Mulbury Six Sigma

Mulbury Six Sigma

Six Sigma · Lean · TRIZ

Applying Six Sigma to an organisation is a major undertaking, involving the three principle elements of Enhanced Customer Focus, Empowered and Valued Employees, and Improved Processes. The success of Six Sigma in some of the companies who have taken it to the very heart of their organisation has been remarkable, and very profitable both financially and in terms of softer issues such as esteem and value in the market-place. To be successful in implementing Six Sigma requires a high degree of dedication as well as the astute attention to detail for may critical factors. Total involvement by all, a passionate drive from the very top of the organisation, and sufficient resources are just three critical ingredients for success. Businesses in the UK and Europe wishing to follow the enviable successes of organisations such as General Electric and AlliedSignal will need to follow a well considered and implemented strategic plan, and Mulbury Consulting offer valuable analysis, advice and insight, and real practical support in all of the key areas. Six Sigma is both a methodology and a key element in any organisation's strategy plan.

Key terms in Six Sigma    

Champions

Are the people in an organisation who ultimately sponsor and nurture quality projects. Generally from senior management, they will have the enthusiasm, resources and drive to ensure the ultimate success of the quality improvement project in their care. The process of change within an organisation must be lead from the top, and must be visibly supported and encouraged at all times. Organisations need to ensure that Quality Project Sponsors understand Six Sigma, have buy-in to the ideals and concepts, and are keen to see change take place.

Master Black Belts

Are internal or external consultants, acting as 'agents of change' within an organisation. They must understand the principles and tools of Six Sigma fully, and be able to act as consultants for both technical issues and for organisational and cultural change management issues. They require a wide ranging knowledge and skill set - statistics, computer literacy, people skills, training, project management and diplomacy to name but a few. A typical MBB will coach and mentor perhaps four to six 'Black Belts'. The development of Six Sigma and Total Quality Management comes principally from Japan and America, and the use of such terms as 'Master Black Belt' are therefore to be expected, if a little strange!

Black Belts

Usually internal staff devoted full-time to quality, Black Belts drive and often lead individual quality projects. A passion for Six Sigma is more important than expertise, providing that they have the resource of a Master Black Belt or Six Sigma expert to hand. Black Belts can lead quality improvement teams, although it can be more appropriate if someone else from the business leads the team, and the Black Belt facilitates the meetings and carries out the in-between meeting work, such as data analysis and the complex statistics often involved..

Six Sigma - what it means

Six Sigma Quality Methodology - first developed by Motorola during the 1980s - is the application of Total Quality Management and Statistical Process Control with the aim of achieving effectively zero defects for the customer. GE Capital was the first entirely service transaction based company to apply and extend Six Sigma. In practice, the application of Six Sigma has reduced defects in core processes, increased customer satisfaction, reduced waste and costs, and begun a process of cultural change toward totally customer focused quality. For General Electric as a whole, in the first five years the Six Sigma Quality Initiative added over $3 billion to the company net income.

Six Sigma is a concept and goal, as well as a methodology. The goal is to achieve a defect rate that is as close to zero as is humanly possible, and the methodology applies focused customer research, process mapping, and TQM tools to identifying defects in processes and then entirely eliminating them through process improvement techniques.

Six Sigma goes beyond standard TQM initiatives in being firmly based on scientific and repeatable measurements, and centred on a customer point of view. This ensures that quality is customer driven, and that improvements are substantiated and can be attributed back to financial gains.

Quality Projects

To arrive at zero customer defects usually means that existing processes have to be improved or rebuilt from scratch. Six Sigma uses the concepts embodied in Total Quality Management to facilitate process change, and this is usually carried out by a cross-functional team from the organisation.

Quality projects have one principle aim - to improve (usually) a single process by reducing defects, eliminating waste and inefficiency, and increasing customer satisfaction. The project must be carefully selected and resource by the business management, and sponsored by a key individual from the organisation. Every team requires a leader, and sufficient team resources to provide knowledge, skills and fresh ideas to the group.

A key difference between TQM and Six Sigma is the use of key metrics and applied statistics to identify and quantify performance, and then to assist with identifying the root causes for defects. Another key difference is the almost overtly passionate drive towards a customer-centric focus. This will inevitably mean that new teams require training in both teamwork skills, TQM tools and techniques, and also Statistics, customer research and the concepts behind Six Sigma.

Tools and Techniques

Six Sigma Quality uses a range of tools from standard TQM, as well as many tools from Statistical Process Control and customer research. More advanced Six Sigma, where new processes are designed, will use such tools as Quality Function Deployment, and Failure Mode Effect Analysis to aid the design of new processes from scratch.

Tools cover areas such as customer survey and research, business process analysis, statistical data collection and analysis, project management and team building, cause and effect analysis, new idea creation and evaluation, project management and implementation, and effective meeting skills as well as cultural and change management.

Total Quality Management

TQM in practice consists of a number of tools and techniques for continuous quality improvement. Ultimately, TQM is about inducing and enabling a 'cultural' change within an organisation, with the aim of improving quality and providing a culture of ongoing and continuous improvement.

TQM has, traditionally, been hampered in its effectiveness by a lack of concrete and measurable goals and targets. Six Sigma as a methodology utilises the best existing tools and techniques, but provides a novel and effective 'yard-stick' by which improvement can be measured, together with statistical analysis that aids with identifying and selecting appropriate process improvement solutions.

Many companies have, in the past, applied TQM of one form or another, with various degrees of success. The long term failure of TQM to radically change an organisation is perhaps most likely due to lack of visible and measurable success, a problem that the Six Sigma concept can well address.

Statistical Process Control

SPC - Statistical Process Control - has been in use in industrial applications since early beginnings almost 80 years ago. All processes exhibit natural variation, which has to be controlled within acceptable limits, and special cause variation, which needs to be eliminated from the process. In manufacturing, and particularly production lines, statistical methods are commonly used to continually monitor certain characteristics of a process to look for early signs of changes in the natural or special variation. Such control is used to ensure that the output from the process remains within the expected and specified standards.

The result of applying a Six Sigma quality improvement project will be a reduction in the number of defects from a process, possibly by a factor of 10 or even better. Once the project is complete, however, there is little point in just letting the status quo return, and applying SPC principles to the process is just one way of ensuring that the improvements will continue well in to the future. The use of Control Charts and Process Monitoring, with a sound and well implemented action plan, can ensure that processes continue at the improved level of performance, and may even continue to improve.

The Normal Distribution

The statistical basis for Six Sigma is that almost every measurable characteristic of any process demonstrates natural variation, and that such variation demonstrates the same behaviour as the Normal Distribution.

Statistics theory can describe the shape and behaviour of the Normal Distribution in terms of the average or mean value, and the spread or sigma value. Once the particular normal distribution has been identified  for a given process characteristic, and knowing the customer limits for acceptable quality, it is possible to determine how much of the distribution falls outside of these customer limits. In existing quality practice, three sigma measures either side of the average has been the accepted standard, which (in practice) leaves approximately 7% of the distribution falling outside of the customer limits. In the Six Sigma philosophy, the aim is to ensure that six sigma measures either side of the average fall within the customer limits, which will leave less than 0.0004% of the distribution falling outside of the customer limits. This is as close to perfection as is humanly possible.

An understanding of the Normal Distribution and associated statistical theory is therefore helpful (if not crucial) in fully understanding Six Sigma and the application to process improvement.

Critical To Quality

In Six Sigma, the aim is to first identify core processes - processes of an organisation that add value to the final product or service delivered to the customer. The next step is to identify the measurable and actionable key characteristics of these processes that directly impact the perceived quality of the process, product or service. Such key characteristics are called CTQs or Critical To Quality characteristics.

For example, in purchasing an item from a departmental store - the core process is 'purchase' - and the CTQs for this process might be identified as Speed, Accuracy, and Ease of Use. That is, if the store fails to deliver a speedy, accurate, and easy to use process at purchase, the customers of this process will respond that it is not a quality service. To complete the CTQs it is necessary to identify the measurable levels for which quality is deemed satisfactory by the 'average' customer. Here, it might be found from survey that the CTQs are:

Speed - transaction takes less than 2 minutes from joining a queue to completion

Accuracy - all elements (charged amount, delivery details, item codes) are correct every time

Ease of Use - 80% of customers rate this service as '4' or '5' in a survey question "The purchase process is easy to use - strongly disagree 1 - disagree 2 - neutral 3 - agree 4 - strongly agree 5".

Speed and Accuracy are relatively easy to quantify and measure - Ease of Use is not, and it may often be necessary to apply a survey result rather than trying to measure the characteristic directly.

Mulbury Six Sigma

Publisher and reseller of Six Sigma books

© 2001-2008 G Tennant Mulbury Six Sigma