What Do You Know About 6 Sigma? Do you think there is anything better?

[M.D. Holloway]

I have an opportunity to teach some course work at a college. One area that they tapped me for is 6 Sigma. I think it has it's place in manufacturing but I wanted to get feedback on any other concepts that may be more timely or an acompyment to the 6 Sigma process.

[Ian Donkin]

There are some big firms out there using 6 Sigma for more than just manufacturing.

I used to work at NCR and 6 Sigma was widely adopted there - it certainly added a lot of credibility to improvement projects, whether internal or external.

[Joeaksa]

Its a good process if its used correctly. We used it for almost everything at my last job but once they found the problems only half of the time would they change anything. One time only we saved the company almost $7 million. Another time we cut down the actions from 122 to 18 to get a certain process completed.

Key to this is find some people involved in the area you are wanting to streamline, and make sure that the others in the group have NO experience in this area. Its important to get a fresh outlook on things to see if there are new or other ways to work with things.

JoeA

[Burnin' oil]

Ask the Japanese. I use 6 sigma in my personal life . . . very effective.

[DonDavis]

Dood, I'm a Green Belt card carryin' DMAIC speakin' GE guy.

Just measure it. We can fix it!

[Seahawk]

Very much into 6 Sigma...have two Black Belts in my office working to streamline admin processes and clean out the admin cobwebs that creep into any enterprise.
When I was the chief government flight test pilot at the Sikorsky factory in Bridgeport, CT, we performed three Kaizan events with great results in that production environment. White collar 6 sigma efforts aren't nearly has flashy, but they are effective.

[Milu]

I'm a management consultant, developing and implementing real world solutions is what I do for a living.

Conceptually sixsigma is a good package.

However, the way it is applied in industry is only valid for companies of a certain size, about 500+ employees. A lot of small businesses have been tricked into applying it by their large customers who use it. (level 1 suppliers in the auto industry to their level 3/4 suppliers for example). Many of the original proponents of it have abandonned it, sometimes in favour of a very reduced partial approach (8D) which covers the minimum requirement for their suppliers.

If you really start analysing it there is not really anything new in it. It's just the management fad of five years ago. Like business re-engineering was the one of ten years ago.
The selling point often used for Sixsigma is that it brings in measurable results. This would be more impressive if they were measurable on the bottom line in the annual accounts.

For what it's worth that is my humble opinion, more information is my professional opinion which is available for an exorbitant fee.

[12own911]

Are you saying that 6 Sigma is a software program that you can buy? I undertand that Six Sigma is a term used in Project Management to mean Quality at 99.9998 percent. My company is going to Four Nines or 99.99 percent in quality. Am I confused???

[M.D. Holloway]

Kim, your not confused. Six Sigma is essentially a process to improve a giev system to the point it is almost defect free, or in other words, perfecting a system to where there are little if no opportunities for failure.

I was a trained six sigma master black belt when I work for the general. My projects were geared around productivity improvements for our customers - we were able to legit save the millions.

It seemed at the time that if they just applied smart engineering and truely understood what the customer wanted, they would not have needed us.

I just wanted to make sure that six sigma was still alive and well and was still considered viable and worthwhile. In the past several years, I haven't seen much of it in my business structures.

[al lkosmal]

Six Sigma and Lean are not religions, but provide tools to reduce waste, improve quality via variation reduction, etc. Very effective when applied in a logical manner. They are not the goal, but when used properly are great tools to apply to achieve the goal of Continuous Improvement in many areas. The trick is to use the tools without becoming one. PM me and let me know what it is you are interested in teaching your students and I may be able to help with suggestions on how to apply these tools outside the manufacturing arena.

Regards,

al

[alf]

My brain got mushed in the Six Sigma section of my Ops Management MBA class. BUT I do know who Herby is from The Goal though...

Maybe 8 Sigma is better than 6 Sigma

Have you heard of 7 minute abs? (think Something About Mary)

[red-beard]

And if you're not satisfied, we'll throw in the 8th minute, free.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

More corporate double-speak mumbo-jumbo to me.

IMO the best managers are the ones that have good common sense, a reasonable level of MANAGEMENT aptitude or experience (note: this is NOT the same as technical aptitude or experience), are reasonably well-disciplined, articulate, personable and of reasonable intelligence (this does NOT mean they're necessarily they're smarter than the people they manage).

The biggest mistake I see is that companies (for whatever convention/reason) decide that a guy making widgets is automatically a great candidate to supervise guys making widgets. Wrongo. Problem is in our society there are very few companies with the common sense to reward a senior widget-maker that's good with NEARLY the same compensation as a widget-maker-supervisor. As such, neither the company nor the widget-maker being considered for "promotion" to be a supervisor (manager) speaks up and says "I don't think this is where my talents lie". The company is just following stupid conventional thinking and the employee is just doing what's necessary to get better compensation.

A good manager needs MANAGEMENT skills - not the technical knowledge to do every one of their peoples' jobs.

The truly visionary companies identify which people are good in which roles, match them accordingly and compensate fairly based on the value of that service provided, not buckling to convention or resorting to the empty rationale of "well, that's the way we've always done it".

I've sat in on a bunch of higher-level management meetings of the type discussed here and they're ALWAYS just a B.S.-fest. Pompous fools trying to out-shout each other and puff their chests out and hear themselves spout buzzwords that they somehow equate with intelligence or expertise. (puke) Want to impress me? Either help identify (clearly) an existing problem or help offer a clear, direct, viable solution to that problem (or both), not some theoretical pap veiled in the latest corporate jargon vocabulary to impress schmoozer managers.

[Shuie]

Originally posted by 12own911
I undertand that Six Sigma is a term used in Project Management to mean Quality at 99.9998 percent. Am I confused???

Its a dialect of a language called Consultantspeak. Im just learning it myself, so please be patient with me. Quality at 99% could be a measured result or a goal of a 'process change'. 6 Sigma is a corporate 'methodolgy' that could be used to measure and define or redefine that 'process change'. Teams of consultants, subject matter experts, and 'process owners' all get together and figure out how to define a new process or change an existing process. It can be a forward looking attempt to streamline or improve a business process or a break fix for a previous process or system change that was carried forward into a new system.

[island911]

Originally posted by Milu
. . .
For what it's worth that is my humble opinion, more information is my professional opinion which is available for an exorbitant fee.

that's perfect.

[Milu]

Originally posted by island911
that's perfect.

The invoice for my fee for professional services is in the post, the contract for royalties is being prepared

[M.D. Holloway]

no sweetie, I don't pee outa that thing!