I’ve been talking about technology in my past several entries here. These entries show the value of technology and the significant contribution of Six Sigma to an organization. So I wonder what happens when information technology adopts Six Sigma.
Mercury, the global leader in business technology optimization (BTO) and one of the largest and fastest growing enterprise software companies in the world, provided me some answers.
In its interactive white paper, Mercury mentioned that information technology (IT) was quite late in using Six Sigma because IT itself lacks the system for its own processes. IT needs to adopt a transaction and decision support system that digitizes IT processes, while enabling DMAIC and DMADV improvement projects. For IT to be able to adopt Six Sigma successfully, Mercury recommends the following critical steps:
1. Develop Six Sigma skills — have a good theoretical foundation and a strong group of green and black belts.
2. Implement Mercury IT Governance Center to digitize IT processes — Mercury provides portfolio that support digitized key functions, such as IT portfolio management.
3. Leverage Mercury to accelerate future Six Sigma projects — Mercury Program Management and Program Management applications streamline the planning, tracking, and execution of project. In addition, there is the Mercury Demand Management (MDM) that acts on CTQ data measurements. After these measurements are reported to the defect repository, MDM digitizes the defect-resolution process. This process—from digitized process to defect measurement to analysis to improvement—accelerates Six Sigma benefits.
Read more about Mercury’s Six Sigma-Friendly Approach to IT Process Improvement here.
Having digitized data in a Six Sigma initiative is really advantageous to an organization. Storing, sorting, tracking, and retrieving of information is faster and more systematic. It’s really true that certain methodologies can only work with complementary technologies. I say that this is the right time for Six Sigma. As a data-driven initiative, it needs a sound technology, or even high technology, to be able to manage large amounts of data, discrete or otherwise. And with Six Sigma, technology can operate efficiently.
