Welcome to this course on introduction to Six Sigma this course will provide
you with an overview of Six Sigma approach before we go any further let us
understand that the purpose of Six Sigma is to increase profits how do we
increase profits we do that by making customer happy how do we make customer
happy that is done by reducing variation and providing consistently good product
or service and by reducing defects and reworks
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Six Sigma approach was first proposed and developed by Bill Smith of Motorola
in 1986 it is based on the works of others such as you heard Iran Taguchi
Deming and Ishikawa and their contributions to Quality Control TQM and
zero defects On January 15 1987 Motorola launched a long-term quality program
called the Six Sigma quality program after implementing Six Sigma in 1988
Motorola was among the first recipients of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality
Award since then Six Sigma has constantly caught the
attention of industry as you would see in the next slide allied signal adopted
Six Sigma methodology in 1992 and General Electric in 1995
even though Motorola is the founder of Six Sigma General Electric is the
company which has proven that Six Sigma is an exciting management strategy
General Electric is indeed the missionary of Six Sigma
General Electric began at Six Sigma program in 1995 and has achieved
remarkable results since then originally Six Sigma was designed to be a practice
to improve the manufacturing processes by eliminating defects it quickly became
adopted in other parts of the business too as X Sigma showed great success
before we go any further into this course let us understand what is Six
Sigma to explain Six Sigma in very general terms let us take an example of
a pilot landing on a landing strip if the pilot is able to land on half of the
landing with most of the times then we can say that the pilot has Six Sigma
landing capability the key thing to understand here is that the pilot is
operating in half of the allowable margin on the other hand if we talk
technically Sigma is a letter in the Greek alphabet that in terms of
statistics means standard deviation we will explore this statistical aspect
later in this course and we'll learn that a Six Sigma process allows only
three point four defects per million opportunities so it is a program aimed
at than your elimination of defects from every product process and transaction
in today's highly competitive business environment the company leadership faces
a number of challenges this slide touches upon some of these challenges
the first and foremost challenge is to satisfy customers that is the main
reason for the company to be in the business actually many of the points
listed here are related to the main issue of satisfying customer as the
expectations of customers increase the companies have to use the latest
available technology to meet the demands quicker a lesser price and meeting the
specific needs of individual customers to meet these challenges companies need
dedicated employees retaining the best employees is a challenge for the
companies
Six Sigma is based on project by project improvement approach improvement
projects are selected based on organizational strategy these projects
are customer and profit focused a team works on the selected project and
resolves the issue the financial benefits from the project are calculated
there is a reward and recognition system to motivate
these are some of the gains achieved from implementing Six Sigma
this slide is from the annual report of General Electric the main thing to note
on this slide is that you will have to invest initially before you start
reaping the gains if you look at the 1996 portion of the graph the cost then
was more than the benefits the big part of this cost is company's investment in
training people
Six Sigma has three different meanings as a statistical tool it focuses on
maintaining three point four defects per million opportunities as a process it
focuses on D Mac approach of process improvement DMACC or DMAIC means define
measure analyze improve and control we will learn d-mac approach later in this
course as a philosophy Six Sigma means that defects are costly and can be
eliminated it aims to deliver the product or the service in most efficient
and effective way
we have already talked about this subject in the previous slide this is
another way of presenting the fact that Six Sigma has three different meanings a
philosophy a process or statistics
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for any program to be successful the role of top management is undeniably
important having said that the question arises what should management do to
drive Six Sigma in the organization first and foremost the management should
understand the concept of Six Sigma commits itself to its implementation and
should actively participate in the process
once the management has decided to implement Six Sigma in the organization
these are the key issues they need to consider what should be the rate of
implementation how will it fit into their existing program
how will it be controlled and monitored
Six Sigma approach can be summarized into these four points before you
improve know what is important to the customer so that you work on parameters
that enhance customer satisfaction reduce defects and meet customer
specifications DPM o stands for defects per million opportunities attempt should
be to target at the center of the specification rather than be within the
target range variation is the biggest enemy of quality so attempt to reduce
the variation
in Six Sigma customer focus is the key priority any improvement is measured by
its impact on customer satisfaction Six Sigma improvements are based on facts
and data the focus is on the process improvement tools in Six Sigma support
proactive management as against reactive management Six Sigma supports
optimization of the organization as a whole instead of optimization of
departments or functions this is achieved through multi discipline teams
when you attempt to achieve perfection there is a chance that you would risk
failure Six Sigma methodology has a system of periodic reviews and accepting
failures
in the equation y equals FX y is the output and X are inputs in data driven
approach you observe the effect of process inputs on the process outputs in
actual case y or the output may be profit customer satisfaction or the
yield this output depends on number of inputs or X to learn here is to solve a
problem you work on the root causes and not on the symptoms
there are two improvement processes in Six Sigma D Mac and D matvey if you are
looking for improving an existing process go for D Mac however if you want
to create a new process go for D FSS or design for Six Sigma and it uses D
matvey approach we will focus on D Mac approach in this course
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