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March 1, 2005
7 Ways to Avoid Deep-Sixing Six Sigma
Six Sigma is renowned for helping companies deliver near-perfect products and services. But many manufacturers are actually dissatisfied with the results of their Six Sigma projects. So what are they doing wrong?
Six Sigma is all about rooting out errors in processes and products, and delivering that savings to the bottom line as increased profitability. But while many executives and managers have embraced it because of its ability to compress cycle times, minimize product defects and enhance customer satisfaction, some are less than impressed with its results.
In fact, an Aviation Week magazine survey of major aerospace companies found that less than half of respondents were satisfied with what they had achieved from their Six Sigma projects. Some 30% were not satisfied while another 20% were only "somewhat satisfied." What went wrong? A recent Quality Magazine article says that these companies are probably failing to do one or more of the following...
1. Provide sufficient, streamlined information for Six Sigma initiatives. The Quality Magazine article recommends utilizing a "consistent set of questions to gather, sort, organize and analyze information." For example, one high-tech manufacturer instructed all of its customer support representatives to ask the same group of questions at the outset of each call to define problems and to pinpoint variations. By enforcing uniformity in information gathering, the company trimmed the average time it took to iron out customer issues by 58%.
2. Choose appropriate projects. Companies using the portfolio approach--instead of focusing on specific functions such as the shop floor and the purchasing department--tend to be more successful in implementing Six Sigma. Quality Magazine suggests plotting out all products and services in two dimensions: volume and margin. Those belonging in the high-margin/low-volume quadrant can be taken off the table. Since their high margin suggests high efficiency, such projects will most likely benefit from better marketing, not Six Sigma.
3. Anticipate future problems. Don't forget to ask the all-important implementation question: "What could go wrong?" According to Quality Magazine, "every implementation plan should include an analysis of potential problems, their likely causes, and preventive and contingent actions." Companies should turn to customers and suppliers for input and direct the team's efforts to preparing for potential stumbling blocks.
4. Listen to your customers. It's simple and basic (in fact, it's the first rule of Six Sigma!), but many are neglecting to do this. In fact, a survey conducted by Greenwich Associates found that only 3 out of 13 companies "mentioned customers as critical success factors" when they were asked to spell out what made a project effective. Many companies are mistaking the "voice of accounting" for that of the customer or placing too much emphasis on benchmarking.
5. Attack the root of the problem. According to Quality Magazine, most Six Sigma teams make the mistake of rushing into action. Pressured to make improvements quickly, they fail to fully grasp the reason for shoddy process or product performance. "Without identifying, verifying and removing the root cause of the problem, teams almost always fall short of reducing variation," says the article.
6. Follow a disciplined project-management approach. All team members should be on the same page about how to manage the project. Before planning, each team should be made to define the project's scope and deliverables. They should be armed with "clear assignments, accurate sequencing and realistic timeframes," according to Quality. Once they enter the implementation phase, they should track progress though milestones and regular reviews. For example, some companies employ a Six Sigma Project Dashboard, which lists all ongoing improvement projects and depicts how they're doing against objectives, schedule and costs with red, yellow and green indicators.
7. Take account of the "human side of change." While technically sound, many solutions can be bound for failure because they do not consider the human side, which is composed of five elements: situation, performer, response, consequences, and feedback. The implications of the project on each element must be considered. For example, make sure that people are made aware of how their job situation will change and are trained on the new required skillset.
Source:
Quality Management: Six Sigma's Seven Deadly Sins
James P. Zimmerman and Dr. Jamie Weiss
Quality Magazine, January 1, 2005
www.qualitymag.com/CDA/ArticleInformation/features/BNP__Features__Item/0,6425,141655,00.html
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18 CommentsThe seven success robbing faults mentioned above have plagued companies long before Six Sigma became vogue. Unfortunately Six Sigma will not overcome lack of managing the process.
March 1, 2005 8:06 PMI will add another failure cause: It is useless to plot a six sigma project before applying Lean Manufacturing and TQM.
March 2, 2005 9:45 AMGreat list! Hit all the most important points for any project.
March 3, 2005 7:43 AMIf Senior LEADERSHIP is not on board with the work involved to make Six Sigma go, it is doomed before dollar one is saved. With regards to other methods like Lean and TQM, use them as part of the solution not the driver.
March 3, 2005 9:38 AMI suppose, Not being in manufacturing, means, I don't know what Motorola's original Six-Sigma was all about,- so, I'll comment from the angle of a Programmer (did that, once upon a time) and the 2000-card assembly-language program (I did say, once upon a time) ... which means ca 4.3-Sigma if you want to stay-around, say, 50 years.
Two adjacent cards turned-up swapped. The remedy in Firmware, was to locate a suitable jump-point (an inline NOOP or cleverer) and patch-in a jump to the implemented correct code and jump back;-- thus creating three versions: the A-type cards-correct, the B-type card-errors patched-around; and the AB-type cards-on-error removed of B-type (We didn't use the O-type;-- let'em Hollerith).
The original question was, How do we know all the step-items are in originally-correct order? And the usual answer is, Secure the Facility against sabotage, or let the Engineer/Programmer go.
But Programs got bigger; Security took-on the air of -fairness- which meant nothing at all; And PGA-style programming was designed to hide auto-bugs.
Thus, Five-Sigma meant, Compare The Result To The Original Spec. (Like rereading the original word-problem in arithmetic.) And in actual fact, this also helped spot spec.-troubles, higher than even the Customer, and the President, combined-- "What would I, want, if -I- were, the Customer?"-... Six-sigma a piece of junk, yields a piece of junk.... This is important....
If, your people perceive what the end-product is, they see how better to get there, how to mesh the job-products, how to feedback, how to interface:- Take away that perception, give them design goals they can meet, and quickly their potential goes thermal (keeping the job to stay warm).
You wouldn't believe what junk comes out of MIT Lincoln Labs national security if you knew-better than beer drinkers within 50 years of their job.
/rkp
March 23, 2005 8:33 PMReally six sigma helped many organisations
to save millions of dollars.
We should get trained properly,understand
clearly the concepts and apply them
honestly.It will do wonders for you.
Yes but take a grain of salt with that, to better estimate its full flavor:- Motorola built a $7~15 billion 66~78 satellite constellation globally secure digital telephony system ("Iridum"), that didn't sell well against the soon-to-follow cheap western cellular telephone systems (plural; not so global, but interfaced to standard telephony) that -did- sell well in America and Europe (and Russia *) ... and went bankrupt: ultimately sold-off as salvage for a six-sigma price to the DoD-Pentagon in the Southern New York Court (**) ... Six-Sigma may not be peak-sales, though it cut production cost:
Not all junk is junk ... some of it is just too expensive for cheap-at-any-price-minded America.
/rkp
* (Russia-- but I recall a certain QualComm-type who got arrested for running around the hillsides of Moscow, wearing a GSPS-receiver [and probably his CDMA "code-division" cellphone]; scaring the wits out of them ... a clever News-promo scheme.)
** (3/4 targets of a roughly equal-cost 9-11-2001 center-of-the-World calamity; odd coincidences in statistics: Think again about the fourth, target).
A good course in Statistics teaches you to never trust a liar ... but you should have known that.
/rkp
March 26, 2005 3:47 PM[Corrected Appendix Item]
Yes but take a grain of salt with that, to better estimate its full flavor:- Motorola built a $7~15 billion 66~78 satellite constellation globally secure digital telephony system ("Iridum"), that didn't sell well against the soon-to-follow cheap western cellular telephone systems (plural; not so global, but interfaced to standard telephony) that -did- sell well in America and Europe (and Russia *) ... and went bankrupt: ultimately sold-off as salvage for a six-sigma price to the DoD-Pentagon in the Southern New York Court (**) ... Six-Sigma may not be peak-sales, though it cut production cost:
Not all junk is junk ... some of it is just too expensive for cheap-at-any-price-minded America.
/rkp
* (Russia-- but I recall a certain QualComm-type who got arrested for running around the hillsides of Rostov-on-Don, wearing a GSPS-receiver [and probably his CDMA "code-division" cellphone]; scaring the wits out of them ... a clever News-promo scheme; but points-out the trouble with a world that does not readily accept "a degree of precision not needed for installation of a telephone".)
** (3/4 targets of a roughly equal-cost 9-11-2001 center-of-the-World calamity; odd coincidences in statistics: Think again about the fourth, target).
A good course in Statistics teaches you to never trust a liar ... but you should have known that.
/rkp
March 26, 2005 4:02 PM
Many small and med industries starts six sigma as projetc -concept.Takes training from experts but do not persue..rather they give more importance to kaizan moves ..small small improvement ..
Which technique is most advantageous..?
