My Six Sigma Research: Part 1

Posted by: meikah | 22 February 2006 | 4:16 am

I’ve mentioned that I am going to write about Six Sigma deployments of Philippine-based manufacturing and service companies. For the most part of this study, I will be doing interviews. I have the questions ready and I’ve been trying to make appointments with the companies. I hope by end of this week, I can start my interviews.

Meanwhile, I am researching the background of the companies that I’m going to study. First on the list is Read-Rite Philippines. Read-Rite is one of the world’s largest independent suppliers of magnetic recording heads for hard disk drives. The company has headquarters in the U.S., but has manufacturing plants in various countries, including one in Laguna, Philippines.

I guess among the many Six Sigma projects of Read-Rite, the one done in the Philippine facility made a good impact. The case study was in fact featured in isixsigma.com.

Read-Rite’s manufacturing plant in the Phillippines is the Tape Head Business Unit, specifically handling assembly and testing. It manufactures magnetoresistive tape heads to the entry level through mid-range tape drive markets, with products such as Travan, DLT (Digital Linear Tape), SLR (Scalable Linear Recording) and SDLT (Super DLT).

The project was aimed at improving First Pass Yield of the plants’ Dynamic Electrical Test activity from 61% to 90%. The Elite Six Sigma team began its work in December 2002 and finished its DMAIC project in February 2003. The team achieved its goal, resulting in a cost savings of 41 cents per unit.

This is quite interesting, don’t you think?

Now, two years later, we will find out how the facility is doing. We will find out the answers to the following questions:

1. How was your company performing before Six Sigma?
2. What made you decide to deploy Six Sigma?
3. Who/What started it?
4. How did you get started?
5. What was Management’s role?
6. What were the obstacles/limitations?
7. How did you overcome them?
8. What was the cost?
9. What was the most significant component of the project? Was it training?
10. What percent of the organization are into the project?
11. How many worked full time on the project?
12. What did you achieve?
13. What are the tangible benefits?
14. Have you sustained the methodology? Why? Why not?
15. What is your next step?

Source:
Read-Rite Low Tape Head FPY Manufacturing Case Study

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