Quality Assurance

Assignment

Topic: 6 Sigma Explanation with a detailed case

study of its application in Ford Motors

Submitted by:
• ISHAAN SINGH, 1RV17ME127
• SUCHETH SHENOY, 1RV17ME112
• T CHETAN KUMAR REDDY, 1RV17ME115
• AKEPATI LOKESHWAR REDDY, 1RV17ME138
Table Of Contents
• What is 6 Sigma
• History of 6 sigma
• 5 steps in 6 sigma
• Why do we need 6 Sigma
• Types of 6 Sigma certification
• Advantages of 6 Sigma
• Disadvantages of 6 Sigma
• Case studies : Ford Motors
 What is 6 sigma?

• The term Six Sigma 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—
specifically, to within how many standard deviations of a normal distribution the fraction of
defect-free outcomes corresponds.
 Graphical
Explanation
• If we see carefully, the graph gives
us a glimpse of process capabilities
between various standard
deviations from mean.
• The graph shown is called normal
distribution a.k.a bell distribution
with centre line being mean and
deviations from the mean line is
called standard deviation.
• For 2sigma the percentage of
defects is 32%.
• For 4sigma the percentage of
defects is 5%.
• For 6sigma the percentage of
defects is less than 0.3%.
 History of 6 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. (Incidentally, “Six
Sigma” is a federally registered trademark of Motorola).
• In the early and mid-1980s with Chairman Bob Galvin at the helm, Motorola engineers decided that
the traditional quality levels — measuring defects in thousands of opportunities – didn’t provide
enough granularity. Instead, they wanted to measure the defects per million opportunities.
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.
History and Development of 6
Sigma
 5 steps in 6 sigma process
• The five steps of the Six Sigma process form an acronym: DMAIC.
• Define: The initial phase of the Six Sigma process is the define stage. The team initiating a high-
level view of company processes to gauge client needs and define a problem or an area that needs
improvement.
• Measurement: The second stage, measurement, is the accumulation of data, which is critical
during the life of the project. Initially, the team maps out the current process to determine a
baseline and looks for what is causing a problem. Throughout the project, it charts possible
improvements empirically.
• Analysis: The third stage is analysis, which is continual as the team analyzes the data and focuses
on the cause of a problem.
• Improvement: The fourth phase is improvement. This is the solution-development phase in which
the team implements a solution and varifies it performs as expected.
• Control: Finally, the fifth phase entails control. Here, the focus is on maintaining the solution and
progress the team has made.
 Why do we need Six Sigma
• Significantly cut down the cost for any organization and improve customer satisfaction
• Shorten time to market
• Reduce defects, rejections, re-work and helps you simplify operations.
• Improve competitive position.
• In six sigma process, 99.9999966% of the products manufactured are expected to be
free of defects.
DPMO (Defect
Process Sigma Per Million Process Yield
Opportunities)
6.0 3.4 99.99966%
5.0 230 99.97700%
4.0 6210 99.37900%
3.0 66,800 93.32000%
2.0 308000 69.20000%
1.0 690000 31.0%
 Advantages of 6 Sigma
• The first and most important advantage is that Six Sigma focus completely on the customer. Within
Six Sigma the defect ratio is 3.4 defects per one million products or service processes. Six Sigma
goes beyond the simple error and takes a close look at the entire process behind the product or
service and not only the results and the complaints that customers have. So we can say that the
advantage is that Six Sigma is proactive and not reactive, and it looks at how improvements can be
made even before faults are found either by customers or others parts of the process.
• Furthermore, for Small Businesses, the advantages of having a Six Sigma quality certification will
make them stand out among competitors within the industry. For customers of B2B businesses, it is
important to know that there is a standard for manufacturing their products and Six Sigma is one of
those warranties for businesses. It is even important to know that even though the business is
small there is somebody that has been trained in Six Sigma and in the proactivity philosophy and
the customer satisfaction approach.
• Other advantages are that Six Sigma can be implemented in many categories within a business and
this will impact directly on profitability and reduction in costs; that the methodology focuses on
improving every part of the process and not the final outcome and that for Six Sigma the
prevention of defects is far more important than waiting for them to appear to fix them.
 Disadvantages of 6 Sigma
• It is difficult to imagine that a methodology created to improve can actually bring
problems to an organization. The first drawback is that Six Sigma can create
amazing bureaucracy and rigidity because the methodology covers all the process
of the company and this, in turn, leads to delays and problems in creativity.
• Furthermore, when Six Sigma is taken to the extreme problems can arise because
companies tend to favour policies that follow the Six Sigma methodologies and
forget about policies or approaches that can only apply to their company. So, for
example, a company can prefer to follow the Six Sigma methodology and apply a
very expensive measure rather than trying a very inexpensive measure that
evidently is needed in the business.
• For small businesses, one of the biggest disadvantages is that applying Six Sigma
can be very expensive to implement. The main cause of this cost is training.
Companies have to find certified Six Sigma institutes to get their training or do
their training in-house without formal certification. Either way, the cost for small
business is too high and a lot of training is needed to really get the grasp of the
system and to apply it to each and every process.   
• Another disadvantage is that Six Sigma really focuses on a strict
and rigid process to follow and that goes against the new trends
that favor creativity and innovation because the innovative
approach focuses on redundancy, unusual solutions, and
deviations in production, and all these things clearly go against
the Six Sigma principles.
• Another disadvantage is that people are not trusting Six Sigma as a
methodology in itself anymore. They are saying that this methodology
is just a continuation of the continued improvement techniques that
were applied in Toyota and companies are shifting to other
approaches or strategies that require outsourcing of projects that
bring big problems with accountability. With this in mind, it is clear
that Six Sigma also requires many trained staff that needs to be
motivated in time and well trained for long periods.
 Types of Six Sigma Certification

• Five types of six sigma certification training are:

• Six Sigma White Belt
• Six Sigma Yellow Belt
• Six Sigma Green Belt
• Six Sigma Black Belt
• Six Sigma Master Black Belt
Six Sigma White Belt
Six Sigma White Belt certified training courses are geared toward providing you
with fundamental comprehension of the Lean Six Sigma outline. It involves
process improvement, variability, adverse effects on process performance. It
gives brief information about the specific roles that every team members play.
Six Sigma Yellow Belt
Six Sigma Yellow Belt is a basic level course. It teaches you some basic
methodologies. It also covers a few of the underlying improvement procedures
along with important metrics.
Six Sigma Green Belt
The Six Sigma Green Belt certification training and certification course allow individuals to
learn how to create charts, process map and control an entire plan to guide other
employees to describe the Six Sigma roles within an organization. The Green Belt
designation mostly belong to the team leader or a senior member of the team working
directly with the team leader.
Six Sigma Black Belt
The Six Sigma Black Belt Certification course allows individuals to perform factorial
experiments, multiple regression, and describe the various type of process optimization. A
Black Belt should able to understand team dynamics and assign team member roles
according to his or her skill level.
Master Black Belt
The two-week program Master Black Belt training is the highest Six Sigma certification
program. It offers an advanced and highly focused approach Six Sigma project and
statistical methods. It is a useful certification course for a person who deals with a team or
is part of executive leadership. The Master Black Belt Six Sigma professional should able to
answer procedural questions and able to resolve any complex technical issues.
 Case Study: Ford Motors
Why was 6 sigma necessary for Ford ?
• There are four core factors behind Ford’s Six Sigma initiative. These are: 
• Cost reduction. 
• Ford’s old production process was surprisingly costly. By introducing Six Sigma,
they were no longer using resources that were not necessary.
• Improving quality.
 Ford has always been known for their quality products, but event heir standards
slip from time to time. While, for most companies, a mere 99% quality level is
considered acceptable, this lets through a surprising amount of defect. As much
as 20,000 instances of defect. Six Sigma espouses that only 99.99966% (and up)
is ideal. This percentage limits the number of defects per million to just seven As
such, Ford made some great astonishing strides in quality improvement using Six
Sigma. 
• Poor customer satisfaction rates. 
Satisfying customer demand is as critical to success as leveraging it.
Many of these issues link to one another, as multiple instances of
defect are likely to add up to a defective product. This will inevitably
dissatisfy the customer which is why Ford chose to implement Six
Sigma, to streamline their processes, and improve production
issues. All of which adds up to a more productive company and
happier customers.
• Lowering environmental impact by reducing solvent
consumption. 
Six Sigma is an extremely green philosophy, and Ford uses it to
make some great changes in their environmental awareness. Ford’s
consumption of vital resources proved very costly in the long-term.
But by committing to a green work culture with Six Sigma, they
reduced costs, increased quality, and improved customer
satisfaction.
Ford’s Strategy In achieving 6 S
 Ford’s approach to 6 Sigma
• The Ford Motor Company began using Six Sigma strategy in the late nineties. Their goal was
to become a fully-fledged consumer products company and not just another automobile
manufacturer. Additionally, they wished to enhance the quality of their products and to
improve their customer satisfaction rates. Their approach towards achieving these goals they
referred to as Consumer-driven Six Sigma. Furthermore, Ford was the world’s very first
automaker company to implement Six Sigma methodology into their business operations on
a large scale. 
• One of the most pressing problems facing Ford at the time was the 20,000 plus opportunities
for defects that came with manufacturing cars. Despite the company’s prior history of quality
control and innovation, some defects inevitably slipped through their fingers. Following this
revelation, they achieved substantial improvements using Six Sigma. Their aim was to reduce
their defect rate to only a single defect per every 14.8 vehicles, and they succeeded.
Furthermore, this also satisfied their goal of enhancing customer satisfaction. In Six Sigma,
even the smallest change can have a ripple effect, helping to change other processes and
move towards continuous improvement.
 Obstacles for Ford’s 6 sigma
initiatives
• Despite its success, there were several obstacles in the way of Ford’s Six Sigma
implementation. These are:
• Employee commitment. As is often the case, many employees at Ford, including
top-level and senior management, initially viewed Six Sigma with skepticism. This
meant a lack of commitment was present from the beginning, proving a major
cause of concern for Ford’s Six Sigma implementation. The time constraints, on top
of this, made it difficult to put its 350 top leaders through weeks of training.
• Time, Money, Productivity. Furthermore, along with a lack of commitment, key
resources like time and money meant employee training was often difficult. The
lack of commitment also led to a lack of productivity.
• Data needs. Finally, Ford was new to Six Sigma and poorly equipped to follow
through with its Six Sigma initiative. Six Sigma, of course, relies on vast amounts of
data to This meant that Ford needed to create and implement new measurement
•                                    
                                      The Ford DMAIC cycle follows:
 Ford’s 6 Sigma success
• Ford’s use of Six Sigma methodology, while it did provide some
road bumps, enabled them to eliminate more than $2.19 billion in
waste over the last decade and a half. They solved this problem by
applying Lean Six Sigma techniques, such as a data-driven
problem-solving process, to devise solutions to waste issues.
Moreover, the company’s methodologies for quality improvement
and waste elimination saw a staggering impact on the company’s
operations. Ford’s Consumer-driven Six Sigma has saved them
over a billion dollars worldwide, helping complete almost 10,000
improvement projects since the early 2000s. Regarding customer
satisfaction, Ford managed to increase their percentage by five
points. We may go as far as to say that Six Sigma saved Ford from
its deep-rooted problems. These issues include inadequate
productivity, poor use of resources, low customer satisfaction,
and environmental unfriendliness.