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SIX SIGMA MAINTENANCE SCORECARD METHODOLOGY AND CASE STUDY

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 SIX SIGMA MAINTENANCE SCORECARD
METHODOLOGY AND CASE STUDY

C. Pereira Cabrita(1),(3), J. Oliveira Matias(2),(3), Davide S. Fonseca(1),(3),

Paulo M. Vaz(4), Francisco P. Brojo(3)

(1)
CISE – Electromechatronic Systems Research Centre
(2)
CAST – Centre for Aerospace Science and Technologies
(3)
University of Beira Interior
Convento de Santo António
6201-001 Covilhã, Portugal
(4)
MSc, ex-Delphi Guarda Maintenance Engineer

Tel: +351 275 329 918, email: cabrita@ubi.pt

Abstract
In order to present a new methodology to help maintenance practitioners, owners and
managers to develop and implement strategies for the management of their maintenance
activities, based on the Gupta’s Six Sigma Business Scorecard (SSBS) this paper proposes
the theoretical principles of the Six Sigma Maintenance Scorecard (SSMS) as well as a
case study. The proposed methodology, SSMS, represents a very efficient tool to evaluate
the performance of maintenance activities and to adopt methodologies for continuous
improvement. Moreover, by creating both performance and evaluation standards, as
proved in the case study presented, the SSMS also allows the comparison between
maintenance services.

Keywords: Maintenance; Six Sigma Maintenance Scorecard; Partial Key Performance

Indicator; Maintenance Performance Index; 6σ Level.

1
1. Introduction

The maintenance process represents a key factor for the production in industrial processes

(Ghosh and Roy, 2010; Pintelon and Gelders, 1992). Therefore, a powerful tool as the

one proposed in this paper, allowing the evaluation of the maintenance performance, and

helping decision makers, represents a strong advance on this field of industrial

engineering. Statistics are very important within the context of quality improvement and

therefore in business and industry (Hoerla and Sneeb, 2010; Sana, 2010; Mishra and

Dangayach, 2009; Linderman, McKone-Sweet and Anderson, 2005). Despite some

“pitfalls” (Goh, 2010), Six Sigma (6σ) philosophy is a strongly disciplined practice

directed to continuous improvement, to be applied in processes, products and services, in

order to reduce failures and production costs (Snee, 2004; de Mast, 2007). The evaluation

of how many failures or defects exist in an industrial processes, will allow the adoption

of the correct procedures in order to eliminate those failures and attain the goal of “zero

failures or errors” (Akram, Saif, and Rahim, 2012; Goh and Xie, 2003).

Six Sigma is, perhaps, the most successful business improvement strategy during the last

five decades. Prabhushankar et al. (2008) presented and critically evaluated the various

definitions that exist in the literature and proposed the following definition: “Six Sigma

can be defined as a highly disciplined, organised, systematic, proactive, powerful and

multifaceted problem-solving or continuous and/or breakthrough business/process

improvement strategy that seeks to find and eliminate the sources of error or the causes

of customer-defined mistakes or defects, drive out wastes in business processes, and

reduce variation, thereby improving the efficiency and effectiveness of organisational

operations, and strives to reach a level of 3.4 Defaults Per Million of Opportunities

(DPMO) using extremely rigorous data gathering and statistical analysis, thereby

2
meeting or even exceeding customers’ needs and expectations with a focus on financially

measurable bottom line results”.

When applied to the industrial sector, this philosophy represents a methodology that

assures, in an almost perfect way, the continuous improvement of the productive

processes, imposing a maximum rate of defective processes of 3.4 per million.

On the other hand, a study carried out by Thirunavukkarasu et al. (2008) indicated the

flexible and expanding nature of Six Sigma methodology and witnessed the efforts made

to integrate Six Sigma methodology with several other strategies. For instance, the design

technique named Total Six Sigma Function Deployment (TSSFD) and, as example, others

developed by Thomas and Barton (2006) and Thomas and Lewis (2007), which developed

and applied a combined Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and Six Sigma strategy in

a sample Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) and cost-effective six sigma methodology

in order to eradicate a major Critical to Quality (CTQ) issue. In this context, and bearing

in mind that there is often a mismatch between some organisations' goals and their

strategies, Pyzdek (2004) presented an approach that shows how objectives can be used

to drive strategy directly linked to action.

The Six Sigma Business Scorecard (SSBS) (Gupta, 2007), whose theoretical and practical

principles are described in (Bass, 2007; Cabrita, 2009a; Cabrita, 2009b) consists in the

analysis and improvement of the organizations financial and business performance, based

on the 6σ structure (Bass, 2007; Gupta, 2007; Cabrita, 2009a; Cabrita, 2009b).

It represents also a process of continuous improvement, which allows to evaluate and

analyse the organizations performance, taking the previously defined strategy as basis.

The performance is measured using the 6σ levels, by means of indicators related to the

financial situation, productivity, processes, customers, suppliers, development strategy

3
and human resources. Therefore, allowing the measure of the organizations financial and

business performance, giving the administrations the possibility to monitor that

performance and, consequently, compare it with the previously defined strategy and

outline their respective improvements, Gupta (2007) also proposed an indicator, called

Business Performance Index, as a relative measure of the performance, which allows to

determine the corresponding 6σ level.

Taking the SSBS into account, the Six Sigma Maintenance Scorecard (SSMS) is based on

the normal distribution and represents, in the same way, by evaluating the industrial

maintenance activities, a powerfull tool for a continuous improvement process without

losses. Note that the Weibull continuous distribution can be relevant for example to

describe the time evolution of equipment failure rates. However, for the time periods

defined for the SSMS the mean failure rates must be considered instead of their continuous

time evolutions. It allows to analyse and improve the performance of the maintenance

activities based on the 6σ levels. This philosophy should present the following

characteristics in order to obtain the goal of “zero failures” (Silva, 2008; Vaz, 2009):

1. Application of the correct maintenance policies.

2. Maximization of both rentability and efficiency of the defined policies, reducing

the maintenance activities costs.

3. Maximization of the overall efficiency of the production lines equipments.

4. Acceleration of the continuous improvement processes, with a fast and efficient

transition from the corrective and reactive activities to a new culture based on

preventive and ameliorative policies.

5. Promotion and motivation of all human resources to take part in the

implementation and development of the 6σ methodologies, taking advantage of

4
 the Total Productive Maintenance principles, as well as, other maintenance

models that involve, directly, equipment operators with the objective to avoid

time, material and human resources wastes.

6. Force the cultural changes in the maintenance structure with the objective of

continuous improvement.

7. It should be lead by the administrations, which are responsible by the strategy,

planning and organization rentability, and with everybody participation.

8. Should be controlled by the Maintenance Department director, in collaboration

with both Production and Quality Departments directors.

9. Should be improved continuously by the human resources from these two

departments.

10. Promotion of a continuous training practices, in order to encourage all the human

resources, making them feel every time more responsible, and could this way

contribute for the development of innovative solutions concerning productive

necessities.

11. Adoption of the most suitable policies in what concerns the materials

management, in order to avoid the oversized warehouses and unnecessary

administrative resources. The maintenance materials suppliers should also be very

carefully selected.

12. Utilization of the most suitable diagnostic methods.

13. Utilization of computer resources as a support to all technical and administrative

activities inherent to the maintenance.

14. Maintain, permanently updated, the historical data concerning all equipments and

maintenance materials.

5
2. Implementation

Based on the SSBS guidelines (Gupta, 2007), the following sequential steps to install the

SSMS should be observed:

1. Understand clearly the meaning of the 6σ philosophy and Lean Thinking, as well

as the implications and importance of the maintenance for the wellness of the

organization.

2. Make feel that this philosophy corresponds to the miscegenation of 6σ with the

utilization of the preventive and ameliorative maintenance.

3. Create an indicator for the overall maintenance activities that could be designed

as Maintenance Performance Index.

4. Establish short and long term improvement objectives for all maintenance

activities, in order to change this function into a profit center.

5. Establish the key performance indicators concerning technical and financial

performance for all maintenance activities.

6. Establish the relation between the equipments productivity and the values

obtained for the measured indicators.

7. Develop a policy concerning the utilization of state-of-the-art technology for the

means of diagnostic and for the automation of the data acquisition and analysis

systems.

8. Identify the key processes for improvement of the maintenance performance.

9. Identify all parameters associated to the Maintenance Function.

10. Establish methods for data logging, calculation of parameters and subsequent

analysis.

6
 11. Elaborate the trend charts and present the data related to the objectives to reach,

ideally with weekly or monthly periodicity, according to the enterprise dimension,

its production field, the number of productive equipments and its complexity and

criticality.

12. Publish internally the Maintenance Performance Index, weekly or monthly, as

well as the monthly progress reports.

13. Review the performance of Maintenance Funcion from the obtained data and

having as comparison basis the initial objectives.

14. Identify the indicators that present a high variance and an adverse performance

compared to the initial objectives and research the causes of these differences.

15. Develop actions to improve the performance and monitor the improvement impact

on the Maintenance Performance Index.

16. Establish a benchmarking practice between all organization factories and with

other similar organizations.

3. Methodology

3.1. Partial Key Performance Indicators (PKPIs)

The knowledge of the maintenance PKPIs is essential to evaluate the efficiency of the

maintenance productivity, as well as to launch continuous improvement measures. From

the very complete available indicators defined in (Moubray, 1997; Mather, 2005;

Wireman, 2005; ECS, 2007), the following 9 were chosen, in order to exemplify, in

practice, the methodology to determine the 6σ level for the SSMS. However, other

indicators, as for example the maintenance cost can be considered.

M1. Equipment Operational Availability (EOA):

7
Is obtained by:

MTBM
EOA = ×100 (1)
MTBM + MDT

where MTBM is the Mean Time Between Maintenance and MDT the Mean Maintenance

Down Time. Because there are, in general, several production lines with various

equipments, EOA should correspond to the average availability of all equipments.

Sometimes there are equipments with very high criticality levels and consequently with

high probability of non planned stopps, having then a low EOA. In these cases, is essential

to adopt preventive and ameliorative maintenance policies associated to a rigorous

planning of activities, in order to improve availability and, in sequence, the 6σ level

maintenance (Silva, Cabrita and Matias, 2008).

M2. Equipment Failure Rate (EFR):

Is obtained by:

total number of failures

EFR = (2)
total working time

As for EOA, EFR should correspond to the average of all equipments failure rates, with

special attention to the criticals.

M3. Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE):

Is obtained by

OEE = AV × OE × QR (3)

where AV is the Availability, OE the Operational Efficiency and QR the Quality Rate:

Net available run time − Downtime losses

AV = =
Net available run time
(4)
Real cycle time
=
Net available run time

8
 Total output for operating time × Design cycle time
OE = =
Net available run time − Downtime losses
(5)
Total output for operating time × Design cycle time
=
Actual operating time

Total output for operating time − Rejects

QR = (6)
Total output for operating time

According to Wireman (2004), the reference values for an excellent performance are

respectivelly AV = 0.90, OE = 0.95 and QR = 0.99, having this way the goal OEE = 0.90

⋅ 0.95 ⋅ 0.99 = 0.85 (85%). For a better understanding of the OEE calculation, a practical

example related to the manufacturing of a product is presented as follows:

● Gross time available: 2 daily shifts of 8 hours each, 5 days per week during 2

weeks: 2 ⋅ 8 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 60 = 9600 min.

● Planned downtime, for preventive maintenance, meals, shift changes – 5 hours: 5

⋅ 60 = 300 min.

● Net available run time: 9600 – 300 = 9300 min.

● Downtime losses, for failure breakdowns, setups, and adjustments – 4 hours: 4 ⋅

60 = 240 min.

● Actual operating time: 9300 – 240 = 9060 min.

● Availability: AV = 9060 / 9300 = 0.97 (97%).

● Total output for operating time: 8000 pieces.

● Design cycle time: 1.05 min/piece.

● Operational Efficiency: OE = 8000 ⋅ 1.05 / 9060 = 0.93 (93%).

● Rejects: 80 pieces.

● Quality rate: QR = (8000 – 80) / 8000 = 0.99 (99%).

● Overall Equipment Efectiveness: OEE = 0.97 ⋅ 0.93 ⋅ 0.99 = 0.89 (89%).

9
M4. Overwork Maintenance Index: Evaluates the charges related to the overwork

maintenance activities, compared with the total work of the maintenance human

resources:

Total internal personnel overwork spent in maintenance

OMI = ×100 (7)
Total internal personnel work spent in maintenance

M5. Maintenance Technical Index:

Total cost of maintenance materials

MTI = ×100 (8)
Total maintenance cost

M6. Production Volume Index:

Total maintenance cost

PVI = ×100 (9)
Total sales

M7. Maintenance Service Quality Index (Preventive Maintenance Index):

Total preventive maintenance time

PMI = ×100 (10)
Total maintenance time

M8. Maintenance Staff Index:

Total number of maintenance personnel

MSI = ×100 (11)
Total number of production personnel

M9. Subcontracted Work Index:

Total subcontrac ted maintenance man × hours personnel

SWI = ×100 (12)
Total maintenance man × hours personnel

10
It should be emphasized that both number and type of these indicators depend from the

specificity of the organization, as well as from the importance attributed to the

maintenance activities. Furthermore, the key performance sub-indicators MTBF, MTTF

and MTTR are included in both inherent and operational availabilities (IEC Standard

60050 (191), 1990; IEC Standard 61703, 2001), which are more important in the

maintenance activities evaluation. Note that the European Standard EN 15341 (ECS,

2007) includes the definitions of 71 maintenance key performance indicators – 24

economical, 21 technical and 26 organizational. In this work concerning Six Sigma

Maintenance Scorecard, only nine indicators were chosen in order to clearly present the

theoretical fundamentals of this methodology, including also a practical case study. The

inclusion and quantification of training in Lean Sigma and TPM as well as in Reliability

Centred maintenance (RCM) (Ahuja, 2011; Fraser, Hvolby and Watanabe, 2011) can be

made by the addition of other organizational key performance indicators. Furthermore,

the costs of investment in diagnostics to be applied in condition-based preventive

maintenance policies, and their production gains can also be included through other

technical and economic indicators.

However, the determination of the 6σ level presents always the same calculation

methodology, as follows.

3.2. Determination of the Six Sigma Level

To understand the 6σ level methodology calculation for the SSMS, a numerical example

concerning a given evaluation time period (one year for the present case), is presented in

11
Table 1 (Gupta, 2007; Cabrita, 2009a; Cabrita, 2009b). Then, to obtain the Maintenance

Scorecard, the following steps must be observed:

• Indicators to measure: Already defined in 3.1, are presented in column 1. Note

that, the indicators to choose must be the more representative to the company

objectives and specifications and its number could be different from 9.

• Definition of the measured indicators weights: These Pn weights are attributed to

every indicator as a function of the specificity of every one and of its importance

for the maintenance development. The sum of these weights must be equal to 100,

independently of the number of indicators (Table 1).

• Definition of the indicators weighted performances: As with the Business

Scorecard, for every one of the n measured indicators, these weighted performances

are calculated using the following ratio:

Obtained performance for the Mn indicator

Rn = × 100 (13)
Previously defined performance for the Mn indicator

As for Business Scorecard (Gupta, 2007; Cabrita, 2009a), the effective values to be

used for the SSMS are suggested in Table 2. Relatively to this ratio, it should be

emphasized the following:

ü The actual performance ratio, Rn, for every one of the measured indicators

must be corrected for Dn, according to the Table 2.

ü As for SSBS, the elaboration of the SSMS don’t consider the actual ratio

Rn, but the corrected value Dn in order to clearly differentiate good from

bad performances. As example, for the EOA, if one has Rn = 100, the

performance is excellent, but if it is equal to 80 it could be considered as

mediocre. However, the difference is only 20. Nevertheless, with the

12
 corrected values recommended in Table 2, one obtains for Dn respectively

100 and 40, that is a more significant difference (see Table 3).

ü On the other hand, a Rn > 100 means that the performance obtained for

this indicator is higher than the specified for the analysis period.

ü Additionally, for other indicators, as the value of Rn is higher than 100

smaller must be the value of Dn, because performance suffers an

aggravation every time higher. The same will happen with OMI, where

this situation will correspond to an increase of the overwork hours of the

maintenance human resources when compared to the previously defined

ratio. This could be indicative of deficiencies related to the maintenance

organization and management. Identical situation happens with M5, M6

and M8.

ü Whereas Rn could be higher than 100, the value of Dn can’t get higher than

that value, from where comes the need to elaborate the correspondence

table between Rn and Dn.

ü However, the maximum performance value for the n indicators could not

be considered to all of them as being Dn = 100, because it can conduct to

a case where MPI = 100% and consequently DPU = 0, i.e. DPMO = 0,

which is a senseless situation, because the maximum 6σ level corresponds

to 3.4 DPMO. In order to avoid this situation, one should consider,

arbitrarily, for only one of the indicators, the values 90 or 95 for its

maximum performance.

ü In the situation where the maintenance services make the option to

consider the actual ratio Rn, if its value is higher than 100 one must always

13
 consider Rn = 100. In the limit, i.e. when all the ratios are equal to 100,

one of them should be reduced to 90 or 95.

• Determination of the Partial Maintenance Performance Indexes:

The PMPI’s are obtained by

P × Dn
PMPI n = n (14)
100

• Determination of the Maintenance Performance Index:

The MPI is obtained by

N
MPI = ∑ PMPI n (15)
n =1

• Determination of the number of Defects per Unit: As for the Business Scorecard

(Bass, 2007; Gupta, 2007; Cabrita, 2009a; Cabrita, 2009b), it should be calculated

by using the formula:

⎛ MPI ⎞
DPU = − ln ⎜ ⎟ (16)
⎝ 100 ⎠

• Determination of the number of Defects per Million Opportunities: Being:

total number of defects

DPU = (17)
number of units

total number of defects × 10 6

DPMO = (18)
total number of opportunit ies for defect

because one has the following relationship:

total number of opportunities for defect = number of units ⋅

⋅ average number of opportunities for defect per unit

eq. (18) becomes:

DPU × 10 6
DPMO = (19)
average number of opportunit ies for defect per unit

14
 On the other hand, for the maintenance one must have:

total number of defects = total number of failures in the production lines

number of units = number of production lines

average number of the opportunities for defect per unit =

= average number of equipments per production line
Then, one obtains:

DPU × 10 6
DPMO = (20)
average number of equipments per production line

• Determination of the Six Sigma level: The calculation of the 6σ level is performed

using the standard normal distribution playing numerically with the DPMO and the

respective areas covered by that distribution (defined by average and standard

deviation), establishing the correspondent equivalences (Cabrita, 2009a; Cabrita,

2009b).

To simplify the determination of the 6σ level it is recommended to build a table relating

directly 6σ levels with DPMO (Table 4). For the levels calculated with the decimal part

to the hundredth or to the thousandth, for example 4.13, the respective DPMO could be

determined, without significant error, through linear interpolation. To this respect, it

should be emphasized that a small error is introduced compared with the use of the

padronized normal distribution. However, it is not important, because 6σ philosophy

represents itself, in its principles, a numerical game of approximations where the true

analysis of normal distribution is changed.

As a complement, Table 5 shows the maximum and minimum values obtained for DPU,

according to Tables 1 and 2, as well as the limits for DPMO as a function of the average

number of equipments per production line.

15
 PKPIs Pn Dn PMPIn
M1. Equipment Operational Availability EOA 10 40 4
M2. Equipment Failure Rate EFR 20 75 15
M3. Overall Equipment Effectiveness OEE 10 50 5
M4. Overwork Maintenance Index OMI 10 100 10
M5. Maintenance Technical Index MTI 10 30 3
M6. Production Volume Index PVI 15 70 10.5
M7. Preventive Maintenance Index PMI 5 50 2.5
M8. Maintenance Staff Index MSI 10 90 9
M9. Subcontracted Work Index SWI 10 70 7
Calculations
MPI 66.0 %
DPU 0.416
average number of equipments
9
per production line
DPMO 46222
6σ level 3.184 (3.18)

Table 1 – Calculation of the 6σ level (Maintenance Scorecard).

PKPIs Rn Dn
M1. Equipment Operational Availability EOA ≤ 60 20
80 40
90 70
≥ 100 100
≥ 200 20

16
 M2. Equipment Failure Rate EFR 150 40
120 70
≤ 100 100
M3. Overall Equipment Efectiveness OEE ≤ 50 20
60 30
75 50
≥ 100 100
M4. Overwork Maintenance Index OMI ≥ 200 10
150 30
120 70
≤ 100 100
M5. Maintenance Technical Index MTI ≥ 200 10
150 30
120 70
≤ 100 100
M6. Production Volume Index PVI ≥ 200 10
150 30
120 70
≤ 100 100
M7. Preventive Maintenance Index PMI ≤ 20 10
40 30
60 50
≥ 100 100
M8. Maintenance Staff Index MSI ≥ 200 10
150 30
120 70
≤ 100 100
M9. Subcontracted Work Index SWI ≤ 70 20
80 30
90 70
≥ 100 90

Table 2 – Suggested values for the effective performance ratios of the measured
indicators.

Rn Dn
PKPIs Pn
Rn PMPIn Dn PMPIn
M1 10 80 8 40 4
M2 20 100 20 100 20

17
 M3 10 60 6 30 3
M4 10 100 10 100 10
M5 10 100 10 100 10
M6 15 100 15 100 15
M7 5 60 3 50 2.5
M8 10 100 10 100 10
M9 10 80 8 30 3
Calculations
MPI 90.0 % 77.5 %
DPU 0.1054 0.2549
average number of
equipaments per 9
production line
DPMO 11711 28322
6σ level 3.769 (3.77) 3.407 (3.41)

Table 3 – Differentiation between Rn and Dn.

Levels DPMO Levels DPMO Levels DPMO

1 690000 2.7 115100 4.4 1866
1.1 655422 2.8 96800 4.5 1350
1.2 617911 2.9 80757 4.6 968

18
 1.3 579260 3 66800 4.7 686
1.4 539828 3.1 54799 4.8 483
1.5 500000 3.2 44565 4.9 337
1.6 460172 3.3 35930 5 230
1.7 420740 3.4 28717 5.1 159
1.8 382088 3.5 22750 5.2 108
1.9 344578 3.6 17865 5.3 72
2 308000 3.7 13904 5.4 48
2.1 274253 3.8 10724 5.5 32
2.2 241964 3.9 8198 5.6 21
2.3 211856 4 6210 5.7 13
2.4 184100 4.1 4661 5.8 9
2.5 158655 4.2 3467 5.9 5
2.6 135666 4.3 2555 6 3.4

Table 4 – Correspondence between 6σ levels and DPMO.

3.3. Correction Proposal for Six Sigma level

As known:

DPU × 10 6 DPU × 10 6
DPMO = = (21)
average number of opportunit ies of defect per unit NOD

where NOD is the average number of equipments per production line. By considering the

highest 6σ performance, one has DPMO = 3.4, then:

DPU × 10 6
NOD = (22)
3.4

As can be concluded, for the production of industrial components and equipments, for

example power semiconductors and electronic converters for electrical motors speed

control (Cabrita, 2009a; Cabrita, 2009b), it is possible, at least theoretically and even in

practical terms, to obtain a performance corresponding to the maximum 6σ level.

Nevertheless, for the SSMS is impossible, from the rational point of view, to attain that

19
level, as explained ahead. From Table 5 the minimum value for DPU is 0.101 and,

therefore, from Eq. (22) the maximum performance should be obtained for NOD
6
= (0.0101 × 10 ) / 3.4 = 2970.

This result is irrational, because to have a maximum 6σ performance it will be needed

that the production lines have 2970 equipments, what is completely impossible. On the

other hand, as shown in Tables 1 and 5, for the same performance, i.e. the same DPU, the

higher the average number of equipments per production line, the higher will be 6σ level.

Althought SSMS presents the great merit of allowing to evaluate the performance of

maintenance in comparative terms, it succeeds that, for the same level of quality, i.e. for

the same DPU, the sigma level differs from organization to organization in function of

the number of equipments of the production lines. Thus, when the DPU number is the

same, the maintenance must have the same 6σ level, independently of the number of

equipments, because they present exactly the same level of performance.

Maximum Minimum
PKPIs Pn
Dn PMPIn Dn PMPIn

20
 M1 10 100 10 20 2
M2 20 100 20 20 4
M3 10 100 10 20 2
M4 10 100 10 10 1
M5 10 100 10 10 1
M6 15 100 15 10 1.5
M7 5 100 5 10 0.5
M8 10 100 10 10 1
M9 10 90 9 20 2
Calculations
MPI 99.0 % 15.0 %
DPU 0.0101 1.8971
average number of
equipments per 9
production line
DPMO 1122 210789
6σ level 4.559 (4.56) 2.304 (2.30)

Table 5 – Maximum and minimum values for DPU.

Therefore, a correction of the 6σ level, obtained by using the methodologies exposed in

Tables 1 and 5, is proposed. To obtain the Scorecards, one should proceed according to

the following sequence, showing Table 6 a practical example:

• Calculation of the values for MPI (99.0 %), DPU (0.0101) and DPMO (842),

concerning the maximum possible performance, and the respective 6σ level (4.65)

taking the average number of equipments per production line (12) into account.

• Calculation of the values for those same indicators (MPI = 54.0 %, DPU = 0.6162,

DPMO = 51350), and the respective 6σ level (3.13), for the effective performance

related to a given time period.

21
• Calculation of the correction factor (6 – 4.65 = 1.35). Since the number of

equipments considered is the same and the correction factor is calculated from the

maximum performance, then the correction factor is always identical,

independently of the 6σ level corresponding to the effective performance.

• Calculation of the corrected 6σ level, for the effective performance, i.e. 3.13 + 1.35

= 4.48.

Because the average number of opportunities for defect per unit influences the

calculation of the DPMO and consequently the 6σ level, one can argue that the

introduction of the proposed corrective factor isn’t advisable. In authors’ oppinion,

the introduction of this factor presents several reasons considered relevant, as

follows:

ü The calculation of the 6σ level represents itself a correction of the normal

distribution, which is translated by the introduction of the factor 1.5

(Cabrita, 2009a; Cabrita, 2009b).

ü The original idea for the creation of the 6σ philosophy is based on the

evaluation of the performance goodness of the production lines, quantified

by the number of defective products manufactured, which is then

converted in sigma levels. It is then relatively easy to calculate the values

for DPU and DPMO, being enough to count the components and the

manufactured units with defects and in conformity with the specifications

previously defined.

ü The SSBS represents an adaptation very original, ingenious and intelligent

of the 6σ, with the intent to evaluate in relative terms based on the 6σ

levels, the business performance of the organizations, independently of

22
 their activity sector and dimension. Concerning the SSMS, it represents the

adaptation of the SSBS for the company Maintenance Function, with the

same objectives of evaluation and continuous improvement. Nevertheless,

the calculation in both cases of DPU, differs significantly in its basis from

the situation related to the manufacturing of products. This is because

DPU for both SSBS and SSMS is conditioned to the calculation method

itself, being in general higher than their homologous concerning the

manufactured products, even in maximum performance situations.

ü Related to the SSMS, to manufacture a given product, independently of the

production companies, the number and the type of equipments of the

production lines are obviously similar, meaning that as these companies

present the same DPU, its sigma level will be the same. The differentiation

exists only when the DPU is the same and the average number of

equipments per production line is different, then one obtains inequal sigma

levels, being more penalized the maintenance service that has at his charge

the smaller number of equipments.

ü Concerning products manufacturing, the calculation of both DPU and

DPMO and, consequently, the sigma level is easy to perform. For

example, in bearings production the number of units assembled must be

counted as the opportunities for defect. However, for both SSBS and SSMS

the calculation of DPMO is more subjective, taking into account that the

definition of the average number of opportunities for defect depends on

the point of view of the executives in what concerns business or

maintenance. Therefore, if one consider a given time period for evaluation

23
 of the maintenance performance, for the same DPU one can calculate two

different values for DPMO, depending if is considered the average number

of equipments per production line or the total number of components of

these equipments as opportunities for defect. On the other hand, it can also

be considered, despite its subjectivity, the number of maintenance

employees with decision power, because they represent opportunities to

make mistakes in maintenance decision making.

ü For the SSMS one consider for the calculation of the DPMO the average

number of equipments per production line, because it is a parameter of

easy quantification. Then, in order to atenuate the differences pointed

previously, it is proposed to use the sigma level correction factor.

Whatever the number of opportunities for defect chosen, in practice one

can emphasize that using the lessons learned from the 6σ philosophy, the

SSMS offers a new method for maximizing maintenance quality.

24
 Effective
Maximum
PKPIs Pn performance
Dn PMPIn Dn PMPIn
M1 10 100 10 40 4
M2 20 100 20 70 14
M3 10 100 10 50 5
M4 10 100 10 30 3
M5 10 100 10 70 7
M6 15 100 15 30 4.5
M7 5 100 5 50 2.5
M8 10 100 10 70 7
M9 10 90 9 70 7
Calculations
MPI 99.0 % 54.0 %
DPU 0.0101 0.6162
average number of
equipments per 12
production line
DPMO 842 51350
6σ level (4.645) 4.65 (3.134) 3.13
Correction factor 6 – 4.65 = 1.35
Corrected 6σ level 6 4.48

Table 6 – Calculation of the correction factor for the 6σ level.

4. Case Study

4.1. Description of the Factory

The presented case study was developed in a factory that belongs to Delphi Automotive

Systems, and was located in the central area of Portugal (city of Guarda). It had 749

employees and had 5 labour days per week in two fixed shifts. The productive process

25
was concerned only with the fabrication of electrical cables for world first class

automotive builders.

Taking into account that quality is an inseparable function for all productive processes

and which is also reflected in the quality of the final products, this company was certified

by the ISO 9000, QS 9000, ISO 14001 and ISO TS 16949 standards. It should be noted

also that this company used state of the art technology and productive processes without

wastes neither time losses (Lean Production), where the developing cycle of its products

consisted in the following phases: research and development, project, simulation,

prototyping, test, process planning, logistics, production planning, fabrication and supply

to the customers.

4.2. Maintenance Activities Structure

The maintenance was under the Department of Engineering Maintenance, where the

preventive activities were executed by outsources, whereas the corrective maintenance

was performed by the technical personnel of the company. This factory had a care about

the activities of the human resources connected to the production lines, through a policy

of clear and objective definition of the responsibilities of these resources in what

concerned the good performance of all equipments they operated, in order to transfer the

maintenance personnel to more specialized tasks and of higher complexity. Figure 1

shows the organizational chart related to the structure of the Industrial Direction (Vaz,

2009).

Concerning the use of proactive maintenance policies for the Assets Efficiency

Optimization related to the preventive activities based on reliability, it was given a

significant enhancement to the OEE, being considered the following aspects, which were

equally in the basis of the exequibility of the methodologies used (Vaz, 2009):

26
 • Improve the cooperation between the maintenance personnel and the equipments

operators, with the consequent improvement of the internal communication

process.

• Higher integration of the maintenance personnel in the production processes and

associated equipments.

• Higher integration of the production personnel with the equipments they operated.

INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT

OEE
Overall Equipment
Effectiveness

Industrial Production Production Quality

Engineering Engineering Engineering Engineering
(Production) (Tools and
Software)

Cells Shifts Teams

Coordinators, Leaders
Customers,
Process
Engineering
Coordinator Production Engineering
(Kaizen),
(Maintenance)
Documents,
Operational
Methods
Assembling Equipments, Control Processes and
Programs, Tools, Approvals, Fixed Assets Control,
Maintenance Policies

Figure 1 – Industrial Management Structure of the Delphi Guarda.

4.3. Partial Key Performance Indicators

27
For the Delphi Guarda, the partial key performance indicators related to the time period

2003-2007 are shown in Table 7. Taking Table 7 into account one can conclude the

following:

• M1 increased and as expected M2 decreased significantly, due to a better planning

of the maintenance, specially the preventive activities.

• M3 increased slightly, due to the optimization of their three sub-indicators, being

in 2007 at an excellence level of 86%.

• M4 was invariant due to the good practices of assets maintenance management.

The same succeeded, in an approximated way and by the same reasons, for the

M5.

• M6 was almost completely stable, due to the stabilization of the maintenance

activities (essentially preventive), the same happened with M7, also by the same

reason.

• M8 increased due to the decreasing of the production personnel, whereas the

maintenance personnel remained stable. It is a perfectly justified situation,

because even with production fluctuations, the equipments maintained the same

procedures in what concerns their maintenance.

• M9 was stable due to the good practices in what respects the planning of the

subcontracted preventive maintenance activities.

PKPIs 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

28
 M1 - EOA [%] 99.4 99.7 99.6 99.8 99.97
M2 - EFR
[failures per 7.47 ⋅ 10-2 4.09 ⋅ 10-2 4.70 ⋅ 10-2 1.10 ⋅ 10-2 1.30 ⋅ 10-2
hour]
M3 - OEE [%] 84 83 81 85 86
M4 - OMI [%] 4 4 4 4 4
M5 - MTI [%] 89 71 77 69 76.9
M6 - PVI [%] 1.89 0.95 1.18 1.20 1.25
M7 - PMI [%] 32 45 47 58 54
M8 - MSI [%] 1.1 1.4 1.7 1.9 2
M9 - SWI [%] 18 31 32 40 38

Table 7 – Maintenance PKPIs (Delphi Guarda).

4.4. Determination of the Six Sigma Levels

The methodology used is obviously the same as that described previously, being

presented in Table 2 the values suggested for the effective performance ratios of the nine

measured indicators (Vaz, 2009). Because one had average number of equipments per

production line = 13 it will come:

DPU × 10 6
DPMO = (23)
13

Accordingly, the calculation of the maximum and minimum sigma levels as well as the

correction factor is presented in Table 8. It should be emphasized that the values attributed

to the Pn weights obey to criteria directly related to the importance that the measured

indicators presented for the good performance of the maintenance technical and

management activities (Vaz, 2009).

PKPIs Pn Maximum Minimum

29
 Dn PMPIn Dn PMPIn
M1 20 100 20 20 4
M2 20 100 20 20 4
M3 10 100 10 20 2
M4 5 100 5 10 0.5
M5 10 100 10 10 1
M6 10 100 10 10 1
M7 5 100 5 10 0.5
M8 10 100 10 10 1
M9 10 90 9 20 2
Calculations
MPI 99.0 % 16.0 %
DPU 0.0101 1.833
average number of
equipments per 13
production line
DPMO 777 141000
6σ level 4.668 (4.67) 2.577 (2.58)
Correction factor 6 – 4.67 = 1.33
Corrected 6σ level 6 3.91

Table 8 – Maximum and minimum values of DPU and DPMO (Delphi Guarda).

Table 9 shows the results related to the application of the SSMS for the time periods 2003-

2005 and 2006-2007. It was chosen to determine the sigma levels for two groups of years

and not for each year separately, because for each year inside each period the obtained

levels are practically coincident.

30
 Time periods 2003 - 2005 2006 - 2007
PKPIs Pn Dn PMPIn Pn Dn PMPIn
M1 20 100 20 20 100 20
M2 20 100 20 20 100 20
M3 10 100 10 10 100 10
M4 5 100 5 5 100 5
M5 10 100 10 10 100 10
M6 10 100 10 10 100 10
M7 5 50 2.5 5 70 3.5
M8 10 100 10 10 100 10
M9 10 50 5 10 50 5
Calculations
MPI 92.5 % 93.5 %
DPU 0.0779 0.0672
average number of equipments
13 13
per production line
DPMO 5992 5169
6σ level 4.014 (4.01) 4.067 (4.07)
Correction factor 1.33
Corrected 6σ level 5.34 5.40

Table 9 – Six Sigma Maintenance Scorecard (Delphi Guarda).

Analyzing the data shown in Table 9, one can conclude the following:

● As expected, for both time periods the 6σ levels were relatively high (5.34 and

5.40), due to the excellent production and maintenance management methods.

● Relatively to the values suggested in Table 2, M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M6 and M8

were according to the objectives previously specified.

● Concerning M7, it was given to D7 the values 50 and 70 and not the maximum

100, because it was advisable that the preventive maintenance activities should

31
 increase in a significant way in order to this indicator to get higher than 75, what

was considered as a very good value.

● Concerning M9, for both time periods it was attributed to D9 the value 50 and not

the maximum 90, because it was advisable the increase of the subcontracted work

and consequently, of the preventive maintenance activities. With the continuous

increase of this indicator, M7 should increase also in a direct way.

5. Final Considerations

From the presented work one can conclude that the 6σ philosophy represents a very

powerfull tool, allowing through the used metrics, to evaluate either the organisations

performance and determined sectors of its working structure, as succed with the

maintenance as proposed in this work. It also define all the correction procedures for the

key performance indicators, specially the more critical ones, in a continuos improvement

basis

As explained, the Partial Performance Key Indicators should be selected according to the

characteristics of the maintenace department, the industrial activities and objectives to be

met. In the presented case study the major goals are related to the maximization of the

production.

Unfortunately, due to the global economic crisis, Delphi Guarda ended its activity and

closed at December 32, 2010. This paper represents the authors’ tribute to all employees

of that excellent organization.

32
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