in Six Sigma we will be talking about the history of Six Sigma I will explain
Six Sigma in layman's term and then we will be looking at three approaches for
Six Sigma the next thing will be defect level and Sigma number and then we will
talk about DMAIC and DMADV approaches and then we will talk about Six Sigma
belts such as white belt yellow belt green belt black belt what do they do so
this is the lesson plan for Six Sigma Six Sigma in itself is a big topic there
are number of belts white belt yellow belt green belt and black belt so as you
go through these belts you learn more and more about Six Sigma there is lot of
complexity there is lot of mathematics and statistics involved in Six Sigma so
if you want to learn this in more detail then you can go through these belts
let's start with the quick history of Six Sigma when it comes to the history
of Six Sigma few things which you need to remember that Six Sigma was invented
by Motorola in 1987 and then another company which is associated with Six
Sigma is General Electric General Electric implemented Six Sigma in a big
way they implemented Six Sigma in all the processes all the work they did all
the managers in General Electric were required to go through Six Sigma
training and implement that so these are two main things in the history which you
need to remember motorola invented that and General Electric implemented Six
Sigma in a big way no after talking about this quick history now let's
understand what Six Sigma is so to understand Six Sigma let's take an
example of a plane aeroplane which is landing on the strip so forth plane to
be safe the plane has to land on the landing strip you don't want the plane
to land outside the landing strip so this is what you expect normally but
when we talk of Six Sigma our intention is that the pilot should be
to land the plane in half the width of the landing strip most of the time not
using the full width just the half of the width if the pilot is able to land
the plane in half of the width of the landing strip then we will say that
pilot has Six Sigma performance so now if I generalize this concept what
the Six Sigma mean is that whatever tolerance you have you just need to use
half of that tolerance if you are using half of the tolerance then you are
having a Six Sigma performance so if you need to make a piece which is having a
size between 100 and 1 0 - if this is the tolerance then you will have Six
Sigma performance if most of your pieces are not between 100 and 102 but between
100 point 5 2 101.5 so here what you're doing is you're
using one millimeter tolerance instead of two millimeter told us aloud to you
this is what Six Sigma is in layman's term there are three broad approaches of
implementing Six Sigma and these approaches are using Six Sigma as a
statistical tool or using Six Sigma as a process or using Six Sigma as a
philosophy let's talk about Six Sigma as a statistical tool so when you are
implementing Six Sigma as a statistical tool what you are looking for is less
than three point four defects per million but in more technical terms this
is three point four defects per million opportunities this is another thing
which you need to remember for your exam as well Six Sigma performance means
three point four defects per million opportunities let me put it here three
point four defects per million opportunities then you want to use Six
Sigma as a process here what you are interested is in improving processes in
that we have two approaches DMACC and d-mat V we will talk about these but let
me put it here one is DMACC and the second approach is
matvey so this is how you use Six Sigma as a process the next one or the highest
level of implementing Six Sigma is using Six Sigma as a philosophy here
organizations understand that anything less than ideal has an opportunity to
improve so wherever there is a possibility you improve that if you work
with that mindset if you implement Six Sigma with that mindset then you can say
that you are implementing Six Sigma as a philosophy improving anything and
everything which is not ideal General Electric implemented Six Sigma
as a philosophy most of the organizations implement Six Sigma either
as a statistical tool or as a process improvement tool so previously when we
were talking about using Six Sigma as a statistical tool we said that Six Sigma
means three point four defects per million opportunities we are not going
into the mathematics of that but let's look at the table here when you have
three point four defects per million opportunities that means you are having
six Sigma performance and as your defect level or defects per million
opportunities go up your Sigma level keep on reducing when you have 500,000
defects per million opportunities then you are having one point five Sigma and
five hundred thousands per million means half if half of your items are getting
rejected then you can say that you are having one point five Sigma performance
level so this table gives you the correlation between the Sigma level and
the defect level and same thing you can see on the right side here in form of a
graph as Sigma level goes up that defect level goes down other thing which we
talked earlier was that using Six Sigma as a process improvement tool there we
talked about two approaches d'emic and dimedwi let's look at these so here we
have d'emic approach d'emic approach for process improvement is used when you
want to improve an existing process so if your existing process is not giving
the desired results then you use d'emic approach to improve
process your existing process might be giving too many defects your existing
process might not be satisfying clients needs whatever case might be when you
want to improve that existing process you use Damac approach and d'emic stands
for default define em for measure a for analyze i for improve and C for control
so the first thing is defining the problem what problem you have my weld
repair rate is high my customer satisfaction level is low then you
measure that measure in terms of what is the percent defectives in case of
welding what is the satisfaction level of the client that you measure once you
have measured that then you analyze those measurements in analysis you look
at the root cause you might use some of the tools which we talked earlier such
as a fishbone diagram histogram Pareto chart you could use even those simple
tools or you could use even more complex tools which are taught in Six Sigma
courses but then you analyze the problem and then you improve you improve the
existing process and once you have improved the existing process the last
step is C C stands for control here you want to control your process in that new
improve the level you don't want your improve the process to fall to your
original level so for that you need to put some controls in place so this is
the DMACC approach for improving an existing process but if you are
designing a new process the approach for that is d mad v D mat V stands for D for
define M for measure a for analyze so these three things are same as endemic
but then the next two stages are designed and verified so this is
something which you use when you are improving a new process this is also
called as DF ss designed for Six Sigma now coming to Six Sigma belts as I
earlier told in Six Sigma you have a white
yellow belt green belt and black belt so these are the level of competency so you
start with white belt white belt is for management level all for people who just
want to have some basic understanding of Six Sigma then you move to the yellow
belt yellow belt is the beginner level belt here you participate in a Six Sigma
Improvement Team so if you have qualified as Six Sigma yellow belt you
become part of Six Sigma team as a team member and you support those projects
once you go to greenbelt you acquire more knowledge you acquire more
experience then in green belt you either lead some small size projects the
projects with less complexity or you could support the black belt in
executing a complex project green belt is a part-time assignment here you keep
on working on your existing work whatever you are doing so if you are in
assembly if you are in design you keep on doing that job but in between you
support Six Sigma projects on part-time basis the next level is black belt black
belt is a full-time job so once you are a black belt in your organization the
only thing you do is Six Sigma Improvement Project
you lead complex projects complex improvement projects and you even mantle
green belt so that they can improve and they can also become black belt someday
so these are four main levels but then on top of that is master black belt
the master black belt is someone who is very competent in Six Sigma and project
management generally you will have one person as a master black belt in the
organization who will train black belt and other belts so these are the belt in
Six Sigma so with this we complete a brief introduction to Six Sigma and I
know this was really brief there is lots and lots to learn in this topic we are
not going into those details there are separate courses for that there are
separate es-tu certification exams for that