Introducing Six Sigma: How Do We Start Implementing It in Our Organization?

Six Sigma methodology is known as DMAIC :-

Define opportunities

Measure performance

Analyze opportunity

Improve performance

Control performance

Define:-

This phase defines the project. It identifies critical customer requirements and links them to business needs. It also defines a project charter and the business processes to be undertaken for Six Sigma.

Measure:-

This phase involves selecting product characteristic, mapping respective process, making necessary measurements and recording the results of the process. This is essentially a data collection phase

Analyse:-

In this phase an action plan is created to close the �gap� between how things currently work and how the organization would like them to work in order to meet the goals for a particular product or service. This phase also requires organizations to estimate their short term and long term process capabilities.

Improvement:-

This phase involves improving processes/product performance characteristics for achieving desired results and goals. This phase involves application of scientific tools and techniques for making tangible improvements in profitability and customer satisfaction.

control:-

This phase requires the process conditions to be properly documented and monitored through statistical process control methods. After a �settling in� period, the process capability should be reassessed. Depending upon the results of such a follow-up analysis, it may be sometimes necessary to revisit one or more of the preceding phases.

standardisation:-

This phase requires institutionalizing Six Sigma into day to day working of the organization. In this phase the Six Sigma gains derived by certain specific projects are applied to the other projects as well for optimum business results.

strategy at various levels:-

Executives at the business level can use Six Sigma for improving market share, increasing profitability and organizations long term viability.

Managers at operations level can use Six Sigma to improve yield and reduce the labor and material cost.

At the process level engineers can use Six Sigma to reduce defects and variation and improve process capability leading to better customer satisfaction.

Six Sigma is a high performance data driven approach focused on analyzing the root causes of business problems and solving them. It ties the outputs of a business directly to market place.

Six Sigma places a clear focus on getting the bottom line results along with the time frame. No Six Sigma project is approved until the bottom line or the success factors are clearly spelt out. Each project must be completed within a given time frame which is usually 3-6 months.

Human elements:-

Strong leadership

Training

Customer focus

Project teams

Culture change

Process elements:-

Analysis of variation

Disciplined approach

Quantitative measures

Statistical methods

Process improvement

General Electric's, Jack Welch describes Six Sigma as the most important initiative GE has ever undertaken. GE had an operative income of 10% for decades and they were not able to improve this despite various efforts. After implementation of Six Sigma GE was able to improve its operative income from 10% in 1995 to 16.7% in 1998.

business perspective of strategy:-

Define what plans must be in place to realize improvement of each state.

Measure the business systems that support the plans.

Analyze the gaps in system performance benchmarks.

Improve system elements to achieve performance goals.

Control system-level characteristics that are critical to value.

Standardize the systems that prove to be best-in-class.