcome.

5. Six Sigma is prospective methodology as compared to other quality programs as

it focuses on prevention on defects rather than fixing it.

6. It is attentive to the entire business processes and training is integral to the

management system where the top down approach ensures that every good thing
is capitalized and every bad thing is quickly removed.

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 7. It is customer driven

8. Defined as a limit of 3.4 defects per one million products or service processes,
where anything not acceptable to the end customer is considered a defect.

9. It addresses the entire process behind the production of an item or completion of

a service, rather than just the final outcome.

10. It is proactive rather than reactive, as it sets out to determine how improvements
can be made even before defects or shortcomings are found.

11. A small company that achieves the coveted Six Sigma quality certification will
certainly stand out among its competitors. It is particularly valuable to a
specialty manufacturing concern that produces precision goods, such as medical
technology, where quality is the utmost customer priority and the customer
expects to bear the cost of the Six Sigma process. Even businesses that are
unable to implement Six Sigma due to cost or practicality may benefit from
having a partner or employee learn and implement some of the basics of the
system, especially the philosophy of proactivity and customer satisfaction that
underlies Six Sigma.

Disadvantages

1. Applicability of Six Sigma is being argued among the Six Sigma critics. They
opined that the quality standards should be according to specific task and
measuring 3.4 defects per million as standard leads to more time spent in areas
which are less profitable.

2. Six Sigma gives emphasis on the rigidity of the process which basically
contradicts the innovation and kills the creativity. The innovative approach
implies deviations in production, the redundancy, the unusual solutions,
insufficient study which are opposite to Six Sigma principles.

3. People argue that Six Sigma is a bit gimmicky and simply a rebranding of the
continues improvement techniques and tools as practiced by Toyota. It thus
promotes outsourcing of improvement projects with lack of accountability.

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4. Six Sigma implementation constantly require skilled man force. Thus control
and employee dedication are hard to accomplish if its not implemented
regularly.

5. While converting the theoretical concepts into practical applications there are lot
to real time barriers which needs to be resolved.

6. Because Six Sigma is applied to all aspects of the production and planning
process, it may create rigidity and bureaucracy that can create delays and stifle
creativity.

7. Customer focus may be taken to extremes, where internal quality-control

measures that make sense for a company are not taken because of the overlying
goal of achieving the Six Sigma-stipulated level of consumer satisfaction. For
example, an inexpensive measure that carries a risk of a slightly higher defect
rate may be rejected in favor of a more expensive measure that helps to achieve
Six Sigma, but adversely affects profitability.

8. Small company six sigma is extremely costly for many small businesses to
implement. Employees must obtain training from certified Six Sigma institutes
in order for an enterprise to receive Six Sigma certification. Even if a firm
wishes to implement Six Sigma without formal certification, much training is
necessary in order to understand the system and how to apply it to particular
business processes. Many small businesses cannot possibly afford such training,
even for a single employee. In addition, small businesses that need to remain
nimble and creative often find the Six Sigma system of process analysis stifling,
bureaucratic and overly time consuming.

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9. FMEA TOOLS OF SIX SIGMA
• The SIPOC
• CT (critical to) tree
• Modelling
• Simulation
• C and E (cause-and-effect) matrix
• Fishbone diagram
• FMEA (failure mode effects analysis)
• Capability and complexity analysis
• Plans

What is FMEA

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a structured approach to discovering

potential failures that may exist within the design of a product or process.
Failure modes are the ways in which a process can fail. Effects are the ways that these failures
can lead to waste, defects or harmful outcomes for the customer. Failure Mode and Effects
Analysis is designed to identify, prioritize and limit these failure modes.
FMEA is not a substitute for good engineering. Rather, it enhances good engineering
by applying the knowledge and experience of a Cross Functional Team (CFT) to review the
design progress of a product or process by assessing its risk of failure.

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There are two broad categories of FMEA, Design FMEA (DFMEA)and Process FMEA
(PFMEA).

Process FMEA

Process FMEA (PFMEA) discovers failure that impacts product quality, reduced
reliability of the process, customer dissatisfaction, and safety or environmental hazards
derived from:
 Human Factors
 Methods followed while processing
 Materials used
 Machines utilized
 Measurement systems impact on acceptance
 Environment Factors on process performance
Why Perform FMEA
Historically, the sooner a failure is discovered, the less it will cost. If a failure is
discovered late in product development or launch, the impact is exponentially more
devastating.
FMEA is one of many tools used to discover failure at its earliest possible point in product or
process design. Discovering a failure early in Product Development (PD) using FMEA
provides the benefits of:
 Multiple choices for Mitigating the Risk
 Higher capability of Verification and Validation of changes
 Collaboration between design of the product and process
 Improved Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFM/A)
 Lower cost solutions
 Legacy, Tribal Knowledge, and Standard Work utilization
Ultimately, this methodology is effective at identifying and correcting process failures
early on so that you can avoid the nasty consequences of poor performance.

There are Seven Steps to Developing an FMEA:

1. FMEA Pre-Work and Assemble the FMEA Team

2. Path 1 Development (Requirements through Severity Ranking)

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 3. Path 2 Development (Potential Causes and Prevention Controls through
Occurrence Ranking)
4. Path 3 Development (Testing and Detection Controls through Detection Ranking)
5. Action Priority & Assignment
6. Actions Taken / Design Review
7. Re-ranking RPN & Closure

The Steps for conducting FMEA are as follows:

1. FMEA Pre-Work and Assembly of the FMEA Team
Pre-work involves the collection and creation of key documents. FMEA works
smoothly through the development phases when an investigation of past failures and
preparatory documents is performed from its onset. Preparatory documents may
include:
 Failure Mode Avoidance (FMA) Past Failure
 Eight Disciplines of Problem Solving (8D)
 Boundary/Block Diagram (For the DFMEA)
 Parameter Diagram (For the DFMEA)
 Process Flow Diagram (For the PFMEA)
 Characteristics Matrix (For the PFMEA)
 A pre-work Checklist is recommended for an efficient FMEA event. Checklist items may
include:
 Requirements to be included
 Design and / or Process Assumptions
 Preliminary Bill of Material / Components
 Known causes from surrogate products
 Potential causes from interfaces
 Potential causes from design choices
 Potential causes from noises and environments
 Family or Baseline FMEA (Historical FMEA)
 Past Test and Control Methods used on similar products

2. Path 1 Development- (Requirements through Severity Ranking)

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 Path 1 consists of inserting the functions, failure modes, effects of failure and Severity
rankings. The pre-work documents assist in this task by taking information previously
captured to populate the first few columns (depending on the worksheet selected) of the
FMEA.

 Functions should be written in verb-noun context. Each function must have an

associated measurable. Functions may include:
 Wants, needs and desires translated
 Specifications of a design
 Government regulations
 Program-specific requirements
 Characteristics of product to be analyzed
 Desired process outputs
 Failure Modes are written as anti-functions or anti-requirements in five potential ways:
 Full function failure
 Partial / degraded function failure
 Intermittent function failure
 Over function failure
 Unintended function failure
 Effects are the results of failure, where each individual effect is given a Severity
ranking. Actions are considered at this stage if the Severity is 9 or 10
 Recommended Actions may be considered that impact the product or process design
addressing Failure Modes on High Severity Rankings (Safety and Regulatory).

3. Path 2 Development – (Potential Causes and Prevention Controls through Occurrence

Ranking)

Causes are selected from the design / process inputs or past failures and placed in the Cause
column when applicable to a specific failure mode. The columns completed in Path 2 are:
 Potential Causes / Mechanisms of Failure
 Current Prevention Controls (i.e. standard work, previously successful designs, etc.)
 Occurrence Rankings for each cause
 Classification of Special Characteristics, if indicated

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  Actions are developed to address high risk Severity and Occurrence combinations,
defined in the Quality-One Criticality Matrix.

4. Path 3 Development- (Testing and Detection Controls through Detection Ranking)

Path 3 Development involves the addition of Detection Controls that verify that the design
meets requirements (for Design FMEA) or cause and/or failure mode, if undetected, may
reach a customer (for Process FMEA).
 The columns completed in Path 3 are:
 Detection Controls
 Detection Ranking
 Actions are determined to improve the controls if they are insufficient to the Risks
determined in Paths 1 and 2. Recommended Actions should address weakness in the
testing and/or control strategy.
 Review and updates of the Design Verification Plan and Report (DVP&R) or Control
Plans are also possible outcomes of Path 3.

5. Action Priority & Assignment

The Actions that were previously determined in Paths 1, 2 or 3 are assigned a Risk
Priority Number (RPN) for action follow-up.
RPN is calculated by multiplying the Severity, Occurrence and Detection Rankings for
each potential failure / effect, cause and control combination. Actions should not be
determined based on an RPN threshold value. This is done commonly and is a practice
that leads to poor team behaviour. The columns completed are:
 Review Recommended Actions and assign RPN for additional follow-up
 Assign Actions to appropriate personnel
 Assign action due dates.

6. Actions Taken / Design Review

FMEA Actions are closed when counter measures have been taken and are successful at
reducing risk. The purpose of an FMEA is to discover and mitigate risk. FMEAs which
do not find risk are considered to be weak and non-value added. Effort of the team did
not produce improvement and therefore time was wasted in the analysis.

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 7. Re-Ranking RPN and Closure
After successful confirmation of Risk Mitigation Actions, the Core Team or Team Leader
will re-rank the appropriate ranking value (Severity, Occurrence or Detection). The new
rankings will be multiplied to attain the new RPN. The original RPN is compared to the
revised RPN and the relative improvement to the design or process has been confirmed.
Columns completed in Step 7:
 Re-ranked Severity
 Re-ranked Occurrence
 Re-ranked Detection
 Re-ranked RPN
 Generate new Actions, repeating Step 5, until risk has been mitigated
 Comparison of initial RPN and revised RPN.
10.Eight Steps Map for Successful Six Sigma Implementation
Before I get into the road map for successful implementation of Six Sigma, let me start
with a question here. Is your organization ready to implement Six Sigma?
If you weighed your pros and cons and believe that Six Sigma will help you in
organizational excellence, then you are ready.
Here are eight steps for successful Six Sigma implementation.
Step One: Burning Platform and Shared Vision

In order to implement or even think about implementing Lean or Six Sigma

methodologies, we need to have a burning platform. The burning platform could take
several forms: "We are suffering huge quality losses and it accounts for more than 45
percent of our costs," "our competitors are gaining our market share every quarter by 12
percent," etc. Without a burning platform like this, organizations seldom have the
motivation to implement TPS (Lean) or Six Sigma or TQM or any continuous
improvement initiative.

Many are cynical about implementing Six Sigma. They'll ask: Why Six Sigma? Why
Quality? Why Process Excellence? It does not help, so why do we need to do this? Often
we in the Six Sigma fraternity have to meet and manage such cynics, and the only way to
counter this pushback is to have a common vision across the organization, such as, "If I
had a choice I would like to be best rather than biggest."

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 Let me tell you how a seemingly small e-mail from a software programmer leads to a
common standard across the whole of IBM; this is just an example of having a common
understanding or vision across an organization.

Louis Gerstner, former Chairman of IBM, normally received almost 100 e-mails a day
from employees at various levels. One day, a software programmer sent him an e-mail
detailing the complicated system of internal procedures required to obtain software from
another division. "Going through that much bureaucracy for a $100 IBM product is
ludicrous," wrote the programmer.

This was brought up during the next meeting, and a couple of days later a message
went out from the chairman stating, "Henceforth it will be our policy to share with our
colleagues enthusiastically and without added cost whatever we develop."

Now having said that, I want to be best rather than biggest; how do I spread this
vision, which is the first step in successful implementation? Let me start this with what we
did in our company. When we started our journey, the Process Excellence team wanted to
make Six Sigma a great success, so we ensured that the CEO was the first person in the
company to understand Six Sigma and to be trained on the methodology.

With this task accomplished, everything else started falling in place since Six Sigma
became a vision across the organization. Hence to drive organization vision and value
across our workforce, customers, partners and suppliers, we needed to have our key
leadership aligned towards a common vision. This ensures that the organization
environment is amenable to change and able to drive change, leveraging innovation and
technology as the key tools.

Lastly, we need to take action to attain our vision; this ensures that we gain visibility
and strong support from leadership. Leadership sponsors ensure we meet our organization
vision, thereby attaining excellence.

Step Two: Resources

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 Now let me get into step two of success. It‘s pretty simple: You pay peanuts and you
get monkeys, and your entire Six Sigma plan is heading towards disaster.

This is true to any resource. As Robert Bosch says, "He has lots of money since he
pays good wages." Do not hesitate to hire the right resource at the right price. This is
applicable to any resource, be it man, material or technology.

Resources alone do not help us in ensuring we are successful… we need to deploy

them as a team, and this team should act as a change agent. As an organization we must
emphasize empowering the team to carry out the initiatives, and hence we need domain
expertise and knowledge.

Let me share a personal example on selection process. We had finalized a candidate

for a Black Belt position in our customer service process. During my interview I asked
him, "What was the most wonderful experience in your life," for which he replied, "The six
months I spent working in a farm with no people, no telephone and no tension."

Here is a candidate who was saying he wanted no connectivity, and we were looking
to hire him for a customer service-oriented position. I ran to my boss and told him he might
not fit in, but the damage was already done; he was hired, but he left within three months.
The point I am trying to make is it‘s not only money but also the fit of the resource which
matters.
We need to take care of our resources both in terms of wages and also the resource fit and
commitment to implementing the shared vision.

Step Three: Teach

As the proverb says, if you give a man a fish he'll eat for a day, but if you teach a man
to catch a fish he'll eat for a lifetime.
For Six Sigma to survive for a lifetime, we need to teach, or rather train, our resources to
be powerful change agents. This can be attained by ensuring our leadership team is 100
percent trained as well as our grass root level team.

Hence, any amount of Six Sigma Yellow Belt,Green Belt, or Black Belt training is
good to increase organizational awareness and to increase our QDNA. Ultimately, success

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 lies in implementing at the grass root level, and for training it‘s absolutely necessary that
the resource has good mentoring skills. There is also a saying, "You can lead a horse to the
water, but cannot make it drink." So the resources identified for training should be the right
resources and should share the organization‘s shared vision.

Step Four: Prioritize

You have a vision, which has ensured you get the right resource, and now that you
have organization-wide awareness at the top and at the grass root level, next comes the
prioritization.

Have we listened to our customer? Is it linked to our business goals? Have we done a
thorough CTQ tree analysis is what we need to first ensure that we do?
We need to learn what to overlook and where to take risk, and the question here is how
good we are in terms of risk mitigation and expectation management in terms of meeting
the key expectation of our organization‘s goals.

Step Five: Ownership

With ownership comes empowerment and a sense of pride, and here integrity plays a
key role that ensures that we have team commitment, accountability and engagement. Just like
the golden rule for real estate is "location, location, location," the Golden Rule for a Six
Sigma Black Belt is "relationship, relationship, relationship." This is the key for success in
terms of driving commitment, accountability and engagement since it ensures proper
ownership in the whole process.

Step Six: Measurement

Creating a measurement system ensures a proper baseline. To ensure that we achieve a
set target, we must have an objective decision making analysis of variation.

The key for measurement is to get to the cost of quality right. When I had just
completed my engineering degree and was working as a trainee engineer in an engineering
firm, I was posted to the field warehouse to take stock of all the nuts, bolts and other parts,
and now I was in a situation where I thought, "Hey, what I am I doing here? If I start counting
each and every nut I will be spending weeks doing this task, which is not a right way to

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measure." I did not want to spend weeks doing this since I would not learn anything, so I
devised a way to count the nuts and bolts by working on a system of weighing the parts in
large batches and converting the same into units. When my manager found out I took only a
fraction of the time to count from the earlier method that had been followed for years, I was
moved to field engineering, and I went on to handle the complete field quality within six
months.

"What can‘t be measured cannot be improved," but we need to devise a right way to
measure to ensure we are on a faster pace to achieving objective decision making. Having too
many measures on our scorecard shifts our attention away from the critical few. We need to
identify and measure the key leading indicators instead of measuring the many lagging
indicators (which is a pitfall most organizations fall into!).
Step Seven: Governance (Review)

The key to project or program sustenance is to have a proper (required) governance

structure. Improper governance/poor governance/too much governance can lead to the vision
falling apart. A business quality council at the top level of the organization can smooth and
clear all hurdles; this would create synergy and also clear ways for adhering to timelines.

Proper governance would help us create a best practice sharing forum, which would
help to replicate Six Sigma projects and would also highlight key challenges. Without
governance (regularly scheduled productive meetings/reviews), course correction and
guidance to the organization‘s employees would be affected and ultimately the vision would
be lost.

Step Eight: Recognition

Rewards and recognition plays a key role in ensuring that a Six Sigma team does not
resign and renegotiate. Rewards and recognition are what create energy in the implementation
system both at the top level and the grass root level and drives innovation throughout the
organization.

Proper rewards and recognition ensures there is consistency in achieving excellent

performance. Let me quote my personal example on reward and recognition at a grass roots
level. During my days as a Quality engineer we got a note from one of our biggest customers

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whom we used to supply springs; they are one of the largest automobile manufacturers in
India and we were supplying springs for them. The note was to reduce the price of our springs
by 10 percent, and we were in a fix. We did everything possible. Many changes happened
across the company; improvements ensured we could reduce the price by around seven
percent but we still needed a three percent reduction. My boss who was a well know quality
expert asked me to go to one of our key suppliers who supplied spring wires and work with
the supplier to reduce the cost of making wires.

Let me tell you, the first day when I went for a meeting with the supplier we did a
whole lot of talking for almost five hours, and guess who was there in the meeting? We had
the engineering head, quality head, Operation and design chief. Every one talked and we came
to the conclusion that price cant be reduced since we had to import the bearing, which we
used to wind the wires and this used to wear out every month due to increased weight of the
spring wires and we had to change them often increasing the manufacturing cost.

I went back and told my boss I had a brainstorming session, and we came to the
conclusion we could not do anything. He was silent for some time. Then he asked who were
in the meeting. I told him all the heads who attended. The moment I said that, he said, "You
are stupid." He asked if there was anyone in the room who was an operator or anybody who
deals with the machine at the ground level. I said no.

He told me to go back again talk to the grass root level operators. I went back the next
day and had a meeting with the operations team, which included a person whose job was just
to shift the bundle of steel wires to stores. I made sure he was part of the brainstorming
session. He said since we have the winding machine placed on the ground and the drawn cold
wire winds on the winder, all the load of the wires gets onto the bearing. He asked us why
don‘t we have the winding machine installed from the ceiling so the wire load does not fall on
the bearing but instead fall on the winder? Finally we did have a solution: The bearing that
was wearing out in a month gave three months life, which eventually decreased the cost.

I still interact with this person; he has been promoted from a store operator to a
foreman in the company. That‘s recognition and he is still in the company..

Conclusion of the Eight Steps

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 In summary, the eight steps for successful Six Sigma implementation starts with
having a clear vision (which originates from a burning platform), which ensures
organizational alignment, By ensuring we hire the right resources (by not paying peanuts) we
will have an organization-wide QDNA which will transform the organization into a
productive, synergistic, continuously improving organization.

11.Benefits of Six Sigma in Career

Learning Six Sigma and applying its methodologies to your work life can have
tremendous impact on your future in business. Simply being able to put Six Sigma
certification on your resume proves your commitment to improving your business acumen
and analytical skills, not to mention your commitment to improving the business within which
you work. In short, a Six Sigma certification makes the recipient stand out from the crowd.

That, in turn, can lead to better job opportunities and improved salary. It‘s not easy.
Another reason Six Sigma certifications demand so much respect is that they are not easy to
attain, and executives and hiring managers at major companies know this.

Then, of course, there are the practical applications. Those who know Six Sigma are
knowledgeable in dozens of different methods to reduce costs, increase revenue, streamline
business processes and improve employee buy-in, all of which leads to a better bottom line.

Six Sigma training also prepares students for a leadership role. Once the Six Sigma Black Belt
level is achieved, a person is not only educated on the methodologies of Six Sigma, he or she
is prepared to become a change agent within their organization, leading efforts to improve
processes and the quality of what is delivered to customers.

Achieving Six Sigma Black Belt status can open the doors for promotion into upper
management, as well as improve your chances of obtaining a job with a different employer
should you want to leave your current position. It‘s not difficult to see why a person with
these skills and a Six Sigma certification to prove it would be an attractive job applicant.
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Benefits of Six Sigma to the Organization

The proper application of Six Sigma methodology can affect many different aspects of a
business, from improvements of goods and services to employees investing more into the
final product. Here are some benefits of using Six Sigma to improve a business operation.

 Customer Satisfaction: With Six Sigma methodologies in use, a business will

implement improved processes and better quality control, both of which should
result in a better product. That, in turn, will lead to more satisfied customers.
 Customer loyalty: Satisfied customers are customers who will stay loyal to a
brand and return to make future purchases – as long as the product remains
consistent in its quality.
 Improve bottom line: Happy customers mean good word-of-mouth and also
customers returning for more, all of which translates into a better revenue stream.
If publicly held, this can also mean a rise in share prices.
 Employee satisfaction: One of the side benefits of Six Sigma is how it can rally
employees to a common cause. Unlike companies where management often
flounders, Six Sigma offers leaders a chance to clarify and streamline the
message. Also, improved results can create a sense of camaraderie that leads to
even more good results going forward. Nothing succeeds like success.
 Better partnerships: Whenever a company does well, other companies
associated with it can see improvements, as well. This can lead to long-term
partnerships as well as having other companies adopt similar Six Sigma strategies
for their companies.

As you can see, becoming Six Sigma certified has advantages for both you and the
company you are working for. Six Sigma methodologies have the capability of improving
your company‘s bottom line and making customers happier, as well as improving your
marketability and chances of quality employment for many years to come.

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12.What Is Six Sigma Certification?

Six Sigma certification is a confirmation of an individual‘s capabilities with respect to

specific competencies. Just like any other quality certification, however, it does not indicate
that an individual is capable of unlimited process improvement – just that they have
completed the necessary requirements from the company granting the certification.

What is involved in Six Sigma Certification?

As with attaining a driver‘s license in the United States, Six Sigma certification entails
learning the appropriate subject matter, passing a written proficiency test and displaying
competency in a hands-on environment. The materials can be purchased from almost any Six
Sigma training and consulting company, but almost always comes bundled with classroom
training. Usually you or your company will purchase a training session, which has different
bodies of knowledge and durations for each Six Sigma level (Green Belt, Black Belt, Master
Black Belt, etc.).

The written proficiency test may be given by the training company or the business
hiring the training company. Typically, companies new to Six Sigma will defer to the training
company‘s proficiency test. Companies that have been performing in-house training for years
(such as Motorola or GE) have created and administer their own written proficiency tests.

After a quality professional has completed training, they must complete one or two
quality projects and display competency in applying the concepts learned in the classroom
training. This is where certification companies diverge – this part of the certification is the
most fuzzy and undefined. Some organizations require a certification candidate to complete
one project if a Green Belt, and two projects if a Black Belt or Master Black Belt; others
require less or more. In addition, there is no standard for what passes and what fails to display
an individual‘s competency.

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 So, what‘s the takeaway from certification? Any worthwhile certification involves
training, a written proficiency exam and a hands-on competency display of the methodology
to real world problems. The specifics around each of these three requirements vary from
company to company. Will it ever become standardized? Probably, but not in the near future.

At the project level, there are black belts, master black belts, green belts, yellow belts and
white belts. These people conduct projects and implement improvements.

 Black Belt: Leads problem-solving projects. Trains and coaches project teams.

 Green Belt: Assists with data collection and analysis for Black Belt projects. Leads Green
Belt projects or teams.

 Master Black Belt: Trains and coaches Black Belts and Green Belts. Functions more at
the Six Sigma program level by developing key metrics and the strategic direction. Acts
as an organization‘s Six Sigma technologist and internal consultant.

 Yellow Belt: Participates as a project team member. Reviews process improvements that
support the project.

 White Belt: Can work on local problem-solving teams that support overall projects, but
may not be part of a Six Sigma project team. Understands basic Six Sigma concepts from
an awareness perspective.

Every project needs organizational support. Six Sigma executives and champions set
the direction for selecting and deploying projects. They ensure, at a high level, that
projects succeed, add value and fit within the organizational plan.

 Champions: Translate the company‘s vision, mission, goals and metrics to create an
organizational deployment plan and identify individual projects. Identify resources and
remove roadblocks.

 Executives: Provide overall alignment by establishing the strategic focus of the Six Sigma
program within the context of the organization‘s culture and vision.

IMPLEMENTATION ROLE

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 One key innovation of Six Sigma involves the absolute "professionalizing" of quality
management functions. Prior to Six Sigma, quality management in practice was largely
relegated to the production floor and to statisticians in a separate quality department. Formal
Six Sigma programs adopt a kind of elite ranking terminology (similar to some martial arts
systems, like judo) to define a hierarchy (and special career path) that includes all business
functions and levels.

Six Sigma identifies several key roles for its successful implementation.

 Executive Leadership includes the CEO and other members of top management. They
are responsible for setting up a vision for Six Sigma implementation. They also
empower the other role holders with the freedom and resources to explore new ideas for
breakthrough improvements by transcending departmental barriers and overcoming
inherent resistance to change.
 Champions take responsibility for Six Sigma implementation across the organization in
an integrated manner. The Executive Leadership draws them from upper management.
Champions also act as mentors to Black Belts.
 Master Black Belts, identified by Champions, act as in-house coaches on Six Sigma.
They devote 100% of their time to Six Sigma. They assist Champions and guide Black
Belts and Green Belts. Apart from statistical tasks, they spend their time on ensuring
consistent application of Six Sigma across various functions and departments.
 Black Belts operate under Master Black Belts to apply Six Sigma methodology to
specific projects. They devote 100% of their valued time to Six Sigma. They primarily
focus on Six Sigma project execution and special leadership with special tasks, whereas
Champions and Master Black Belts focus on identifying projects/functions for Six
Sigma.
 Green Belts are the employees who take up Six Sigma implementation along with their
other job responsibilities, operating under the guidance of Black Belts.

According to proponents of the system, special training is needed for all of these
practitioners to ensure that they follow the methodology and use the data-driven approach
correctly.

Some organizations use additional belt colours, such as Yellow Belts, for employees that have
basic training in Six Sigma tools and generally participate in projects and "White belts" for

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those locally trained in the concepts but do not participate in the project team. "Orange belts"
are also mentioned to be used for special cases.

Sigma levels

The table below gives long-term DPMO values corresponding to various short-term
sigma levels.

These figures assume that the process mean will shift by 1.5 sigma toward the side
with the critical specification limit. In other words, they assume that after the initial study
determining the short-term sigma level, the long-term Cpk value will turn out to be 0.5 less
than the short-term Cpk value. So, now for example, the DPMO figure given for 1 sigma
assumes that the long-term process mean will be 0.5 sigma beyond the specification limit
(Cpk = –0.17), rather than 1 sigma within it, as it was in the short-term study (Cpk = 0.33).
Note that the defect percentages indicate only defects exceeding the specification limit to
which the process mean is nearest. Defects beyond the far specification limit are not included
in the percentages.

The formula used here to calculate the DPMO is thus

A control chart depicting a process that experienced a 1.5 sigma drift in the process
mean toward the upper specification limit starting at midnight. Control charts are used to

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maintain 6 sigma qualities by signalling when quality professionals should investigate a
process to find and eliminate special-cause variation.

13.APPLICATION

Six Sigma mostly finds application in large organizations. An important factor in the spread
of Six Sigma was GE's 1998 announcement of $350 million in savings thanks to Six Sigma, a
figure that later grew to more than $1 billion. According to industry consultants like Thomas
Pyzdek and John Kullmann, companies with fewer than 500 employees are less suited to Six
Sigma implementation or need to adapt the standard approach to make it work for them. Six
Sigma however contains a large number of tools and techniques that work well in small to
mid-size organizations. The fact that an organization is not big enough to be able to afford
Black Belts does not diminish its abilities to make improvements using this set of tools and
techniques. The infrastructure described as necessary to support Six Sigma is a result of the
size of the organization rather than a requirement of Six Sigma itself.

Although the scope of Six Sigma differs depending on where it is implemented, it can
successfully deliver its benefits to different applications.

1. Manufacturing

After its first application at Motorola in the late 1980s, other internationally recognized firms
currently recorded high number of savings after applying Six Sigma. Examples of these are
Johnson and Johnson, with $600 million of reported savings, Texas Instruments, which saved
over $500 million as well as Telefonica de Espana, which reported $30 million Euros of
revenue in the first 10 months. On top of this, other organizations like Sony and Boeing
achieved large percentages in waste reduction.

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 2. Engineering and Construction

Although companies have considered common quality control and process

improvement strategies, there‘s still a need for more reasonable and effective methods as all
the desired standards and client satisfaction have not always been reached. There is still a
need for an essential analysis that can control the factors affecting concrete cracks and
slippage between concrete and steel. After conducting a case study on Tinjin Xianyi
Construction Technology Co, Ltd., it was found that construction time and construction waste
were reduced by 26.2% and 67% accordingly after adopting Six Sigma. Similarly, Six Sigma
implementation was studied at one of the largest engineering and construction companies in
the world: Bechtel Corporation, where after an initial investment of $30 million in a Six
Sigma program that included identifying and preventing rework and defects, over $200
million were saved.

3. Finance

Six Sigma has played an important role by improving accuracy of allocation of cash to
reduce bank charges, automatic payments, improving accuracy of reporting, reducing
documentary credits defects, reducing check collection defects, and reducing variation in
collector performance. Two of the financial institutions that have reported considerable
improvements in their operations are Bank of America and American Express. By 2004 Bank
of America increased customer satisfaction by 10.4% and decreased customer issues by 24%
by applying Six Sigma tools in their streamline operations. Similarly, American Express
successfully eliminated non-received renewal credit cards and improved their overall
processes by applying Six Sigma principles. This strategy is also currently being applied by
other financial institutions like GE Capital Corp., JP Morgan Chase, and Sun Trust Banks,
with customer satisfaction being their main objective.

4. Supply Chain

In this field, it is important to ensure that products are delivered to clients at the right
time while preserving high-quality standards from the beginning to the end of the supply
chain. By changing the schematic diagram for the supply chain, Six Sigma can ensure quality
control on products (defect free) and guarantee delivery deadlines, which are the two major
issues involved in the supply chain.

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5. Healthcare

-This is a sector that has been highly matched with this doctrine for many years because
of the nature of zero tolerance for mistakes and potential for reducing medical errors involved
in healthcare. The goal of Six Sigma in healthcare is broad and includes reducing the
inventory of equipment that brings extra costs, altering the process of healthcare delivery in
order to make more efficient and refining reimbursements. A study at the University of Texas
MD Anderson Cancer Center, which recorded an increase in examinations with no additional
machines of 45% and reduction in patience preparation time of 40 minutes; from 45 minutes
to 5 minutes in multiple cases.

Lack of originality

Quality expert Joseph M. Juran described Six Sigma as "a basic version of quality
improvement", stating that "there is nothing new there. It includes what we used to call
facilitators. They've adopted more flamboyant terms, like belts with different colours. I think
that concept has merit to set apart, to create specialists who can be very helpful. Again, that's
not a new idea. The American Society for Quality long ago established certificates, such as
for reliability engineers."

Inadequate for complex manufacturing

`Quality expert Philip B. Crosby pointed out that the Six Sigma standard doesn't go far
enough customers deserve defect-free products every time. For example, under the Six Sigma
standard, semiconductors which require the flawless etching of millions of tiny circuits onto a
single chip are all defective, he claims.

Role of consultants

The use of "Black Belts" as itinerant change agents has fostered an industry of training
and certification. Critics have argued there is overselling of Six Sigma by too great a number
of consulting firms, many of which claim expertise in Six Sigma when they have only a
rudimentary understanding of the tools and techniques involved or the markets or industries in
which they are acting.

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Potential negative effects

A Fortune article stated that "of 58 large companies that have announced Six Sigma
programs, 91 percent have trailed the S&P 500 since". The statement was attributed to "an
analysis by Charles Holland of consulting firm Qualpro (which espouses a competing quality-
improvement process)" The summary of the article is that Six Sigma is effective at what it is
intended to do, but that it is "narrowly designed to fix an existing process" and does not help
in "coming up with new products or disruptive technologies."

Over-reliance on statistical tools

A more direct criticism is the "rigid" nature of Six Sigma with its over-reliance on
methods and tools. In most cases, more attention is paid to reducing variation and searching
for any significant factors and less attention is paid to developing robustness in the first place
(which can altogether eliminate the need for reducing variation). The extensive reliance on
significance testing and use of multiple regression techniques increases the risk of making
commonly unknown types of statistical errors or mistakes. A possible consequence of Six
Sigma's array of P-value misconceptions is the false belief that the probability of a conclusion
being in error can be calculated from the data in a single experiment without reference to
external evidence or the plausibility of the underlying mechanism. One of the most serious but
all-too-common misuses of inferential statistics is to take a model that was developed through
exploratory model building and subject it to the same sorts of statistical tests that are used to
validate a model that was specified in advance.

Another comment refers to the often mentioned Transfer Function, which seems to be a
flawed theory if looked at in detail. Since significance tests were first popularized many
objections have been voiced by prominent and respected statisticians. The volume of criticism
and rebuttal has filled books with language seldom used in the scholarly debate of a dry
subject. Much of the first criticism was already published more than 40 years ago. Refer
to: Statistical hypothesis testing Criticism for details.

Articles featuring critics have appeared in the November–December 2006 issue of USA
Army Logistician regarding Six-Sigma: "The dangers of a single paradigmatic orientation (in
this case, that of technical rationality) can blind us to values associated with double-loop
learning and the learning organization, organization adaptability, workforce creativity and
development, humanizing the workplace, cultural awareness, and strategy making."

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 Nassim Nicholas Taleb considers risk managers little more than "blind users" of
statistical tools and methods. He states that statistics is fundamentally incomplete as a field as
it cannot predict the risk of rare events — something Six Sigma is especially concerned with.
Furthermore, errors in prediction are likely to occur as a result of ignorance for or distinction
between epistemic and other uncertainties. These errors are the biggest in time variant
(reliability) related failures.

Stifling creativity in research environments

According to an article by John Dodge, editor in chief of Design News, use of Six
Sigma is inappropriate in a research environment. Dodge states "excessive metrics, steps,
measurements and Six Sigma's intense focus on reducing variability water down the discovery
process. Less than Six Sigma, the free-wheeling nature of brainstorming and the serendipitous
side of discovery is stifled." He concludes "there's general agreement that freedom in basic or
pure research is preferable while Six Sigma works best in incremental innovation when there's
an expressed commercial goal."

A Business Week article says that James McNerney's introduction of Six Sigma
at 3M had the effect of stifling creativity and reports its removal from the research function. It
cites two Wharton School professors who say that Six Sigma leads to incremental innovation
at the expense of blue skies research. This phenomenon is further explored in the book Going
Lean, which describes a related approach known as lean dynamics and provides data to show
that Ford's "6 Sigma" program did little to change its fortunes.

Lack of systematic documentation

One criticism voiced by Yasar Jarrar and Andy Neely from the Cranfield School of
Management's Centre for Business Performance is that while Six Sigma is a powerful
approach, it can also unduly dominate an organization's culture; and they add that much of the
Six Sigma literature – in a remarkable way (six-sigma claims to be evidence, scientifically
based) – lacks academic rigor:

One final criticism, probably more to the Six Sigma literature than concepts, relates to
the evidence for Six Sigma‘s success. So far, documented case studies using the Six Sigma
methods are presented as the strongest evidence for its success. However, looking at these
documented cases, and apart from a few that are detailed from the experience of leading
organizations like GE and Motorola, most cases are not documented in a systemic or
academic manner. In fact, the majority are case studies illustrated on websites, and are, at

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best, sketchy. They provide no mention of any specific Six Sigma methods that were used to
resolve the problems. It has been argued that by relying on the Six Sigma criteria,
management is lulled into the idea that something is being done about quality, whereas any
resulting improvement is accidental (Latzko 1995). Thus, when looking at the evidence put
forward for Six Sigma success, mostly by consultants and people with vested interests, the
question that begs to be asked is: are we making a true improvement with Six Sigma methods
or just getting skilled at telling stories? Everyone seems to believe that we are making true
improvements, but there is some way to go to document these empirically and clarify the
causal relations.

14. LEAN MANUFACTURING

Lean manufacturing or lean production, often simply "lean", is a systematic

method for waste minimization ("Muda") within a manufacturing system without sacrificing
productivity. Lean also takes into account waste created through overburden ("Muri") and
waste created through unevenness in workloads ("Mura"). Working from the perspective of
the client who consumes a product or service, "value" is any action or process that a customer
would be willing to pay for.

Lean manufacturing makes obvious what adds value, by reducing everything else
(which is not adding value). This management philosophy is derived mostly from the Toyota
Production System (TPS) and identified as "lean" only in the 1990s.[1][page needed], [2] TPS is
renowned for its focus on reduction of the original Toyota seven wastesto improve overall
customer value, but there are varying perspectives on how this is best achieved. The steady
growth of Toyota, from a small company to the world's largest automaker,[3] has focused
attention on how it has achieved this success.

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15.Overview

Lean principles are derived from the Japanese manufacturing industry. The term was
first coined by John Krafcik in his 1988 article, "Triumph of the Lean Production System",
based on his master's thesis at the MIT Sloan School of Management.[4]Krafcik had been a
quality engineer in the Toyota-GM NUMMI joint venture in California before joining MIT
for MBA studies. Krafcik's research was continued by the International Motor Vehicle
Program (IMVP) at MIT, which produced the international best-selling book co-authored
by James P. Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos called The Machine That Changed the
World.[1] A complete historical account of the IMVP and how the term "lean" was coined is
given by Holweg (2007).

For many, lean is the set of "tools" that assist in the identification and steady
elimination of waste. As waste is eliminated quality improves while production time and cost
are reduced. A non exhaustive list of such tools would include: SMED, value stream
mapping, Five S, Kanban (pull systems), poka-yoke (error-proofing), total productive

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maintenance, elimination of time batching, mixed model processing, rank order clustering,
single point scheduling, redesigning working cells, multi-process handling and control
charts (for checking mura).

There is a second approach to lean manufacturing, which is promoted by Toyota,

called The Toyota Way, in which the focus is upon improving the "flow" or smoothness of
work, thereby steadily eliminating mura ("unevenness") through the system and not upon
'waste reduction' per se. Techniques to improve flow include production leveling, "pull"
production (by means of kanban) and the Heijunka box. This is a fundamentally different
approach from most improvement methodologies, and requires considerably more persistence
than basic application of the tools, which may partially account for its lack of popularity.

The difference between these two approaches is not the goal itself, but rather the prime
approach to achieving it. The implementation of smooth flow exposes quality problems that
already existed, and thus waste reduction naturally happens as a consequence. The advantage
claimed for this approach is that it naturally takes a system-wide perspective, whereas a waste
focus sometimes wrongly assumes this perspective.

Both lean and TPS can be seen as a loosely connected set of potentially competing
principles whose goal is cost reduction by the elimination of waste. These principles include:
pull processing, perfect first-time quality, waste minimization, continuous improvement,
flexibility, building and maintaining a long term relationship with suppliers, autonomation,
load leveling and production flow and visual control. The disconnected nature of some of
these principles perhaps springs from the fact that the TPS has grown pragmatically since
1948 as it responded to the problems it saw within its own production facilities. Thus what
one sees today is the result of a 'need' driven learning to improve where each step has built on
previous ideas and not something based upon a theoretical framework.

Toyota's view is that the main method of lean is not the tools, but the reduction of
three types of waste: muda (non-value-adding work), muri (overburden),
and mura (unevenness), to expose problems systematically and to use the tools where the
ideal cannot be achieved. From this perspective, the tools are workarounds adapted to
different situations, which explains any apparent incoherence of the principles above.

Also known as the flexible mass production, the TPS has two pillar concepts: Just-in-
time (JIT) or "flow", and "autonomation" (smart automation). Adherents of the Toyota
approach would say that the smooth flowing delivery of value achieves all the other

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improvements as side-effects. If production flows perfectly (meaning it is both "pull" and
with no interruptions) then there is no inventory; if customer valued features are the only ones
produced, then product design is simplified and effort is only expended on features the
customer values. The other of the two TPS pillars is the very human aspect of autonomation,
whereby automation is achieved with a human touch.[8][full citation needed]
In this instance, the
"human touch" means to automate so that the machines/systems are designed to aid humans in
focusing on what the humans do best.

Lean implementation emphasizes the importance of optimizing work flow through

strategic operational procedures while minimizing waste and being adaptable. Flexibility is
required to allow production leveling (Heijunka) using tools such as SMED, but have their
analogues in other processes such as research and development (R&D). However, adaptability
is often constrained, and therefore may not require significant investment. More importantly,
all of these concepts have to be acknowledged by employees who develop the products and
initiate processes that deliver value. The cultural and managerial aspects of lean are arguably
more important than the actual tools or methodologies of production itself. There are many
examples of lean tool implementation without sustained benefit, and these are often blamed
on weak understanding of lean throughout the whole organization.

Lean aims to enhance productivity by simplifying the operational structure

enough to understand, perform and manage the work environment. To achieve these
three goals simultaneously, one of Toyota's mentoring methodologies (loosely
called Senpai and Kohai which is Japanese for senior and junior), can be used to foster
lean thinking throughout the organizational structure from the ground up. The closest
equivalent to Toyota's mentoring process is the concept of "Lean Sensei," which
encourages companies, organizations, and teams to seek third-party experts that can
provide advice and coaching.[9]

In 1999, Spear and Bowen[10] identified four rules which characterize the "Toyota
DNA":

1. All work shall be highly specified as to content, sequence, timing, and outcome.
2. Every customer-supplier connection must be direct, and there must be an
unambiguous yes or no way to send requests and receive responses.
3. The pathway for every product and service must be simple and direct.

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 4. Any improvement must be made in accordance with the scientific method, under
the guidance of a teacher, at the lowest possible level in the organization.

 Frederick Winslow Taylor

Frederick Winslow Taylor, the father of scientific management, introduced what are
now called standardization and best practice deployment. In Principles of Scientific
Management, (1911), Taylor said: "And whenever a workman proposes an improvement, it
should be the policy of the management to make a careful analysis of the new method, and if
necessary conduct a series of experiments to determine accurately the relative merit of the
new suggestion and of the old standard. And whenever the new method is found to be
markedly superior to the old, it should be adopted as the standard for the whole
establishment."

Taylor also warned explicitly against cutting piece rates (or, by implication, cutting
wages or discharging workers) when efficiency improvements reduce the need for raw labor:
"...after a workman has had the price per piece of the work he is doing lowered two or three
times as a result of his having worked harder and increased his output, he is likely entirely to
lose sight of his employer's side of the case and become imbued with a grim determination to
have no more cuts if soldiering [marking time, just doing what he is told] can prevent it."

Shigeo Shingo, the best-known exponent of single minute exchange of die and error-
proofing or poka-yoke, cites Principles of Scientific Management as his inspiration.

American industrialists recognized the threat of cheap offshore labor to American

workers during the 1910s, and explicitly stated the goal of what is now called lean
manufacturing as a countermeasure. Henry Towne, past President of the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers, wrote in the Foreword to Frederick Winslow Taylor's Shop
Management (1911), "We are justly proud of the high wage rates which prevail throughout
our country, and jealous of any interference with them by the products of the cheaper labour
of other countries. To maintain this condition, to strengthen our control of home markets, and,
above all, to broaden our opportunities in foreign markets where we must compete with the
products of other industrial nations, we should welcome and encourage every influence
tending to increase the efficiency of our productive processes.

 Henry Ford

Henry Ford initially ignored the impact of waste accumulation while developing his
mass assembly manufacturing system. Charles Buxton Going wrote in 1915:
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 Ford's success has startled the country, almost the world, financially, industrially,
mechanically. It exhibits in higher degree than most persons would have thought possible the
seemingly contradictory requirements of true efficiency, which are: constant increase of
quality, great increase of pay to the workers, repeated reduction in cost to the consumer. And
with these appears, as at once cause and effect, an absolutely incredible enlargement of output
reaching something like one hundredfold in less than ten years, and an enormous profit to the
manufacturer. Ford, in My Life and Work (1922), provided a single-paragraph description
that encompasses the entire concept of waste:
I believe that the average farmer puts to a really useful purpose only about 5% of the
energy he expends.... Not only is everything done by hand, but seldom is a thought given to a
logical arrangement. A farmer doing his chores will walk up and down a rickety ladder a
dozen times. He will carry water for years instead of putting in a few lengths of pipe. His
whole idea, when there is extra work to do, is to hire extra men. He thinks of putting money
into improvements as an expense.... It is waste motion— waste effort— that makes farm
prices high and profits low.

Poor arrangement of the workplace—a major focus of the modern kaizen—and doing a
job inefficiently out of habit—are major forms of waste even in modern workplaces.

Ford also pointed out how easy it was to overlook material waste. A former employee,
Harry Bennett, wrote:

One day when Mr. Ford and I were together he spotted some rust in the slag that
ballasted the right of way of the D. T. & I [railroad]. This slag had been dumped there from
our own furnaces. 'You know,' Mr. Ford said to me, 'there's iron in that slag. You make the
crane crews who put it out there sort it over, and take it back to the plant.'

In other words, Ford saw the rust and realized that the steel plant was not recovering all
of the iron.

Ford's early success, however, was not sustainable. As James P. Womack and
Daniel Jones pointed out in "Lean Thinking", what Ford accomplished represented the
"special case" rather than a robust lean solution. The major challenge that Ford faced
was that his methods were built for a steady-state environment, rather than for the
dynamic conditions firms in Design (DFM) is a concept derived from Ford which
emphasizes the importance of standardizing individual parts as well as eliminating
redundant components in My Life and Work. This standardization was central to Ford's

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concept of mass production, and the manufacturing "tolerances", or upper and lower
dimensional limits that ensured interchange ability of parts became widely applied
across manufacturing. Decades later, the renowned Japanese quality guru, Genichi
Taguchi, demonstrated that this "goal post" method of measuring was inadequate. He
showed that "loss" in capabilities did not begin only after exceeding these tolerances,
but increased as described by the Taguchi Loss Function at any condition exceeding the
nominal condition. This became an important part of W. Edwards Deming's quality
movement of the 1980s, later helping to develop improved understanding of key areas
of focus such as cycle time variation in improving manufacturing quality and
efficiencies in aerospace and other industries.

While Ford is renowned for his production line, it is often not recognized how much
effort he put into removing the fitters' work to make the production line possible. Previous to
the use, Ford's car's components were fitted and reshaped by a skilled engineer at the point of
use, so that they would connect properly. By enforcing very strict specification and quality
criteria on component manufacture, he eliminated this work almost entirely, reducing
manufacturing effort by between 60-90%.However, Ford's mass production system failed to
incorporate the notion of "pull production" and thus often suffered from overproduction.

creasingly face today. Although his rigid, top-down controls made it possible to hold
variation in work activities down to very low levels, his approach did not respond well to
uncertain, dynamic business conditions; they responded particularly badly to the need for new
product innovation. This was made clear by Ford's precipitous decline when the company was
forced to finally introduce follow-on to the Model T.

Toyota develops TPS

Toyota's development of ideas that later became lean may have started at the turn of
the 20th century with Sakichi Toyoda, in a textile factory with looms that stopped themselves
when a thread broke. This became the seed of autonomation and Jidoka. Toyota's journey
with just-in-time (JIT) may have started back in 1934 when it moved from textiles to produce
its first car. Kiichiro Toyoda, founder of Toyota Motor Corporation, directed the engine
casting work and discovered many problems in their manufacturing. He decided he must stop
the repairing of poor quality by intense study of each stage of the process. In 1936, when
Toyota won its first truck contract with the Japanese government, his processes hit new
problems and he developed the "Kaizen" improvement teams.

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 Levels of demand in the Post War economy of Japan were low and the focus of mass
production on lowest cost per item via economies of scale therefore had little application.
Having visited and seen supermarkets in the USA, Taiichi Ohno recognised the scheduling of
work should not be driven by sales or production targets but by actual sales. Given the
financial situation during this period, over-production had to be avoided and thus the notion of
Pull (build to order rather than target driven Push) came to underpin production scheduling.

It was with Taiichi Ohno at Toyota that these themes came together. He built on the
already existing internal schools of thought and spread their breadth and use into what has
now become the Toyota Production System (TPS). It is principally from the TPS (which was
widely referred to in the 1980s as just-in-time manufacturing), but now including many other
sources, that lean production is developing. Norman Bodek wrote the following in his
foreword to a reprint of Ford's Today and Tomorrow:

I was first introduced to the concepts of just-in-time (JIT) and the Toyota production
system in 1980. Subsequently I had the opportunity to witness its actual application at Toyota
on one of our numerous Japanese study missions. There I met Mr. Taiichi Ohno, the system's
creator. When bombarded with questions from our group on what inspired his thinking, he
just laughed and said he learned it all from Henry Ford's book." The scale, rigor and
continuous learning aspects of TPS have made it a core concept of lean.

16.LEAN SERVICES

Lean principles have been successfully applied to various sectors and services, such as
call centers and healthcare. In the former, lean's waste reduction practices have been used to
reduce handle time, within and between agent variation, accent barriers, as well as attain near
perfect process adherence. In the latter, several hospitals have adopted the idea of lean
hospital, a concept that priorizes the patient, thus increasing the employee commitment and
motivation, as well as boosting medical quality and cost effectiveness.

Lean principles also have applications to software development and maintenance as

well as other sectors of information technology (IT). More generally, the use of lean in
information technology has become known as Lean IT. Lean methods are also applicable to

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the public sector, but most results have been achieved using a much more restricted range of
techniques than lean provides.

The challenge in moving lean to services is the lack of widely available reference
implementations to allow people to see how directly applying lean manufacturing tools and
practices can work and the impact it does have. This makes it more difficult to build the level
of belief seen as necessary for strong implementation. However, some research does relate
widely recognized examples of success in retail and even airlines to the underlying principles
of lean. Despite this, it remains the case that the direct manufacturing examples of 'techniques'
or 'tools' need to be better 'translated' into a service context to support the more prominent
approaches of implementation, which has not yet received the level of work or publicity that
would give starting points for implementers. The upshot of this is that each implementation
often 'feels its way' along as must the early industrial engineering practices of Toyota. This
places huge importance upon sponsorship to encourage and protect these experimental
developments.

Lean management is nowadays implemented also in non-manufacturing processes and

administrative processes. In non-manufacturing processes is still huge potential for
optimization and efficiency increase.

17.DESIGN FOR SIX SIGMA

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is a business-process management method related to

traditional Six Sigma.[1] It is used in many industries, like finance, marketing, basic
engineering, process industries, waste management, and electronics. It is based on the use of
statistical tools like linear regression and enables empirical research similar to that performed
in other fields, such as social science. While the tools and order used in Six Sigma require a
process to be in place and functioning, DFSS has the objective of determining the needs of
customers and the business, and driving those needs into the product solution so created.

DFSS is relevant for relatively simple items / systems. It is used for product or
process design in contrast with process improvement.[1] Measurement is the most important
part of most Six Sigma or DFSS tools, but whereas in Six Sigma measurements are made

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from an existing process, DFSS focuses on gaining a deep insight into customer needs and
using these to inform every design decision and trade-off.

There are different options for the implementation of DFSS. Unlike Six Sigma, which
is commonly driven via DMAIC (Define - Measure - Analyze - Improve - Control) projects,
DFSS has spawned a number of stepwise processes, all in the style of the DMAIC procedure.

DMADV, define – measure – analyze – design – verify, is sometimes synonymously

referred to as DFSS, although alternatives such as IDOV (Identify, Design, Optimize, and
Verify) are also used. The traditional DMAIC Six Sigma process, as it is usually practiced,
which is focused on evolutionary and continuous improvement manufacturing or service
process development, usually occurs after initial system or product design and development
have been largely completed. DMAIC Six Sigma as practiced is usually consumed with
solving existing manufacturing or service process problems and removal of the defects and
variation associated with defects. It is clear that manufacturing variations may impact product
reliability. So, a clear link should exist between reliability engineering and Six Sigma
(quality). In contrast, DFSS (or DMADV and IDOV) strives to generate a new process where
none existed, or where an existing process is deemed to be inadequate and in need of
replacement. DFSS aims to create a process with the end in mind of optimally building the
efficiencies of Six Sigma methodology into the process before implementation; traditional Six
Sigma seeks for continuous improvement after a process already exists.

18.DFSS AS AN APPROACH TO DESIGN

DFSS seeks to avoid manufacturing/service process problems by using advanced

techniques to avoid process problems at the outset (e.g., fire prevention). When combined,
these methods obtain the proper needs of the customer, and derive engineering system
parameter requirements that increase product and service effectiveness in the eyes of the
customer and all other people. This yields products and services that provide great customer
satisfaction and increased market share. These techniques also include tools and processes to
predict, model and simulate the product delivery system (the processes/tools, personnel and
organization, training, facilities, and logistics to produce the product/service). In this way,

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 DFSS is closely related to operations research (solving the knapsack problem),
workflow balancing. DFSS is largely a design activity requiring tools including: quality
function deployment (QFD), axiomatic design, TRIZ, Design for X, design of
experiments (DOE), Taguchi methods, tolerance design, robustification and Response Surface
Methodology for a single or multiple response optimization. While these tools are sometimes
used in the classic DMAIC Six Sigma process, they are uniquely used by DFSS to analyze
new and unprecedented products and processes. It is a concurrent analyzes directed to
manufacturing optimization related to the design.

Critics

Response surface methodology and other DFSS tools uses statistical (often empirical)
models, and therefore practitioners need to be aware that even the best statistical model is an
approximation to reality. In practice, both the models and the parameter values are unknown,
and subject to uncertainty on top of ignorance. Of course, an estimated optimum point need
not be optimum in reality, because of the errors of the estimates and of the inadequacies of the
model.

Nonetheless, response surface methodology has an effective track-record of helping

researchers improve products and services: For example, George Box's original response-
surface modelling enabled chemical engineers to improve a process that had been stuck at a
saddle-point for year.

19.DISTINCTION from DMAIC

Proponents of DMAIC, DDICA (Design Develop Initialize Control and Allocate) and
Lean techniques might claim that DFSS falls under the general rubric of Six Sigma or Lean
Six Sigma (LSS). Both methodologies focus on meeting customer needs and business
priorities as the starting-point for analysis.

It is often seen that the tools used for DFSS techniques vary widely from those used
for DMAIC Six Sigma. In particular, DMAIC, DDICA practitioners often use new or existing
mechanical drawings and manufacturing process instructions as the originating information to

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perform their analysis, while DFSS practitioners often use simulations and parametric system
design/analysis tools to predict both cost and performance of candidate system architectures.

While it can be claimed that two processes are similar, in practice the working
medium differs enough so that DFSS requires different tool sets in order to perform its design
tasks. DMAIC, IDOV and Six Sigma may still be used during depth-first plunges into the
system architecture analysis and for "back end" Six Sigma processes; DFSS provides system
design processes used in front-end complex system designs. Back-front systems also are used.
This makes 3.4 defects per million design opportunities if done well.

Traditional six sigma methodology, DMAIC, has become a standard process

optimization tool for the chemical process industries. However, it has become clear that the
promise of six sigma, specifically, 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO), is simply
unachievable after the fact. Consequently, there has been a growing movement to implement
six sigma design usually called design for six sigma DFSS and DDICA tools. This
methodology begins with defining customer needs and leads to the development of robust
processes to deliver those needs.

Design for Six Sigma emerged from the Six Sigma and the Define-Measure-Analyze-
Improve-Control (DMAIC) quality methodologies, which were originally developed by
Motorola to systematically improve processes by eliminating defects. Unlike its traditional
Six Sigma/DMAIC predecessors, which are usually focused on solving existing
manufacturing issues (i.e., "fire fighting"), DFSS aims at avoiding manufacturing problems by
taking a more proactive approach to problem solving and engaging the company efforts at an
early stage to reduce problems that could occur (i.e., "fire prevention"). The primary goal of
DFSS is to achieve a significant reduction in the number of nonconforming units and
production variation. It starts from an understanding of the customer expectations, needs and
Critical to Quality issues (CTQs) before a design can be completed. Typically in a DFSS
program, only a small portion of the CTQs are reliability-related (CTR), and therefore,
reliability does not get center stage attention in DFSS. DFSS rarely looks at the long-term
(after manufacturing) issues that might arise in the product (e.g. complex fatigue issues or
electrical wear-out, chemical issues, cascade effects of failures, system level interactions).

Similarities with Other Methods

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 Arguments about what makes DFSS different from Six Sigma demonstrate the
similarities between DFSS and other established engineering practices such as probabilistic
design and design for quality. In general Six Sigma with its DMAIC roadmap focuses on
improvement of an existing process or processes. DFSS focuses on the creation of new value
with inputs from customers, suppliers and business needs. While traditional Six Sigma may
also use those inputs, the focus is again on improvement and not design of some new product
or system. It also shows the engineering background of DFSS. However, like other methods
developed in engineering, there is no theoretical reason why DFSS cannot be used in areas
outside of engineering.

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING application:

Historically, although the first successful Design for Six Sigma projects in 1989 and
1991 predate establishment of the DMAIC process improvement process, Design for Six
Sigma (DFSS) is accepted in part because Six Sigma organisations found that they could not
optimise products past three or four Sigma without fundamentally redesigning the product,
and because improving a process or product after launch is considered less efficient and
effective than designing in quality. ‗Six Sigma‘ levels of performance have to be ‗built-in‘.

DFSS for software is essentially a non superficial modification of "classical

DFSS" since the character and nature of software is different from other fields of engineering.
The methodology describes the detailed process for successfully applying DFSS methods and
tools throughout the software product design, covering the overall Software Development life
cycle: requirements, architecture, design, implementation, integration, optimization,
verification and validation (RADIOV). The methodology explains how to build predictive
statistical models for software reliability and robustness and shows how simulation and
analysis techniques can be combined with structural design and architecture methods to
effectively produce software and information systems at Six Sigma levels.

DFSS in software acts as a glue to blend the classical modelling techniques of

software engineering such as object-oriented design or Evolutionary Rapid Development with
statistical, predictive models and simulation techniques. The methodology provides Software
Engineers with practical tools for measuring and predicting the quality attributes of the
software product and also enables them to include software in system reliability models.

DATA MINING AND PREDICITIVE ANALYTICS APPLICATION

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 Although many tools used in DFSS consulting such as response surface methodology,
transfer function via linear and non linear modeling, axiomatic design, simulation have their
origin in inferential statistics, statistical modelling may overlap with data analytics and
mining,

However, despite that DFSS as a methodology has been successfully used as an end-
to-end [technical project frameworks] for analytic and mining projects, this has been observed
by domain experts to be somewhat similar to the lines of CRISP-DM

DFSS is claimed to be better suited for encapsulating and effectively handling higher
number of uncertainties including missing and uncertain data, both in terms of acuteness of
definition and their absolute total numbers with respect to analytic s and data-mining tasks,
six sigma approaches to data-mining are popularly known as DFSS over CRISP [CRISP- DM
referring to data-mining application framework methodology of SPSS ]

With DFSS data mining projects have been observed to have considerably shortened
development life cycle. This is typically achieved by conducting data analysis to pre-designed
template match tests via a techno-functional approach using multilevel quality function
deployment on the data-set.

Practitioner‘s claim that progressively complex KDD templates are created by

multiple DOE runs on simulated complex multivariate data, then the templates along with
logs are extensively documented via a decision tree based algorithm

DFSS uses Quality Function Deployment and SIPOC for feature engineering of
known independent variables, thereby aiding in techno-functional computation of derived
attributes

Once the predictive model has been computed, DFSS studies can also be used to
provide stronger probabilistic estimations of predictive model rank in a real world scenario

DFSS framework has been successfully applied for predictive analytics pertaining to the HR
analytics field, This application field has been considered to be traditionally very challenging
due to the peculiar complexities of predicting human behavior.

20.LEAN METHODOLOGY

What is Lean ?

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 Lean is a set of problem solving tools to reduce or eliminate activities that don't add
value to the process. It emphasizes removing wasteful steps in a process and taking only value
added steps. The Lean method ensures high quality and customer satisfaction. It is a never
ending process of waste removal.

What is “Value”?

Depending on the type of business process, the customer defines value. The activities
can be classified into three types. They are:

 Non- Value added activity: These activities do not add any value to the process. They
form the wasteful steps.
 Value added activity: These activities add value to the process and are essential. They
improve processes for productivity and quality.
 Enabling value added activity: These activities do not add value to a customer. They are
necessary for continuity of a business process.

Removing Waste

Using the Lean methodology, you can remove these eight types of waste.
"DOWNTIME" is the acronym for the eight wastes.

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21.The Five Principles of Lean

These Lean principles can be applied to any process to reduce the wastes. They are:

1. Value Stream Mapping: The customer defines the value of a product or service. The
activities are classified into three parts: Non Value added, Value added and Enabling
value added. The value stream mapping shows the workflow process steps for a
product or service. The value mapping process helps to identify and eliminate non
value adding activities. This helps reduce the delays in a process and improve quality
of service.

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2. System Beat Time: The beat time is the rate at which a product must be ready to meet the
customer demand. This ensures smooth workflow of the process without any
disruptions.

3. Root Cause Analysis: It is necessary to find out the root cause of waste in a process. Using
the 5 Why's tool and a cause and effect diagram is an effective way of root cause
analysis. Here is a sample image:

4. Balancing and Workflow Management: Systems designed on beat time principles allow
easy workflows. The production system must be able to handle customer demands at
any time. This means use of resources/materials on a need basis. It is known as Load
balancing. This means replacing material used for building a product. It also helps to
remove excess inventory.

5. Improving the system: There must be consistent efforts to improve the existing business
process as per changing customer needs. This ensures removal of waste and quality
service to customers.

Now let us read about management approach of Six Sigma.

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22.Goal of Six Sigma:

The Six Sigma method aims for a process to be 99.99996 % defect free. In other
words, a process results in 3.4 defects per million opportunities or less.
Problem solving in Six Sigma is done using the DMAIC framework. There are five stages in
this framework. They are Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control.

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Lean Six Sigma
So far we have read about the methodologies of Lean and Six Sigma. The next
question on everyone's mind would be "What is Lean Six Sigma"? Let's find out......Lean Six
Sigma combines the strategies of Lean and Six Sigma. The principles of Lean Six Sigma help
to improve the efficiency and quality of the process.

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 In this management approach, the lean methodology is used first to remove the waste
in a process. After this is complete, the Six Sigma tools are used to improve process
variations. The combination of these two methods helps to develop streamlined processes
with high quality.

The Lean Six Sigma management approach finds wide application across industries. It
leads to rapid changes in an organization's performance. Lean Six Sigma has become popular
in various companies in the world. They can be product or service oriented companies. The
LSS method has improved processes making them efficient. This is possible because of total
employee involvement and commitment to customer satisfaction.

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CASE STUDY

A Six Sigma Case Study – Tutorial for IT Call Center

Focusing the Project

IT services is a competitive field populated with companies that all deliver important
online and call center support to a variety of customers. Most IT services businesses come to
realize that their clients have choices and, within the same pricing range, they gravitate to the
support organization where the service is best.

In this case study of an IT services business, benchmarking helped quantify what the
business already knew – its competitive position was not totally secure. There are a number of
ways the company might have responded to the challenge. While the company had built up a
reasonable capability in Six Sigma, its management realized improvement was not as simple
as forming a project team and turning them loose on the problem. Senior managers had
learned that an important part of their responsibility as leaders is to find the issues that are
well-enough defined and of a scope to be suitable for a Six Sigma DMAIC project team to
take on.

After working through the benchmarks and other data and with the help of a Black
Belt, they were able to distill enough clues and evidence in the top-level industry figures to
select a DMAIC project they could sponsor with facts and supporting data.

Customer Satisfaction and Business Growth

Industry data was purchased from a clearinghouse that gathers a number of measures
about customer satisfaction and call center technical and business performance. Comparing
their company to the benchmark average and to a select best-in-class group, the company‘s
management team could see that customer satisfaction with their support services (gathered
by an unbiased industry source) was just average or a bit below.

Figure 1: Customer Satisfaction for the Company, 2001-2003

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Figure 2: Customer Satisfaction for Average Companies, 2001-2003

Figure 3: Customer Satisfaction for Best-in-Class Companies, 2001-2003

Figure 4: Relationship of Customer Satisfaction Ratings and New Account

Growth in Best-in-Class Companies

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Figure 5: Support Costs Per Call.

Figure 6: Model Characterizing the Influence of Call Center

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 The comparison of the company‘s customer satisfaction ratings (73 percent on a 100
percent standardized score), with the ―average‖ companies in the same sector (76 percent) and
―best-in-class‖ competitors (87 percent) showed management it had work to do.

The evidence also supported the important business contention that customer
satisfaction (CSat) can be a driver of new account growth. Figure 4 illustrates that the range of
customer satisfaction ratings for best-in-class competitors tracked with about 75 percent of the
changes in new account growth. That was evidenced by the R-sq. value in the linear
regression that was plotted. Senior managers knew that the relationship didn‘t ―prove
causality‖ but, together with their business sense, they saw this as an indicator that customer
satisfaction shows up on the bottom line.

Support Costs Per Call, Per Client

The benchmark data indicated customer satisfaction and business growth do not have
a direct relationship to support costs per call. So the companies with the best customer
satisfaction and best business growth do not spend the most on support costs per call. In fact,
the support costs of $26 per call for the best companies and $30 for the average are lower than
the case study company‘s cost per call of about $36 (Figure 5).

A model was built to check the feasibility of focusing a DMAIC project on call center
service measures (Figure 6). In the figure, the Y, or NewAcct, is new account growth during
the benchmark period (as a percent of sales). The Xs are:

Transfer = Average number of transfers (to different agents and help systems) during a
service call.

Wait Time = Average wait time during a service call.

Service = Average service time during the call (the time spent getting the answer to the
question, problem solving advice, etc.).

Obviously the company would like to have seen a better model-fit than the 62 percent R-Sq
seen here. Realizing, though, that many factors play into account growth, the senior leadership
felt that the model showed enough linkage to the process factors that pursuit of the project
was feasible.

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Since the company‘s senior managers had ready access to wait time benchmark data, they
checked their company‘s performance against the industry (Figures 7, 8 and 9).

The wait time review indicated that, indeed, the company was behind the industry
norms. This, and the model indication that wait time could be an influential factor in customer
satisfaction and new account growth (Figure 5), helped the senior managers see that a
DMAIC team focused on improvement in this area could be worthwhile.

Figure 7: Call Wait Times for the Company (Median 4.5)

Figure 8: Call Wait Times for Average Companies (Median 4.0)

Figure 9: Call Wait Times for Best-in-Class Companies (Median 1.6)

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 The company could see a strong indication that a DMAIC project to reduce support
costs should be quite doable – and should return significant dollars to the bottom line.
Management also could see that the DMAIC team should look for the improved customer
experience connected with reduced wait times and service times to improve new account
growth – bringing dollars to the top line.

The company assigned a Champion from its leadership team to take responsibility for
the new project and identify a team leader and key team members. The team was given its top
level goals and scope – to reduce support costs while improving new account growth. The
work with the benchmark data was helpful in orienting the team to the project rationale. The
team began working on their project charter.

A Case of Mistaken Capability

Lean Six Sigma (LSS) teams focus on the statistical analysis of metrics when
identifying opportunities for improvement. The strong focus on data-driven evaluation,
however, can overshadow the human element that exists behind the data collection plan.
Despite its importance, the impact of human interaction is not easily visible or quantified,
buried under reams of data. The common expression ―numbers do not lie‖ may be true, but a
clear understanding of where the numbers came from, and of the human factors involved, is
required to reveal the truth in the data, as demonstrated in this case study.

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Data Vs. Performance

Due to a rising occurrence of late deliveries, Company X initiated an investigation of a

process that was failing to meet the required output on time. The process was considered
stable and capable of meeting customer requirements until the past two months. There were
no records of recent changes that could account for this downward performance trend, making
it more difficult to pinpoint the cause or causes of failure.
The leader of the project investigating the process decided to perform a cycle time
study by accessing the process database (―desktop time study‖) in lieu of a plant visit. The
desktop time study was repeated multiple times with similar results each time.
The desktop time study focused on the process start and end time stamps. At initial glance, the
data showed capability to meet the required lead time without the need for additional
resources. There also was a high level of confidence in the accuracy of cycle times since the
data had come from computer time stamps before and after completion of each task. To
everyone‘s dismay, however, the wave of late shipments persisted.
Due to the incongruity between the data and performance, the project leader decided
to visit the center and perform a visual audit. Eureka! During observation of the process and
interviews with the operators, the project leader discovered the main cause of this erratic
performance level, discussed below.

Mistaken Process Capability

The process occurs in two parts, Process A and Process B. The operators for Process A
(Team A) had been with the company for a long time and had developed repeatable Lean-
based techniques to simplify the flow and still maintain a high level of quality. Their
improvements had allowed the operators to complete their process earlier than the anticipated
cycle time.
The supervisor of the succeeding process took advantage of this opportunity and
utilized the extra time of Team A to perform data entry for the start-up of Process B. The
result was a shortened cycle time – and thus improved capability – for Process B. The shift in
resource allocation was not documented, however, giving the impression that Process B had
increased its capability utilizing the existing resources of Team B. In reality, only Process A
had the extra capability attributed to Lean streamlining.

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 After a period of time operating this way, the business experienced a change in
volume that required Team A to focus solely on its own process, leaving no extra time to help
with Process B. Since the system was based on an erroneous calculation of capability for
Process B, it was not known that the change in volume – and thus the change in where Team
A‘s time was spent – required additional resources to be assigned to Process B to maintain
productivity. The true capability of Process B was revealed, which in turn led to the late
deliveries.

In a nutshell, it was a case of mistaken process capability (see figure below).

Mistaken Capability of Process B

Fixing the Problem

Meanwhile, the salespeople of the company were producing pricing and delivery-time
proposals based on the erroneous cycle-time and resource-allocation information. Without the
borrowed capability from Team A, the true capability of Process B was lower. Therefore, the
actual capability did not match quoted capability and fell short of customer requirements.

The salesperson who made the initial bid would rather waive their commission than
have to tell the customer, ―Sorry, the price bid is wrong and now we have to increase the
price.‖ A quick solution that could also stand the test of time was needed.

To address the problem, the improvement team implemented several different action
plans, including:

 Mirror the Lean improvements from Process A to shorten total process cycle
time.

 Utilize the expertise of Team A in Lean implementation for cross-training.

 Require time study methods to be approved by subject experts or process owner

to capture any undocumented yet critical knowledge about the process.

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  Require periodic reviews of capability measurements to ensure continuous
optimization.

Lesson Learned

Although numbers do not lie, their origin and meaning must be carefully
interpreted. Using the right methodology, creativity and a willingness to consider the human
element will achieve better results.

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23.Conclusion & Recommendations:

Electronic Companies of small and medium size are using Six Sigma. However,
based on the level of difficulty in gathering information from these companies, it is
concluded that many of these companies may not have the resources to document their
Six Sigma deployment. Based on the findings of this study, several arguments
surrounding Six Sigma implementation at Electronic companies can be addressed with
respect to size, challenges, training, satisfaction and cost/savings.

As a global hub for Electronic innovations, Indian Electronic sector has a bright
prospect. Companies in this sector are progressing in the right direction to become
globally competitive. Nevertheless, except for a few, many have not yet adopted
advanced breakthrough quality improvement strategies like Six Sigma and other
continuous process improvement techniques. Presumably, this can be one of the
important reasons for not being able to gain access to the international market and
contribute significantly to the Indian economy.

There is little research carried out specifically in Electronic industries to explore

its journey in achieving competitiveness. The present survey makes a contribution to
this area in terms of research data and analysis. The findings should not only help
further research agenda but also inform Electronic industries located in developing
countries like India to plan strategies on quality continuum.

For the past 20 years or so, organizations in India have begun to recognize that
Six Sigma is a powerful business strategy that can be applied as the driven force for
achieving operational excellence in Electronic industries. As could be seen a number of
organizations have implemented the programme with some degree of success.
Concluding remarks that may be drawn from the results of this research are related to
various investigated issues. Most of them, such as human resources training, project
selection, tools and techniques adopted, and its inherent benefits showed agreement at
some extent.

Six Sigma has evolved into a disciplined, data-driven approach to process and
quality improvement in many organizations today. In view of successful deployment in
the manufacturing and service industries, it is logical to expect similar or even better
results in Electronic industry using the Six Sigma breakthrough improvement strategy.
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Six Sigma for development process is rapidly emerging as the new wave of change in
Six Sigma.

High performance and accurate inferences are the two major aspects enumerated
to focus on key business issues and critical customer opportunities. The prominent Six
Sigma initiatives that help in attaining performance level are management of change,
transformational impact, principles for better change and high impact solution. Success
factor counts in selecting projects, identifying sponsors, ensure commitment, team
management and technical infrastructure. Change of management is the integral feature
focused in organizational strategies, beneficial to prop up performance status,
responsible results and measurable disparities. Customer needs are satisfied by
empowering and motivating employee through better change.

The benefits of Six Sigma are great. Companies reported increased profitability
and employee and customer satisfaction associated with Six Sigma implementation.
Based on the findings of this study, we can conclude that benefits such as trained quality
professionals in statistical control, increased profitability, improved employee job
satisfaction, and success in quality components are important reasons to deploy Six
Sigma in electronic companies.

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24.Limitations for six Sigma

One of the challenges of the fact-driven process of identifying a problem and working
toward a solution is that it tends to leave out a key component: humans—and more
importantly, how humans impact and work through different obstacles. Sometimes it is often
beneficial to give employees a chance to tackle issues head-on before investing in a complete
operational overhaul.

The one-size-fits-all approach to Six Sigma can also be somewhat limiting at times,
especially within organizations or disciplines that rely on creativity. Employees who crave the
freedom to toss caution (and sometimes process) to the wind in an effort to innovate may find
the Six Sigma process stifling.

Six Sigma also does not technically allow for the introduction of new tools or
methods, even when they could be beneficial. Since Six Sigma generally requires total
dedication across all teams, it‘s difficult to use or experiment with other process
methodologies for other areas of the organization.

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